Doug - Thanks for the clarification and insurance suggestions!

As I mentioned to Pete, I am looking at the Sawyer water purifier - specifically the SP 135 kit ($113) and the SP 155 kit ($145) for the niece. Claimed 3,000 gallon filter life is probably accurate enough if backwash maintenance is done - I used industrial-sized versions of this sort of filter in the 1993 floods to send water directly to hospital mains (using RAW river water intake) - we post-chlorinated a tiny bit so the water qual guys had something to test for (but it was completely unnecessary except for "shelf life"). The plants came from down under IIRC, but the filters were the same type (but BIG).

The head loss across the filters was minimal, so I believe Sawyer's claims of ease of sipping vs others that require squeezing the bottle to build pressure - and I note they use a polycarbonate bottle, which means no squeeze.

I downloaded the BIG video and watched it off-line.

Links:

http://www.sawyerproducts.com/SP135.htm

http://www.sawyerproducts.com/SP155P.htm

It appears to me that these do NOT use an activated carbon element, so there would be no chemical removal/reduction capability; not sure that would be very important in Bolivia.

Do you have any info / reviews / user opinions you can point me at?

I think Sawyer should send you (or Pete) some of the filters and purifiers to review...

Regards,

Tom