When travelling around third world countries, it’s inevitable that you’re going to be faced with unexpected and unwanted occurrences. For example when I was travelling Guatemala strange marks began appearing on various part of my body. I waited a few days for it to go away, which usually works, but not in this case. By luck, one of the people I’d met in Guate was a retired nurse. When I mentioned my “concern” she was kind enough to offer to take a look. I still remember pulling down my trousers so she could get a better look - at my thigh! I waited with baited breath to hear whether I was critical or not; she explained that I had an attack of fleas! When you’ve been worrying about various tropical diseases this is actually good news!
I bring this up now, because I’ve had another attack of “something” while I was in Sucre. My guess I picked it up from Troy, an Australian backpacker who had been visiting one of the small market towns nearby (a flea market, d’think?).
As far as I know, your average flea will leave a line of bite marks as it crawls over your body. For me, however, the bite marks seem to come in pairs, which is very strange as I don’t think there are any vampire bats in Bolivia. After two weeks it seems that I’ve finally got rid of the little bastard(s). The method I use is to simply give myself a good hard rub down all over, everyday until the biting stops. The fleas also stay in your bed, and clothes. I used fly spray in Guatemala on my bed as I was staying in the same spot for a while, which isn’t a problem this trip. Putting on a whole set of clean clothes also helps. An extreme case was a friend who was working in all over Central America with deprived families. She explained that she had had lots of trouble but wearing treated dog collars around both ankles did the trick.
