Purple Country

I went to get my shots today for my “vacation” to Honduras in a few weeks. I am not able to type much because there are so many holes in my arms right now from various preventative vaccinations.

But I do want to share with you a very helpful piece of literature I was handed by my Personal Travel Expert Lady. This was about 40 minutes into her spiel of all the things that could kill me on my “vacation”.

She hands me this map:

“This map shows the areas where you are at risk for malaria. Where is it you are traveling exactly?”
“Does it really matter? The ENTIRE map is purple. The ENTIRE map is a risk. You might even get malaria by touching it.”
“Well, as you can see, there are some areas, the areas with the white dots, that are safe.”
“How can that be? Are those areas in a biodome or something? Can people with malaria not go in and out of those dots?”
“Well, you don’t catch malaria from a person, you catch it from mosquitoes.”
“And being as though mosquitoes are flying insects there is no way they are going to make their way into those dots?”
“I’ve heard of them coming into the city in people’s pockets, yes, so that is a possibility.”
“Stow-away mosquitoes? I was thinking they may, uh, FLY in.”
“I suppose they could do that too. Here is the name of a good bug spray.”
“I’m going to be outside saving the world for like 8 hours a day.”
“Here is the name of a good bug lotion. It’s time released. You’re gonna want to cover yourself with this. And you can actually wash your clothes in the spray.”
"Great. Can I bathe in it as well?"

This is an actual conversation. And it’s in regards to ONE of the roughly 800 billion pieces of paper that we reviewed which went into GREAT detail about not petting monkeys and how water that is “uncomfortably hot to touch may be safe for drinking”.

It all combined to make just about the worst travel brochure I’ve ever seen. Honestly, if I can’t pet the monkeys what the hell is even the point of going?