The Bota Bag Comes into its Own

You won’t need your Camelback in Costa Rica. If you’re thirsty just tilt your head back, open your mouth and all the fresh pure rainwater you want will be instantly delivered down your throat.

Seriously though, unless it’s already an irreplaceable part of your active lifestyle you can probably leave the hydration system home.  They are fantastically inefficient for anything except a run or a ride where you don’t need to carry anything else.

However, you will want some way to carry water on your travels.

Hydration system packs weigh in at a couple of pounds and if you’re lucky you can fit a Powerbar, credit card and set of keys in the “pack” portion.  For about the same weight I have an Osprey ultralight pack that will carry everything I need for two weeks and a couple of minimalist water bags with the same capacity.

The Platypus can also move from pack to fanny pack to just being tossed on the beach next to my towel (you wouldn’t want to do that with a $129 hydration system or it would be stolen).

For years we’ve just refilled 1 L bottled water bottles but the flexibility of water bags like the ones made by platypus have sold us on the modern bota.  This has been a clever idea since early man first sewed up the skin from a goat leg and popped a cork in the top.  The plastic versions are very light, tough, flexible for cramming and collapse down when empty or partially filled.