Leah´s top three tips for jungle travel

Still hanging out in La Ceiba on the Honduran coast. We´ve settled in a bit at a nice place and have signed up for Spanish classes in town. After that, we´ll go visit the Bay Islands for snorkeling. Meanwhile before our five-day Spanish course begins, we decided to see a famous botanical garden where the big fruit conglomerates who used to control this part of the country collected rare plants and experimented with new hybridizations.

On arrival, I visited the bathroom while Alan checked in at information. When I came out I felt something in my shoe, like a dirt clod or something, but ignored it because I wanted to go find Alan. Found him and a guy who seemed intent on giving us a guided tour despite our saying we were fine and him not speaking any English.

So we set off as he prattled on excitedly about the various hard wood trees, rare poisonous plants, strange fruit hybrids, pretty birds, etc. Entirely in rapid Spanish. I tried to follow, guessed a few things right, which made the guide very excited. At one point, standing on a bridge over a swampy area, I realized the DEET on my exposed area was doing nothing to stop all the mosquitoes biting me right through my clothes. After one particularly painful bite, I just started walking forward hoping to keep the tour moving through the standing-water areas.

Our guide let us smell some flowers and taste some strange fruits, one particularly odd one that was a mix of mango and lemon. Yum. Got it all over my hands and face, but very tasty.

The bamboo collection was amazing, so much so that I hardly noticed how much my palms were itching. When the tour was done, it was my turn to drive the one hour ride back to where we were staying. I settled in for a long adventure of passing big trucks around blind turns, and Alan laid back and closed his eyes.

Warm in the car, I noticed the mosquito bites must have been in more places than I realized as I started to itch all over. Most of all, strangely, the bottom of my feet were itching like crazy. Like freaking crazy. Was wearing hot shoes on a hot day, figured just need to get them off. Dodging trucks, chickens, children, horses, cows and potholes, I removed my shoes and socks. Still itching like crazy.

I usually try not to scratch the bites, but soon I just couldn´t stop. My back, my legs, my neck, my hands, my arms, my ASS! Scratching, scratching, scratching. Police checkpoint. Shit, my international drivers license is in the hotel. Alan wakes up. He´s got the vehicle permit. I give the police the permit and Alan´s license. They never seem to look too closely at the paperwork. Then they try to sell us a Bingo ticket for police charity. Yeah. We buy the ticket. When a Honduran policeman holding a big gun tries to sell you a Bingo ticket and you don´t have your license, you buy.

At this point I realize I´m itching so badly my sanity and ability to drive is out the window. Alan takes over and I start rending garments and tearing skin, scratching my entire body, even my scalp.

Back at the hotel, I tear off my clothes and take a cold shower. It´s then I see a bright red rash spreading over my entire body. Hmmm. Alan runs over to the bar for a doctor recommendation. We´re off to some clinic with the usual complicated and vague directions as it´s getting dark.

Amazingly we find it. The doctor is a nice guy who speaks no English. Luckily his wife does. He looks me over and says he has to give me a quick injection of antihistamine. I try to explain I can´t take antihistamines. He explains that a person can´t be allergic to the thing you take for an allergic reaction. I try to explain my strange hypersensitivity and past experience with freaky side effects. Finally, we agree he´ll give me a small dose of a mild one. I find the Spanish phrase in our book for "please use a new syringe." He does. Phew.

He gives us a prescription for more antihistamine and cream. We go to the mall. Yeah, they have a gigantic mall here. Totally American experience. Another story. We get the drugs, go back to bed. Phew.

Then my lips go numb. Then my tongue. Can´t help but think it´s the throat next. I´ve never had an allergic reaction to anything, but I´ve heard these allergy horror stories that involve throats closing. We start to panic. Call the doctor, he´s not home. The wife will call him and we´ll call back. We do. She says call his cell phone. We do. The language barrier is a problem. How do you say "numb" in Spanish? I still don´t know.

He says just drink a lot of water and go to sleep. As the numbness starts heading for the back of my mouth, we decide to head off to the very nice hospital and emergency room we saw back in town. At the emergency room, well you know emergency rooms. Terrifying in themselves. They put a big-ass needle in my arm, inject a shitload of antihistamine and cortisone steroid into me. They leave a cute little plug in my arm in case they need to give me more.

