I asked my husband to find some photos for me this morning – and we all know what that means, he sat on the floor sifting through pics for a couple of hours. One of the gems he turned up was this:
This photo was taken about seven years ago, don’t we look all cute and happy? What you can’t tell from this photo is that we are in the freaking jungle, it’s ridiculously hot, and humid. Oh. So. Humid.
And yet my husband is wearing a beanie.
It was a thick wool beanie, as a matter of fact. The previous year I spent a month and a half in Belize working on an archaeological dig. I, by the way, am not cut out for jungle work, as evidenced by the photo below. This was taken during the dig, and I am very, very upset about my forehead. It’s a pity there wasn’t a side shot, because whatever bit me made a knot the size of a jaw breaker. It was yucky.
Anyway, of the many grotesque, creepy-crawly things to watch out for in the jungle, botflies are pretty high up on the list. I told my husband about a girl on the dig that got bit by not one, but two botflies on her head. After he googled it, (I thought about posting a pic of a botfly bite to go along with the post, but they are so fucking gross I couldn’t bring myself to do it), he vowed that was not going to happen to him, and so he wore a beanie the entire day at Tikal. People looked at him like he was nuts.
Interestingly, though he was mighty concerned about something laying eggs inside of his head, he had no worries at all about ingesting something that might do the same to his stomach. The day after the photo was taken, he drank a very questionable michilada at an outdoor cafe, and got a bad case of…what would you call that? Food poisoning? Michilada poisoning? I dunno, but he was hella sick.
You know you’re in love when someone projectile vomits and you don’t run and hide.
Travel story time y’all, now regale me with yours.
UGHHHHHHHHHHH!! I don’t have anything horror stories like botfly bites. GAH.
There are no questionable Michiladas, only ones you haven’t drank yet.
Oh I beg to differ. About a year later he had a michilada in Mexico that gave him food poisoning too. I’d like to say he learned his lesson the second time around, but probably not.
This is probably why I don’t travel.
Never leave Fargo?
Ha! That’s great. One of my more grotesque and/or hilarious travel stories comes from Peru (ah, South and Central America, where would our gross stories be without you?). I ate some sort of pink potato (are potatoes ever supposed to be pink?) and then spent a gut-wrenchingly horrible next morning on a train to Machu Picchu. I was in college and on a volunteer trip at the time and the leadership forced me to take Pepto Bismol (though I told them it doesn’t work for me). This made me even more nauseated and miserable.
Then we arrived at gorgeous Machu Picchu, climbing a small hill to overlook the ruins. And I promptly vomited bright pink Pepto Bismol vomit all over the hilltop.
Win.
Peru has some wild number of potato varieties, including some purple ones. It’s crazy. I wanted to try them until I read this.
Haha, good to know! Perhaps it was something other than the potatoes, then.
Um, yeah, you definitely win! LOL! I have a phobia regarding being sick in public… I can’t believe you had food poisoning AWAY from home, then had to hike, THEN got sick! That is a nightmare situation! But, like you said in your follow-up comment, at least you got a great story out of it!
Yeah. It was not my favorite travel moment (though I’ve also had worse…but they are less hilarious and just…worse).
I have that phobia too!
Oh my gawd, that’s a long freaking train ride too, how horrible!
P.S. When people ask if I’ve been to Machu Picchu, I proudly announce “not only have I been to Machu Picchu, I have vomited on Machu Picchu.” It gets a horrified look every time.
I really think you need to put that on a t-shirt.
My worst vomiting story has to do with some fried oysters, but that was at home. Travel-wise, the only thing I can think of right now is the time my little brother picked up a leech at some lake in Canada. We didn’t notice until drops of blood started speckling the playground at the campsite. I ripped the thing off and punted it as far as I could. Luckily my mom’s a nurse and took over from there. Very bloody.
ACK! Just so you know, I had to push aside my breakfast after reading that! Leeches – *shudder*
Wherever you were . . . I am never going there. ((Shudder)) And now I have the heebies AND the jeebies. Thanks, Vesta. :p
You are very welcome.
