• Home
  • About
    • Who We are
    • Affiliates
    • Disclosures & Guidelines
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Notice
  • Funding Your Travels
    • Banking on the Road
    • Credit Cards in Our Wallet
    • Spending
  • Contact
    • Media
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Partnership Opportunities

i should log off

log off and live!

  • Travel & Planning
    • Travel Reflections
      • Good, Bad & Ugly
      • Re-Entry
    • Travel Resources
      • Travel Tips
      • Travel Bloggers
    • Reviews
      • Gear
      • Operators
      • Travel Clothing
    • Travel Gear
      • Cameras
      • Danny’s Clothes
      • Electronics
      • Health & Hygiene
      • Jillian’s Clothes
      • General Gear
  • Destinations
    • Travel Guides
    • Africa
      • Egypt
      • Ethiopia
      • Lesotho
      • Kenya
      • Malawi
      • Morocco
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Swaziland
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia & Oceania
      • Armenia
      • Cambodia
      • China
      • Georgia
      • India
      • Kazakhstan
      • Laos
      • Thailand
      • Turkey
      • Uzbekistan
      • Vietnam
    • Caribbean
      • Antigua
      • Cuba
      • Jamaica
    • Central America
      • Belize
      • Costa Rica
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Nicaragua
      • Panama
    • Europe
      • Armenia
      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Czech Republic
      • France
      • Georgia
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Italy
      • Spain
      • Turkey
    • North America
      • Canada
      • Mexico
      • USA
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Israel
      • Jordan
      • Oman
      • Turkey
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Bolivia
      • Chile
      • Colombia
      • Ecuador
      • Peru
      • Uruguay
  • Weekend Adventures
    • Cycle
      • Pastimes
        • Beer & Wine
        • Books
        • Cooking
        • History & Culture
    • Dive & Snorkel
    • Hike
    • Trek
    • Whitewater
  • Photos
    • Photo of the Day
  • Family Travel
You are here: Home / Archives for safety

Staying Healthy: What we’ve learned

August 25, 2010 By Jillian

Danny’s experience in Ethiopia underscores the need to stay healthy on the road.  In case you missed it, take a second to read it before you continue.  Although we’re pretty well prepared to handle basic first aid and stomach illnesses on our own, we were caught out in Harar and frankly that was our own stupid fault. We carry everything with us that we needed, we just didn’t bring it with us for the short weekend. Mistake #1.
IMGP3557

Here are some travel health tips to avoid “the worst day ever”:

Basic First Aid. Both of us are certified in basic and wilderness first aid. We chose to take a wilderness first aid course because of its emphasis on improvised triage and long-term first aid management in difficult situations. I can’t say that we’ve used that knowledge while traveling, but we felt it was good to have just in case.

Prepare, but don’t forget. We were prepared to handle Danny’s stomach problems in Ethiopia, but we “forgot” the first aid and medicine kit in Addis Ababa. What’s the point in carrying it around the world if you don’t have it when you need it? Our “go to” kit includes ibuprofen, oral rehydration salts and ciproflaxin. If you carry medications and first aid equipment, keep it with you. You may not be able to find it in a pharmacy when you need it.

Don’t wait, get help. Fortunately Danny’s fever broke quickly, but that was luck. A few weeks ago we recounted this tale to his Aunt, a registered nurse, over breakfast. Her face and tone said it all, his fever had been dangerously high, and her response reminded us how bad the situation could have been. In hindsight we should have sought help immediately when he began shaking – we aren’t trained medical professionals and violent shivers are a sign that something is very, very wrong. We were lucky this time, but waiting it out isn’t a good idea on the road. Listen to your body, if it doesn’t seem right, get help.

Health is Wealth. Like Mom said, eat your fruits and veggies and get a good night sleep. It’s better to take it easy for a few nights and treat yourself right then end up with a week down and out on the road. If you can’t maintain a balanced diet on the road, consider taking a multi-vitamin. Look for fresh fruit juices at roadside stalls.

Know thy self. Only you know if those aches and pains are normal. Only you know your allergies and tolerances. Ask, ask and ask again. If you’re allergic play charades, draw, or translate your allergy or illness into the local language. Better safe than sorry. In Guatemala a pharmacist tried to sell me a drug to take care of parasites. My Spanish wasn’t great, but I could read enough of the lab report to tell that the bacteria column had a + and the parasite column had a -. I refused the parasite drug and went to another pharmacy. I later learned that the anti-parasite cost 5 times more than the antibiotic which the second pharmacy recommended.

Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: health, illness, safety

Diarrhea + Ethiopia = Worst Day Ever

August 23, 2010 By Danny

A fellow traveler once told us a story of wetting herself on an Indian train for fear of losing her seat and all her belongings. Another traveler recounted a tale of two horrendous days on a bus, stopping the driver every hour to relieve himself. He was later diagnosed with cholera.

IMGP1165This is that type of story, the type that takes time to be able to tell; to see the humor in what was both extremely dangerous and embarrassing all at the same time. This is the kind of thing that happens to all of us on the road, the memories we loathe and relish at the same time, but can almost never ever talk about. It has taken me a few months, but this is my travel illness story.

Disclaimer:  This story should is long and should not be read by anyone with an affinity for plant life, or over any meal.

During a brief excursion to the eastern Ethiopian city of Harar, Jill and I hired a local guide who we invited to eat with us after our tour. We asked him to chose a very authentic restaurant. To order, Jill walked to the front of the shop and actually select the cut of meat right off the actual slab of meat. As she ordered, I held the table and ordered 5 cent beers. The men sitting next to me offered me some of their meal, uncooked beef, I politely declined and opted instead to share a drink.

Several hours later I felt a rumble in my tummy. This is nothing uncommon in Africa, especially not in Ethiopia, and I went running (but with clenched cheeks) all the way back to the hotel. Jill, in close pursuit, saw the humor in the situation and laughed as I paused periodically to ensure no ‘leakage.’ To be fair, this sort of moment isn’t exactly infrequent on the road. We made it back to the room safely and as I flushed the toilet I became aware of two realities: both the water and the electricity were out of service. TIA, I thought, this is Africa.

IMGP9340Over the next few hours things got much worse and I went far beyond the usual roto router pipe cleaning. At first I only went to the bathroom once or twice, nothing major, but then I crawled into bed and simply could not get out from under the covers. I was shivering and thrashing about so violently that my body was actually getting ‘air’ off the mattress, enough to make both Michael Jordan and Ron Jeremy jealous. As luck would have it, we had left most of our belongings, including antibiotics and our assortment of fever reducers and stomach drugs, in Addis Ababa with friends, figuring we wouldn’t need much more than a change of clothes for the two day trip to Harar. All I had to do was make it through the night- we were already booked for a bus back to Addis Ababa the next morning at 5 a.m. We both decided that unless the fever didn’t break, which it did soon thereafter, we would avoid the local hospital and seek help back in Addis.

Intermittent utilities are not all that uncommon in Africa, especially away from the capital cities and we had been warned about the possibility by the front desk upon check-in. By all accounts it hadn’t been lunch with the guide that made me sick (Jill was perfectly fine), rather some undercooked chicken from the night before that I hadn’t been able to see. That’s right, the electricity was out.

IMGP2337Somehow I managed to drink some Sprite and water and rather quickly the high fever subsided and I was left with only some awful diarrhea. Eventually I was able to get out of bed and spend two minutes out of every 20 on the can. A good thing for sure as ‘getting it out’ is generally viewed as progress in these sorts of things and ‘getting it out’ somewhere other than your own bed is generally viewed as success. By these simple measures I was suddenly a very successful man; but success, like all things, wanes with time. I was feeling much better though, and it was clear the worst of it was over. The fever had largely broken, I wasn’t shaking violently, and I managed to send Jill against her protests to feed a few hyenas.

By the time Jill returned to the hotel an hour later, power had returned and we were in the daily 2 hour window of running water which allowed her run a few laps up and down the hall with a 20 gallon bucket of water to “force flush” the toilet. Ahhh, good times. Eventually she went to sleep but I did not. I was awake and in and out of the bathroom about every 5-10 minutes and even with a ‘full bucket,’ water was still in limited supply and I actually had to ration my flushes, eventually settling on a ratio of 2-3 bathroom trips to one flush. Thanks to the returned electricity I was able to occupy myself while in the bathroom by playing ‘wack-a-mole’ with cockroaches when they came within striking distance. We had actually chosen one of the nicer places in town, it had a front desk and even a restaurant. This was one of the most expensive places in town….and government run as well.

