Itchy

It’s good to go on a trip. It’s also good to come home.

Arrived home from Belize late Thursday night and made it into bed by 1:30 am Friday morning. Spent a good chunk of the day yesterday doing laundry. Also put my souvenirs from Guatemala into the freezer. They will need to stay there for four days.

Apparently that is what you are supposed to do if you have fabric items that have been exposed to bedbugs.

Bedbugs!

This is out of an overabundance of caution.

I do not know for certain that we were exposed to bedbugs on our trip.

But I do know that both my friend and I got bitten. Numerous times. Both of us have been (unsuccessfully) trying to avoid itching our bites for days.  The bites are not in the areas where bed bugs traditionally feast (I learned this from Dr. Google), nor did we see any evidence of the critters on or around the beds where we slept. (Dr. Google also explained that bedbugs generally leave droppings and stains around the bottom of the bed and the mattress and around the edges of the mattress pad. They are tiny, but if you look carefully, you usually see something.)

We didn’t see anything.

But who wants to take a chance?

And how difficult is it to follow the basic “Bedbug Removal Protocol,” which is simply “wash things in hot water/dry them in a hot dryer for 30 minutes” and problem solved! Or, if you can’t dry things (because you do not want to ruin your beautiful new Guatemalan woven table runner), you can put them in the freezer for four days and that will take care of the bedbugs, too.

Can you believe that those guys can live for four days in the freezer?

So that’s what I did. I washed every fabric item that had been with me in Belize in hot water and dried them on high for 30 minutes. That included my backpack and my soft travel bag, things which make tremendous amounts of annoying noise when tumbling around in the dryer.

I also washed and dried a few clothing items that should never be dried in a hot dryer.

Too bad!

Who wants to take a chance on bedbugs?

We took a river boat tour and jungle hike while we were in Placencia, which is on the southern coast of Belize. Our tour agency folks told us to wear long pants, long sleeved shirts, sturdy shoes, and to bring mosquito repellant. No argument from me on any of that.

We were joined on our tour by a family of four. They arrived wearing tank tops, sandals, and shorts. “Would you like some mosquito repellant?” our guide asked.

“Oh no!” they said. “Where we live, we have all kinds of bugs. We are accustomed!”

Except when we finally got to the trailhead, they said, “Well. Ok. Maybe a little repellant.”

A few steps into our walk, the family’s mom was swatting at her feet. Ants were biting her. The guide raced back and sprayed her feet with repellant. A little while later, her son did the same “ants are biting my feet” dance. Again, the guide to the rescue. She had a mosquito land on her back that I swatted and killed. It left blood on my hand.

Which is just to say that my friend and I did not have any problems with ants or mosquitos on our jungle walk (possibly because they were happily feasting on our comrades). We were fairly diligent about applying repellant throughout our trip. Also, we listened to our guide.

Still, we got a few bites during our time there.

It’s hard to be 100 percent repellant-ized 100 percent of the time. And the bugs managed to find us anyway.

It was an amazing trip, though.

Just on that one outing, we saw (and heard) howler monkeys and so many birds. Our guide pointed out tiger herons, great egrets, little blue herons, cattle egrets, great blue herons, magnificent frigates, snowy egrets, kingfishers, ospreys, double crested cormorants, royal terns and the spoonbill roseus. There were also leaf cutter ants whose ant hill was so big that we had to walk around it.

I’m trying not to worry about the bites (because if you ask Dr. Google too many things about mosquito bites, you get a lot of troubling possibilities). I’m also trying not to worry about bedbugs, especially since I did everything that I could think to do to minimize the risk of bringing them into my home. I want to remember what a beautiful trip it was, how many kind people we met, how lucky I am to be able to travel. Bugs were just part of the journey.