When I first moved to Mexico, I was constantly sick for the first six months. There is a lot to learn about how to live in Mexico. It was my first or second week in the country, and I made myself a big salad to take to work for lunch throughout the week. By Monday night, I was waking up due to an unfamiliar and profound cramping in my stomach. As the week progressed, I became even more confused. I was eating so cleanly, and only eating food I had made myself, so why was I so sick for so many days?
It wasn’t until a kind native soul reviewed everything I was eating that I learned you that you need to sanitize all your produce with iodine. Maybe four or five months after that, as I continued to struggle on and off, someone else told me that if you are having stomach problems for extended periods it’s a good idea to pick up a deworming pill from the pharmacy. Yes, a deworming pill, like the kind you give to dogs, I was horrified to learn. I know conceptually that our bodies are host to trillions of microorganisms, and that this symbiotic relationship is vital to human health. But being confronted with the reality of harboring potentially hostile and parasitic creatures is by nature, horrifying.
Unlike these easter eggs, where I had to wait for someone to eventually take pity on me in order to know how to survive, most everyone knows that the water in Mexico is not potable. In Mexico City this is not strictly true, the water is treated, but like southern California among other parts of the US the water is in fact so treated that you can smell the chemicals the moment it comes out of the tap, and only the most desperate and die hard are going to drink it. Despite this reality, the more delicate among my cohort were obsessed with avoiding unbottled water at all costs, including brushing their teeth with bottled water and ordering drinks without ice, just in case.
It wasn’t just food born illnesses I needed to contend with. The air quality in Mexico City is often very low. Mexico City is also 1.4 miles high so the air is thin. I had an early morning job and was staying out late due to my newly discovered passion for dance, so I was also not sleeping nearly enough. All of this led to oscillating between feeling mildly to acutely unwell on a daily basis for about the first six months of living in Mexico.
But after those brutal first months, I began adjusting to the food, the air pollution, and the altitude. I slowly started to feel normal and after enough time had passed without suffering from food borne illness I began thinking of myself as more or less indestructible. However, I would eventually learn that this was mere hubris. Maybe returning to live in the United States made me weak, maybe I had only grown accustomed to the bacteria in Mexico, but my experience in Leticia in January of this year left me shook.
Leticia is a small boarder town in the Amazon rainforest tucked into a lesser known and overwhelmingly beautiful corner of the earth. It connects Colombia to Tabatinga, Brazil and Santa Rose, Peru. It’s a poor area, and like most any boarder, there is a kind of pulsing energy and seediness that comes from the trafficking of all kind of things just below the surface.
I was so excited to be meeting some friends there because the Amazon has been a bucket list item for me and I was intimidated to travel there alone. I was also nervous because I knew that an environment as foreign to me as the Amazon could push me to my limits, I just didn’t know which limits exactly would end up being pushed before I went. Would it be accidental poisoning from an exotic plant or animal? Would I get overheated? Would I get lost? Would I finally rage quit my entire life and join the Earth Liberation Front? Only time could tell.
By the time I met up with them, my friends had already been traveling around Colombia for several weeks. During their adventures, one of them had gotten such bad food poisoning but remained so determined to continue the trip that she had put on a diaper for the plane ride from Cali to Leticia, just in case. This all happened in the early hours of the morning so they couldn’t just walk into the pharmacy and pick out what was needed. They had to order through a window which involved learning the word for diaper in Spanish and needing to select from multiple different types of adult diapers. I can only imagine the stress of this type of tedious back and forth while being worried simultaneously about making your flight and shitting yourself, with the addition of a language barrier thrown in there for good measure while a taxi waits on the corner.
It was deduced that they had gotten sick from a pitcher of limonada de coco (coconut limeade), a delicious sugary drink from the coast of Colombia that I would recommend anyone to try if you ever get a chance despite the apparent risk. Like my former colleagues, they said it must have been the ice.
By the time I met up with them they were more or less on the mend and lamenting that they didn’t understand how this could have happened. They were always so careful to not eat street food or anything else risky while traveling. When I heard this information I was floored. When I travel I specifically seek out the street food because it is always the best. Whenever I go anywhere, eating is a big part of the cultural experience that I want to enjoy. But even if it wasn’t, I can’t imagine traveling and never being in a situation where missing a train or being delayed eventually leads to something quick, cheap and convenient becoming a necessity. Of course I understand intellectually the risks associated with eating street food, but I was amazed to think of actually actively avoiding that risk while traveling.