It was a restless night but eventually it was time to get to the bus. I changed into the only fresh set of clothes I had with me before spending another 20 minutes making sure the pipes were clear. Feeling confident, we headed out down the ‘main’ street to the departure point. Luckily we had purchased tickets for the nice bus, we did that even before I got sick, and it had a bathroom. I just had to make it the 20 minutes to the bus and I was in the clear.

As we were walking, my previous success began to wane. At first I thought it was nothing but then the familiar rumble in my stomach got strong and the fart that I thought I was having quickly grew legs. As I dropped my pants the stream of water continued to flow unabated, as if Lake Meade was suddenly freed of the Hoover Dam. It was a powerful force of nature destroying all plant life in its path…..in this case some nice grasses planted as the road’s median. Luckily there was enough darkness to hide me, practically naked, from the runner enjoying his morning jog a mere 30 meters away. My success was gone, my internal housing bubble had burst, and I had foreclosed on any amount of pride I had managed to collect for myself.

We made it to the bus a few, very short and red-faced minutes later. I climbed on and went straight for the bathroom. Locked. Ethiopia strikes again. It was as though I was 14 and I was turned down by a girl for the 8th grade dance. Part of me knew I would survive but it felt like the end of the world as I knew it. Instead of praising love’s sweet sorrows however, my body was so physically exhausted and drained that, miraculously, I fell asleep.

I was doing much better though, able to last several hours between each rest stop. At lunch I found that I was thankful for having already had so much practice with squat toilets, having an easier time ‘aiming’ at the squatter despite the fact that I was aiming in sheer darkness. At one of several ‘side of the road’ bathroom breaks however, I took a little too long and it was Jill, clearly the hero of this story, (she handled the hand-laundry with us back in Addis with me sound asleep) who managed to stop the bus and have it wait for me to finish. I was already walking back to the bus but was moving a bit slower than might have been expected.

The reason for that slow movement was actually our first bathroom break from the bus. Another ‘side of the road’ with a cliff-side replacing the the usual privacy of trees and rocks, I walked from the bus as far as I could, knowing that I’d be having the same Number 1 as everyone else….just out the wrong end. As the flood gates opened, I inched myself forward, away from the carnage behind me until I could not ‘inch’ anymore as a thorn bush had completely engulfed my pants and underwear from all sides.

For the remaining 6 hours of the ride, I sat with burs piercing my butt….because I clearly hadn’t had a bad enough day as it was. I’m not sure exactly how that ending of this story becomes a moral, but I’m pretty sure the moral is in there somewhere.

Filed Under: Africa, Ethiopia, Headline Tagged With: illness, safety, travel

Escorted by the Police…

June 2, 2010 By Jillian

“No. No. No,” the officer shouted as we left our hotel. Waving us back into the hotel he yelled something in his radio and motioned for us to wait. Confused, we looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Five minutes later the officer received a message on his radio and escorted us to dinner. Fully capable of order and eating yummy falafel on our own, the whole situation seemed like overkill.

Just one night away from Cairo and the completion of our Capetown to Cairo overland adventure, we were annoyed at the constant police escort we seemed unable to shake driving from Luxor to Cairo. A few years ago foreigners were required to travel this route in convoy, but to our surprise that system has been downgraded to individual police escorts. Clearly the Egyptian government felt it necessary to protect us, but from what? No explanation was given on why two police cars, one in front of us and one behind, and eight officers had to escort us through Asiyut, nor why we weren’t able to leave them behind anywhere. For nearly the entire journey we had at least one police vehicle in front of us leading the way or a plain clothed (but armed!) officer seated in our front seat. It was strange, uncomfortable and frankly attracted a lot more attention than we would have on our own.

Arriving in Cairo we subtly inquired about the police escort. According to the guys at our Cairo hotel, the area from Luxor to Cairo is the center of Islamic Fundamentalism in Egypt. This may be true, but walking through the market in Asyut, even with our armed escort, we attracted only curious and positive attention. Several teenage girls in chadors approached me and in excellent English asked my name, where I was from and where I was going. They seemed very excited to meet me and welcomed me to their city. It was the exact opposite of feeling threatened. Other Egyptians at our hotel in Cairo gave us various theories on why we needed such a heavy escort, none of which we were able to validate.

