Sick In Bed With Intestinal Parasites
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we didn’t get sick sooner. After spending almost six months in Mexico, we never had any health problems more serious than a minor cold or a rumbly tummy. We had checked into a little hotel with plans to start a big climb into the mountains near San Miguel Acatan in the morning. However, our second day in Guatemala greeted us both with a dramatic fever, pounding headache and extremely violent stomach problems! We both figured it was just some bad food and would pass with time. We waited it out whilst watching some dubbed movies to practice our Spanish. As the symptoms got worse, we started getting worried.
I asked the hotel owner if there was a doctor nearby and he kindly drove us 400m to the local Clinica Medica. After asking some questions, the young doctor quickly diagnosed us with intestinal parasites! EEeeeeeeewww!!
After receiving some painful injections, we were both prescribed an array of pills and told to stay in bed for a few days. Well… it was a very rough two days with poor sleep and little food, but fortunately we are now starting to feel human again. I hope we will be back on the road tomorrow morning.
I consider it coincidence that we got the bugs immediately upon arriving in Guatemala, but it does seem strange it happened on our second day in the country! After so much time without any problems, we may have become a bit blasé with washing our vegetables and always drinking filtered water. I guess this was the wakeup call we needed to institute greater rigour in our sanitation standards!