Something I have observed is that Colombians are generally very proud of their cuisine. It’s something that is often brought up within the first moments of an initial conversation. Usually it goes some variation of:
Oh, you’re from Colombia? It’s so beautiful there I love Colombia.
Oh, you’ve been to Colombia, the food’s great, isn’t it?
And while there are some truly great dishes worth trying, I really don’t understand why so many, so consistently, list the food as the top experience that Colombia has to offer . And as I traveled further into the outskirts of the country, the more limited my options became until it felt that I was eating a variation of fried corn and meat for every meal. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy fried food just as much as the next person, but by day three I was feeling queasy and ready to eat literally anything else.
Without going into gory details, I started to feel generally unwell and sick to my stomach they day before leaving Leticia. Nothing too alarming, I figured I had a light case of food poisoning. It could have been anything I ate the previous day that upset my stomach. But after all that had happened, I did start to suspect the ice from the drink I had with dinner the night before.
We had a midday flight back to the capital of Colombia, Bogota, and then I was scheduled to fly back to the US early the following morning. And I really, really wanted to make that flight. As long as a bathroom was nearby, I was going to be fine. But by the time we got to the local airport, I was feeling much worse. Not to the point that I needed to borrow a diaper from my friend, but unwell to the point of putting my head down on the table, unable to do much else, and debating t if I should go to a hospital. Flying was obviously not the best idea, but I knew that if I needed medical care, my options were going to be much better if I got to Bogota, and the odds of me making my flight home would be much better as well.
Maybe 30 minutes to an hour after take off things took a serious turn. I became more sick than I have ever been in my entire life. I became so feverish, weak, and nauseated that I couldn’t even communicate to a flight attendant or my friends, who were sitting right next me, that I needed help. Not that there was much, if anything, that they could do to help me at that point regardless. I began having that lurching sensation in my stomach that happens when you are on a roller coaster, and a strange lightness throughout my body. There was a ringing in my ears and I couldn’t hear right before blacking out as I felt like I was falling down into a well. I lost consciousness briefly two or three times this way, and began thinking that this really was the end for me. I was struggling to breath through my mask.
The scariest part about this experience in retrospect is that I was too weak and out of it to feel scared even though in the moment I was fully convinced that I was going to die because I felt so strange and unable to respond to what was happening to me, to even ask for help. Also in retrospect, I don’t think I was ever actually in danger of death. I just felt so strange, unfamiliarly weak, and helpless.
Then, when all seemed lost and just as the plane was touching down, the best thing that could have possibly happened to me in that moment did. I projectile vomited a watery mix of Gatorade and whatever I had eaten the night before. I vomited all over myself, the seat back in front of me, the aisle, and most likely hit my friend with some backsplash as well. I was embarrassed, and being able to even have a reaction meant that I was already feeling worlds better. I went from unable to speak to being able to stand up and walk off the plane, even if I was a bit slow and shaky.
I apologized repeatedly as a very kind and understanding flight attendant who brought me napkins, which I used to futilely dab at the vomit covering my surroundings. I hobbled into the airport bathroom sweaty, stinking, and grateful to be alive. We arrived at the apartment of another kind and generous friend who was gracious enough to let us stay with her. I shoved my vomit stained clothes into a bag, showered, and tried not to eat for the next two days. Still shaky, I did manage to make my flight and crawl back home, all adventured out for quite some time.
When I am in these types of stressful, potentially dangerous situations, I sometimes ask myself why I can’t want to go to all inclusive resorts like a normal American. But to me, there is literally no appeal to that kind of travel. What exactly is the difference between going to an all inclusive resort in Cancun or Costa Rica versus going to one on the coast of Florida? Why not just stay in a nice hotel in your home city that has a pool? It seems to me that the experience would be exactly the same. The reason I love to travel, and to travel the way that I do, is because I am looking for new experiences, and I am learning from those experiences. I don’t mind being uncomfortable if it means I get something different than what I am used to.
In case you are wondering, the answer is yes, I still eat the street food when I’m traveling. And in case you are also wondering, I do think I learned something from this trip. I try to be more conscientious by eating more carefully when I first arrive to a new place, giving myself time to adjust to the new bacteria. But, as I am always so quick to point out, danger is ever present, and street food is delicious. And since I have given up smoking and hard drugs, I do try to get my kicks in while I can and live a little before I actually die for real.
Continue reading part two.
A special thanks to my friends and travel companions for the use of their photos.
Leave a Reply