Thread: Help! Shaving in the Wilderness...

Make life easy for yourself. Get a couple of stainless steel razors rather than carbon steel. A four sided paddle strop (one plain leather, 3 pasted) would sort out all your sharpening needs. A small 2 sided barber hone in case you are worried you might chip the razor.

Hot towels are comfortable and part of a not necessary ritual. Most shaving soaps will lather with less than hot water. I find an Omega Syntex (synthetic brush) produces much more lather with a smaller amount of soap or cream than a boar/badger brush. Moreover synthetic briushes do not come to any harm when you cannot dry them properly in your tent.

Happy camping!

I would recommend a good tube of cream--Bigelow from Bath and Body Works, or The Real Shaving company from most drug stores. Either with a brush or without, you can get good lather, slick shaving and decent beard softening.

I just can't imagine using soap without hot water. Cream is much, much simpler--squirt some in your hand, add water and mix it up....

Do you really want to carry all that crap around with you when you're travelling? Grow a beard!!

I addition to all above, maybe can only add that a Stainless Steel razor may be much useful and less prone to rust due to humidity, and that may be you can carry an small flask to fill with hot water when you have the opportunnity, so you can have some hot water for shaving...and "buena suerte"!

If you are heading for the jungle, a bowie knife and a shattered piece of mirror is the way to go.
I went to Peru for 3 weeks and came back with very oily and disgusting skin. I don't know if it is the water, but I was shaving with a Mach 3 and my regular gel (sorry, I converted once back in Canada and I am glad I did, because the airline lost my luggage). Pre and post shave must be particularly important in a different environment, especially if the water is not treated the way it is in North America.
Enjoy your time down there.

All the suggestions so far have been excellent, but with only a week to go AND you're in Ecuador already, shipping time from the US will be a limiting factor, especially with customs. How long did it take to get the razor from SRD?

My best advice (if there are no local suppliers of these things) is to get in touch with the ShoeboxShaveShop.com.
By email: Jeeves@shoeboxshaveshop.com

By phone:
+1-786-200-2774 (between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern Time)

They don't normally ship international, but are willing to do so by arrangement. They don't carry straights, but you can talk to them about getting a suitable DE razor and blades, Syntex brushes, and creams, soaps, pre-shave softeners, post-shave conditioners and after-shaves. Some kind of express shipping can be arranged, but the customs may still be a problem. I am certain that they will bend over backwards to help you, though.

An ARKO shave stick will lather well in even cold water, and ARKO creams are inexpensive but very suitable. Be sure to lather with potable drinking water. If you lather with river water, you need to boil it anyway, because of parasites entering through small nicks or open pores. In spite of the extra weight, be sure to carry a bottle of Witch Hazel or a high-alcohol aftershave to disinfect your face after shaving. (Plastic bottles can help a lot on the weight.)

Another problem is keeping the strop flat. If you can't carry it flat, don't roll it up or fold it! If you have a sleeping bag rolled into about a 12-inch diameter, then you can wrap the strop around that before putting the roll in the stuff bag.

With only a week to learn… I'd grow a beard. Seriously. Good luck though, and I hope you have a great time.

Since you haven't used a straight razor before I would have brought a travel DE instead. The learning curve for the straight razor can be steep, and a tent out in the wilderness might not be the easiest place to learn a new skill.