Public Hygiene in Cancun... Ewww!

Jen's been nursing a cold for more than a week & I've still got the cough I blogged about (here) more than a month ago. We expected to be sick more often here, and we have been, but we expected to encounter digestive issues, not respiratory infections. It's hard to believe...

At least it was until recently.

I won't go so far as to say that Mexicans are less hygienic than other North Americans (hey, my dad once saw a skanky woman drop her pants and urinate in a busy gas station parking lot in the middle of the day), but Jen & I have now seen a few things which help to explain how we keep getting sick.

Here's my top 3...

Catching Colds in Cancun

I'm battling a pretty nasty cold. I also had a bad cold a few months ago. So, to recap: I've had two of the worst colds of my life in the past 6 months.

That would not normally seem that strange. But I've been living in Cancun for six months. And it's been spring and summer here! It has rarely dropped below 80 degress and ~80% humidity.

The all-too-common cold virus

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!

Puppies and Fleas and Worms... Oh My!

I've written before about the low prices here in Cancun. This generally also applies to medical expenses (though you should have travel insurance) and veterinary care.

After we brought our new puppy (Diablo) home (see this post for more on that), a couple of days passed uneventfully, by which I mean "as uneventfully as possible for the owners of a new puppy."