Advised equipment to make a vlog [closed]

Our daughter is going to undertake a 3 month trip to Ethiopia as part of her school education to help start-up a school project there. In her spare time, she would like to visit the surroundings and keep some kind of a video diary. Something worth watching years later.

• Can anyone share some experience about what video equipment worked for them. No Internet access required imo.
• Is something like a GoPro recommended or did a small camera worked best for you?
• What where your considerations when deciding between a GoPro or a small camera?
• I only know about GoPro and/or small camera but perhaps there's something easier?

I'm no traveler by any means but I would expect following to be important

• Battery life
• Recording time
• Robustness
• Weight
• Ease of use
• and off course video quality

Edit

I have massaged the question a bit trying to clear up some of the confusion. If this is still a better fit for another site (like https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/), I'll repost there but the question is as much about the material used as about soliciting some first hand experience while traveling.