The air conditioning is arctic. I´m laying on a bed. Alan is sitting on a table. My throat starts to loosen up. The rash is still all over. In fact, all the red streaks and bumps have begun to join together into one, big Leah-sized red swolleness. I look a little like a Vienna beef hot dog. They shoot me up with more antihistamine and steroid. I´m over worrying about a reaction to the antihistamine. I just want to stop itching and keep breathing. The first doctor told me to drink lots of water, which I´ve done by the liter. So I become well acquainted with the other patients laying around as I pass each of them repeatedly for bathroom visits every 20 minutes.

A couple hours go by. The doctor comes back and looks concerned, says something that translates to "hmm, that´s bad." He says they need to admit me to the hospital, keep me overnight, put me on an I.V. drip with continuous drugs, give me another big dose in four hours. Wow.

A nice man rolls me in a wheelchair as Alan follows along, beginning to look a little worse for the wear himself. The room has a little cot for Alan to sleep on. That´s nice. There´s a TV, but it´s too high to change the channels and the remote control doesn´t work. We don´t care. I just want to live.

More drugs. More drugs. Constantly dripping drugs. The next morning, a way-too-chipper woman wakes us up at 6:00 and puts me in the shower as though I have no choice in the matter. I get back in bed and wait two hours for breakfast thinking, I could have slept more. Don´t sick people need to sleep? More drugs. Some breakfast. Finally, at 9:00, an internal medicine specialist comes to see me because it´s looking less like a basic allergic reaction, more like some insect-delivered toxin.

He tells us in rapid Spanish, I think, that he´s going to give us some more drugs to take home, another big shot of steroid before we go, and if the rash returns, we should come back. OK. We´re out of here. A nurse comes and shoots a bunch more stuff in my arm. Seriously, at this point I´ve got enough steroid in me to beat the entire Chinese olympic swim team, and enough antihistamine to hibernate the entire rest of winter.

But nobody comes to unhook my I.V. The bag is empty. My arm has sucked up the entire bag. Waiting, waiting. We just want to go. Alan asks what´s up. The nurse says the Jefe (Chief) has to sign off on something, and he´s over in the other office. Seriously ... if you read about our border fiasco in Puerto Cortes, you understand why I´m about to tear the I.V. out of my arm and start running now.

Finally, the Jefe figures out how much we owe and Alan goes to pay. Still, I´m tied to the I.V. We have to wait for another Jefe to approve my prescriptions. Always, when they make you wait in Central America, it´s "uno momento," but that means anything from one hour to two days. Also, lunchtime, during which all business involving paper stops, runs from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. It´s now 10 minutes before 11:00. At 11:00 they bring my a handful of medicine and unhook my I.V. Phew. We nearly ran out.

Back to the hotel, to the bar. I can´t drink any alcohol with all this medication, but Alan throws back two bloody marys in rapid succession. Emergency room visits will do that to anyone, but throw in a language barrier in a third-world country, and well, you can imagine. I have no idea how many times we said please use a new syringe. And we refused to sign the form authorizing blood transfusion.

An awesome excuse to lay around and do nothing. I stare at cable TV all day and snooze. In the middle of the night the rash comes back. Keep sleeping. Then my lips go numb again. Crap, we´re just about to run off to the emergency room again when Alan suggests I take my next round of medication early. I do. My lips stay swollen but feeling returns. We pack up a bag in case we have to return to the hospital quickly. And I doze off again. That was last night. This morning I wake up, the rash is not as bad, but ankles, wrists, eyelids and lips are huge.

I´ve got Angelina Jolie´s lips and Rodney Dangerfield´s eyes. It´s not a flattering combination. Back to the hospital. Armed with even more drugs, we have now cancelled our Spanish class scheduled for this afternoon, and are hanging out at the internet cafe waiting for our afternoon appointment with a dermatology specialist.

Still don´t know what did this to me. But having thought back to the day this all started, I have a new list of tips for third-world travel in the jungle:

1. If you feel something moving around in your shoe, take it out.
2. Wear DEET everywhere, a lot of it, all the time.
3. Don´t eat the fruit at the experimental garden.

Anyway, nothing to worry about, just not fun. We´re anxious to start our Spanish class - the language barrier makes all of this more stressful than it needs to be. But I can recommend that hospitals and border crossings are excellent motivators to learning a foreign language quickly.