Perhaps its better that we don’t know the danger we were in. We never felt unsafe or threatened anywhere in Egypt even stopping in villages along the Luxor to Cairo route. Without a doubt the Egyptian police were extremely professional and polite, going so far as to refuse baksheesh (tips). Well ok, one group of officers did repeatedly request we stop for coffee or tea and when we finally relented, they drank as well, so mostly without baksheesh. Given that the government felt their presence was necessary we appreciated their company, but would have rather known what we were getting ourselves into.  We never felt unsafe in Egypt, but having the police escort made us wonder what we had missed.

Filed Under: Africa, Egypt, Headline, Middle East Tagged With: police, safety

Isn’t it dangerous here?

July 14, 2009 By Jillian

So here we are, in Colombia.  Our first new continent together. This is exciting. This is exhilarating. This is dangerous?

We’d originally planned to skip Colombia. We had thought it was dangerous and decided it wasn’t worth our while. But then we started thinking… upon entering Mexico many people advised us against going. We had a great time. We had a phenomenal time. So why should we skip Colombia if we didn’t skip Mexico?

The more important questions is why do we, as people, typecast entire countries when we know so little about them? All I knew about Colombia before I started preparing to go there was what I learned from watching Clear and Present Danger. Is that really fair, probably not.

IMGP1619

So here we are, in Colombia.  There are dangers here, just as if we were going to New York or Detroit. There are also beauties to behold…from volcanic mud baths along beautiful beaches to mountain vistas and more whitewater than you can shake a stick at. The people of Colombia are actually rated as some of the happiest in the world (although the statistician in me is at at a complete loss for how one calculates happiness.)

IMGP1357

A few weeks ago, we were sitting on the island of Utila in Honduras. This was before we were rocked by an earthquake and before Honduras ousted their president. We were speaking with some people who were headed to the USA in the near future, planning to road trip the east coast in just a few weeks. I asked what their plans held and for the most part there was nothing surprising. But then they said they planned to spend 10 days in New York and just 2 in Washington, DC. I asked why such a short time in a city where all the tourist attractions are free and they told me that Washington was just too dangerous for them…after all, it was the murder capital of the country… in the 1970’s.

Filed Under: Colombia, South America Tagged With: safety, stereotypes, travel

Shaken not Stirred

May 28, 2009 By Jillian

Survived last night’s 7.1 earthquake with no injuries or damages.

Although we didn’t feel our first two earthquakes in Guatemala, this one was unmistakable.  Shaken awake somewhere around 3am, at first we were unsure what was going on.  Groggy one of us finally said earthquake.  For what felt like minutes we held each other waiting for the shaking to stop, unsure of what else to do.  (They don’t teach earthquake preparedness in Elementary School in Pennsylvania or Florida!).

Even though it was dark we were jostled awake with such force and could actually see the house shaking.  When the quake started to subside we shouted for the others in the house and started to get outside but with everything still moving, only moving less, and things being so dark, progresss was slow.  We waited for aftershocks which never came as neighbors began walking up and down the beach checking on people.  One exclaimed….”I ain’t never seen anything like that before and I’m from California!”  Worried about a tsunami, we sat and waited for awhile until sleep got the best of us.  Unable to find any news on our radio, and realizing the worst was probably over, we cautiously assessed the house for damage (lost a few pieces of wall art and the toaster managed to make its way to the floor)  and eventually went back to bed.

Power was on again by the time we woke up this AM and we even have running water.  The Associated Press indicates that it was a 7.1 earthquake off the northern coast of Honduras, a few kilometers north of Utila, the island we visited last week.  More information can be found at the USGS.  We’ll check out our village and post pictures/video of anything interesting.

Filed Under: Belize, Central America Tagged With: earthquake, safety

Connect With Us

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Featured Posts

Our Bucket List
How We Travel For Free
$ Travel Tips

Recent Comments

  • Barbara on Kayaking Kauai’s Na Pali Coast
  • Lori Hubbard on Review: Eneloop Batteries and Charger
  • TK on The Trouble with Philadelphia

Banking on the Road

It can be very hard to keep track of your finances while you're on the road long-term. Be sure to check out how we took care of our finances while traveling and feel free to email us any questions you have.

Adventure Guides

Torres Del Paine
China Adventure
Uzbekistan Overland
Egyptian Odyssey
Malaria
Argentina Adventure
DIY African Safari
South Africa Guide
Bolivia by Bus
How-To African Visas

Copyright 2008-2015 · All Rights Reserved · Contact I Should Log Off · RSS · Partner With Us · Privacy