Cancun Water is Deadly, But What About Ice?

Everyone in Cancun knows you shouldn't drink the water. Well, almost everyone.

Eager to save some money, I googled around & learned that you can chlorinate the water & you should be fine. So, when I first arrived, I just added aquatabs to a gallon of water & drank that. (You can even add chlorine bleach: just add a few drops / L like it says right on the bottle!). The water tasted kinda gross but one week later I was still alive. No problem, right? 

Hahahahaha!

Nope. It could have been a biiiiiig problem. I didn't get sick, but I could have. While chlorination kills bacteria like salmonella & e. coli, apparently giardia & cryptosporidium (which make you sick days/weeks after ingestion) can both survive high levels of chlorination. I was lucky.


Naturally, I started buying bottled water, which, by the way, is only ~25 pesos ($2) for a 20 L jug,


Then I made an interesting discovery. While giardia & cryptosporidium can both survive chlorination, apparently they can't survive being frozen for 24 hours (at least giardia can't & that's my main concern). So, I've been making my own ice with chlorinated city water & I'm still fine. No problem, right?



Hahahahaha!



Actually, there shouldn't be a problem. And if there is, I'll have lots of tropical drinks to keep me properly hydrated :)



See, Jen & I recently bought a blender (a Black & Decker CrushMaster) and my only regret is that we didn't buy it sooner. We use it every day to make blended drinks.

My new best friend...

And here's a sidenote for alcoholics looking for an excuse to drink in the tropics: It's hot here, right? And blended icy drinks are basically a necessity, right? And, hey, guess what: with our blender at least, a splash of alcohol seems to stop the ice from clumping!


Yep. Actually, you really only need a dash but that can be our little secret! The nice thing is, you CAN make a drink with such a minute amount of alcohol that you can't even taste it. That's how I make my drinks when I want to give some to Diablo, the woman who found him (a long story for another time), and her 8-year-old son, Santiago!


Corrupting minors... I'll drink to that :)