7 Easy Steps On How To Avoid Stomach Bugs In Your Travels

Oaxaca is one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in Mexico

. A colonial city with a lovely tree-lined, traffic-free central square, also known as the zocalo, you'll find the cathedral with its handsomely carved facade built between the 16th and 18th centuries, and lovely restaurants and cafes under the plaza's arcades. Picturesque and oozing with charm, it was one of our favourite cities on our most recent Mexican adventure.

But Oaxaca had an adventure of another sort awaiting us. On our 3rd day in Oaxaca, Peter, my husband, had picked up a severe stomach bug. This was not great news for us as, later on that night, we would be embarking on a 12 hour bus journey to San Cristobal de las Casas in the Chiapas Highlands. Experiencing severe diahrrea and nausea, Peter had to stay within the confines of our hotel room while I ducked out in search of a pharmacy for some medication.

Stomach bugs can easily be picked up in Mexico. However, one can minimize the chances of picking up a stomach bug if you follow these simple precautions:

1. Only drink bottled water, even in restaurants, making sure that the seal is unbroken. Check with your waiter that the ice cubes are also made from bottled or filtered water.

2. Avoid eating food from the streets if you can. However, if you are tempted, ask the vendor not to include uncooked greens and make sure that you see the vendor using filtered water from a 19 litre blue plastic bottle, and that he/she has a bottle of disinfectant for his/her hands close by.

3. If in a marketplace, stay away from any beef, chicken or pork, particularly towards the end of the day, as the meat would not have been refrigerated.

4. When buying fruit on the streets to eat, make sure that you peel the fruit yourself. You don't know if the vendor's knife is clean, how long the fruit has been exposed, or if the vendor disinfected his/her hands before handling the fruit.

5. Always carry a bottle of disinfectant gel in your handbag and spare tissues, as the public bathrooms frequently do not have soap or liquid hand cleanser.

6. Always wash/disinfect your hands prior to sitting down for any meal at a restaurant.

7. Although you hope that it doesn't happen, always travel with diahrrea medication in your toiletry bag. It pays to be prepared.

There is a happy ending to this story. For an extra 500 pesos, the management of our hotel was kind enough to let us stay in our room until 7PM, giving Peter the extra time to recover. Having had a dose of the medication that I brought back from the pharmacy, and spending the day resting, reading and eating chicken soup, we departed on our 12 hour bus journey to the Chiapas Highlands, which went along smoothly and without incident. Armed with these travel tips, we enjoyed the rest of our Mexican travel with our stomachs intact.

by: Victoria Ugarte

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