How to pack for 4 months?

I just finished reading Hiking Boots to High Heels a post on Janice Waugh’s Solo Traveler Blog where she does a great job of explaining how a fashionable woman can squeeze everything she needs for a two-week trip into one carry-on bag.

It makes a lot of sense. But so far, I’ve got two suitcases full to the brim for my upcoming trip to Guatemala. And more to go. How does a person pack for an extended trip? Especially if you’re visiting a country where it can be freezing in the mountainous highlands by night and baking in the 40C desert by day?

Complicating things is that I scored an invitation to the Central America Travel Market, a conference that brings together tourism suppliers from Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala with travel journalists. So that means I need swanky clothes — and more space in the suitcase — for a quick trip to research eco-spas in Costa Rica.

What to leave behind? The half dozen boxes of non-gluten spagetti for a little five year old boy, a donated camera for a woman hoping to launch a wedding photography business, my cookbooks and reference books on Mayan cuisine? How about the tarot cards and a jug of insect repellent?

I’ve already ditched the high heels and the hiking boots. But the box set of ‘Mad Men’? No way.