Itchy & Scratchy

That´s me today, both itchy and scratchy. At the end of my hike the other day I was eaten alive by small black flies, and the bites have come out with a vengeance all over my ankles and lower legs. Argh! And this morning I discovered some more bites, small ones, in a line, on my wrist and back. Small bites, in a line, can only mean one thing: bedbugs! Yuck! I don´t know where they came from, but I have several ideas. Actually, last night´s horrible saggy bed would be the most suspicious, but I think it´s too soon for the bites to show up. Anyway, I´ll live, but it´ll be an itchy couple of days.

Speaking of biting insects, I started taking malaria medication today, for the first time on my trip. I´m headed up to Chachapoyas, to visit what my guidebook calls a "jungle fortress" at Kuélap. The word "jungle" got me suspicious. I checked online and it seems to be somewhere between Low and Medium risk areas. That didn´t convince me, so I started asking around in various pharmacies. The verdict was unanimous, I should take malaria pills, although surprisingly the pharmacists really didn´t seem too informed about malaria--I knew much more about the various prevention medications than they did. I suspect that most tourists who go there don´t take anything, but after giving it some thought I decided I´d rather take the pills than freak out every time I see a mosquito. However, I did decide to buy different meds than the ones I came with--everyone here warns me about the possible psychotic side effects of the pills I brought, so I decided to get simpler, non-nightmare-or-possibly-suicide-inducing ones. And since they´re so much cheaper here and available without a prescription (as are many things, from birth control to Valium and Xanax) I decided I could afford the $7 for peace of mind. But of course, they only prevent me from getting sick. They can do nothing about the itching...