Madagascar 3b - Sand, Salt, Sweat, Sunscreen and Doxycyclene

Sand

It's everywhere. It's not just on the beaches but everywhere else in the country too. Madagascar is an extremely arid country I had been here 36 straight days before I saw a drop of rain. It's hard to capture photographically the sensation of dust in your eyes when you are in a big city or sand in your underwear when you are in your sleeping bag so I didn't bother but it really does get into everything especially the tent but also shorts pockets and nooks and cranies of electronic devices like gps whose case is really not standing up to the rigors of Gerhard travel.

Salt

One thing that you overlook when you sign up for a week (or more) long trek down the coast is that there are not very many sources of fresh water. We bring all of our drinking water so if you want to bathe, you do it in the sea, which feels great at the time, really nice and refreshing but leaves you with no way to rinse of the salt. When you mix that with all the sand that sticks to you when you get out of the water you get a very interesting layer.

Sweat

It is hot here. No really. Like 35 degrees and not a cloud in the sky hot. Sounds awesome right? Well it is but when you start wishing that your pirogue crew would reposition the sail so as to provide you with some shade rather than positioning it so as to capture the wind then that means the intense sun is getting a bit uncomfortable. So to hide from the sun you put on some clothes. But then you're too hot so you start sweating. So then in addition to having sand and salt all over you, you're dripping with sweat. So the next day do you change to a different shirt because the one you were wearing yesterday has sand salt and sweat all over it or do you opt for a clean one which will really only be clean for a few mins before contaminated with the three S's.

Sunscreen

The fourth S. An absolute necessity and I'm glad I brought 2 bottles because it goes fast. It is very hard to apply when you're covered in the first three S's but I still goop it on generously anyway. I'm still getting sunburned though and that is because of:

Doxycyclene

This is the anti-malarial drug that I'm on. It has one good side effect - it helps prevent traveller's diahrreah which I'm happy to have avoided so far despite the fact that all the dishes I've eaten from on my travells have been washed with unpurified water in many cases directly in the river. It has one side effect that hasn't really concerned me too much, when you take it without food it sometimes makes you a bit nauseous but only until you eat some food. And it has one bad side effect - It makes you more sensitive to the sun. As someone who's lived in London for 2 1/2 years I haven't seen much of the sun for a while so when the pharmacist told me to apply lots of sunscreen she was telling me something I was well prepared to do anyway. What she forgot to mention was that it won't make any difference how much sunscreen you put on your hands, nose and forehead because it won't work and you will get burned there regardless. I was slopping so much sunscreen on my hands that they were white and I stopped rubbing it in altogether but was still getting burned.

It is very hard to hide your hands from the sun. Except maybe when you put them in your pockets. Except that because the top of my hands and knuckes are so sunburned it hurts like hell everytime you reach into your pocket to get some money or a handfull of sand.

I finally found the solution though 40 SPF Baby formula. If it doesn't have a picture of a baby on it. I'm not buying it. That and getting away from the coast into the mountains a bit.

Photos: 1) Doesn't really have anything to do with this blog as the lighting you can barely see that my hands are on fire but it does show off the awesome job of trimming the side of my beard with the scissors from my first aid kit and about an hour of patience the night before. It's even symmetrical! 2) Much better view of sunburned forehead and nose waiting for my 2nd taxi brousse in Tulear over a cup of coffee from a roadside stand.