My family’s conversion van broke down in Hanksville Utah when I was 17. While we were waiting to get the car fixed, a teenage boy with a below-the-legal-limit-for-driving IQ rode up (on a horse) to the picnic bench we were all sitting on. He zeroed in on me and said, “wanna ride?”
I said (HELL) no and my mom looked at me like ,”ride his horse, Heather! Can’t you see his elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top?!”
He got off (thank heavens) and I got on and the horse bolted and the genius-boy spent the next 15 minutes chasing us around the gas station screaming “kaliedescope!”
So really, I’ve had good luck with travel.
Bwahaha! Kaleidoscope? I wonder what that meant to him?
The first time botflies entered my conscious thought processes, I was absolutely 100% sure I would never ever ever ever go to Africa, or any other location where this was a possible outcome for me. No way, no how. Not happening. My ex-husband got sick after a trip to Mexico, before I ever met him, and it left him with a damaged heart and a lifelong, eventually going to kill him ailment. Humid 3rd world nations are not on my to do list.
Oh my goodness, that’s terrible!
I went on a first holiday trip with my in-laws this past Christmas. We flew to San Fran on Christmas eve to meet the future brother-in-law and his fam. Before this, I had only ever had dinner with them a few times. But staying with them in SF meant sleeping on the living room couch and sharing a bathroom with 6 people. We got fairly close, fairly quickly.
Day 3 of the trip: We left Sunnyvale on our way to Palm Springs (riding in the in-law’s SUV). We’d been on the road for about half an hour, and got into a pretty bad car accident – we were rear-ended by a VERY elderly couple, which in turn pushed us into the vehicle ahead of us (which happened to be my future brother-in-law). The folks that hit us were carted away in an ambulance, and their car was absolutely totaled. Fortunately for us (!), we were actually able to drive away from the accident after a short visit to a farm supply store where we purchased some fencing wire to adjust the SUV’s exhaust. Talk about Clampetts Go On Vacay! haha…
All of us woke up fairly immobile in Palm Springs the next day, and carried on to Phoenix. Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like experiencing whiplash with your potential new family, and not being able to go home for another 8 days. I had to continue being Little Miss Sunshine though. This is not a family where one shows weakness on the first big family vacation.
Phoenix was great – caught a nasty cold, but I was intent on enjoying the sun. Sunbathing with a snotty nose = not great. Flying over the Grand Canyon with a snotty nose = pretty gross. Sitting next to the attractive helicopter pilot while being so gross = humiliation at its finest.
At any rate, I survived the trip, married the guy, and have recently finished my physio for the whiplash. The In-Laws are taking us to the UK next spring for a motorcycle race… I shudder in anticipation.
Oh my goodness. Well, they say the best way to get to know a person is by going on a trip. Sounds like you passed with flying colors:)
On my many world adventures, I’ve lived through a number of indignities. Hotels without heat in the winter, hotels with minimal air conditioning in tropical environments, hotels where bug nets were installed over the bed (in a fully-contained room…um…maybe fix your windows or something?), peeing in a squatty you flush by scooping rainwater out of a trough (hey, at least it flushed?), long drives over dangerous mountain roads, and the like. But the food is where it gets really interesting. I’ve had an entire bull’s head set on the table and carved right in front of me, I’ve been served baby sparrows AND SPARROW EGGS, these are a small fraction of the insanity. But, by far, the most insane was eating blowfish, at a shady restaurant, in China. I tried to get out of it, but the company president was there, and I really couldn’t say no. I stalled and delayed and hemmed and hawed as best as I could, and at least bought myself 30 minutes after everyone else at the table ate theirs to confirm that they weren’t keeling over. And you know what? It’s not even good. If I’m going to go out because of something I ate, it better be flipping (insert the real expletive) delicious. But I’m still here typing, and I suppose I get bragging rights for eating something potentially deadly.