Tag 43 - bloody

06/12/19

After a somewhat restless night, I wake up to my legs and arms itching. I open my eyes and see a lot of mosquito bites on my shins - strange, I don't feel like there were more mosquitoes than usual yesterday. I look at the leg of Jonna, who is still asleep, and almost fall out of bed. Without being indiscreet now: I have never seen so many and at the same time so strongly swollen bites on a human leg - never! There were, without exaggeration, around 50 on one leg!

I wake up Jonna and she has the same expression on her face as me, pure horror. After ruling out bed bugs as the cause, we have a suspicion of who could be responsible for this battlefield on our bodies. Yesterday, just for fun, we took pictures of the many small 'harmless' red dots left by sandflies. We compare the position of the red dots with that of the giant welts - they match. These pinhead-sized, uncoordinated flies are not as harmless as we thought. The itching is so bad that we briefly consider changing accommodation or even leaving the island earlier. A search on the internet paints a depressing picture. There is talk of serious disease carriers and persistent inflammation lasting two months.

We calm down and go for a swim. Jonna is still a little cold, so she lies back in the tent and takes a nap for a few hours after the trip into the water. After the little regeneration, we walk along the beach, this time in the other direction, and see what is hidden there. We discover several resorts and a supermarket where at least the essentials are available. We buy cookies and on the way back we meet the two German girls from yesterday, to whom we show the dozens of bites, begging for sympathy.

The rest of the day, we search for danger and once again go into the hammocks - this time we mostly remain unharmed. Evening falls faster than expected and we let it fade away with food and a very well-attended BINGO game. We 'win' three tequila shots each and stroll slightly tipsy to bed.

- Jonna & Alex