Tamera's Take: Cast Away, Cats and Blue Bottle Diablos

I would first like to say !Bienvenidos! (welcome) to our new readers in Ecuador, Ukraine, Germany, Romania and the United Kingdom.

Tamera's Take is about being here.
Are you ready?  I am.

In the beginning, we considered going the shipping container route to bring most of our belongings.  Then we considered airline cargo (basically a lot of checked luggage) to bring some of our belongings.  In the end there were just too many complications with trying to bring all that stuff.

Some things we gave away to family

If you read my husband Jason's most recent post, Familia y Los Amigos - They Love You.  Always and Forever, then you know that we sold or gave away almost everything we owned in order to move to Ecuador.

We arrived in Ecuador with four checked bags weighing a total of 200 pounds, and four carry-on bags consisting of a laptop bag, a small suitcase on wheels, and two carry on pet carriers containing two cats each.

Yes we traveled with pets.  Four pets to be exact - in case you did not do the math.

We rented a fully furnished house about 75 yards (68 metres) from the beach.   Except for a toaster and a frying pan, the house has everything needed.



I think you get the picture.  No.  Not that picture.  The other one.

Yes we brought our CATS!!

There will be a future post on container shipping, air cargo, what we brought and what we wish we had brought.

I will mention one item I wish we had brought. Benedryl.

Sea Glass

Something I notice, now that I live so close to the beach (playa), is the array of things that I find on the shore.

Some things discarded by the many fisherman as they sort out their catch, some things that come directly from the ocean, and some things that wash up with the tides from another place.


My home state of Florida has nearly 1200 miles of coastline, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits.

Drift wood? Drift tree!

This is not a geography lesson.

Treasure hunters with their metal detectors, beach combers picking up shells, sea glass, drift wood, conservationist protecting sea turtle nests and native plants of the dunes; these sights are second nature to me.  Just like spending summers at my grandmother's beach cottage in St. Augustine, going to Anastasia Park with friends as a teenager and as an adult taking my own daughter to the these beaches.

But I never lived at the beach.  Never lived anywhere with the shore and the ocean just steps away from my front door.


A lot of things get discarded in a natural process or otherwise.

Fishermen discard some things

Some things make that transition from shore to ocean and back to the shore again.  Maybe not the same shore, but a shore.  Somewhere.

I learned from an early age to keep an eye out for one of those things that wash up on shore in the natural process - jellyfish.  Why?  Because if jellyfish are on the shore, you can bet they are in the water close to the shore.

If you have never experienced a jellyfish sting, I am glad.



I was not so lucky.  It is inevitable when you spend so much time at the beach.  No matter how well you checked out the shore before you got into the water.  As a kid though, you are sometimes willing to take that risk.

Little Sting Ray

I have not been stung by a jellyfish since I was a child.  I suppose I learned my lesson.  I still scan the shore before I jump into the ocean.

That did not matter two days ago.  Jason and I went down to the beach for the specific purpose of swimming in the ocean.
I bugged him about it all day.  I really wanted to go swimming.  Even though Jason was a bit tired - we had both been up since 5:00 am and he had been very busy all day - he recognized that pouting face of mine and with a smile, took me down to the beach to go swimming.

That is what you do for the person you love.  At least that is the kind of thing my husband does for me.  All the time.  He do what he do.



I think I had been in the surf for about one minute when it happened.  Really.  One minute.

Photo by Vlad Minin                              Courtesy of National Geographic

As I swung my left arm behind me to get past the next wave swell coming up, I feel something brush up against me.  My upper left arm.  I stop swimming immediately and float, trying to figure out if a fish or sting ray had nudged me.  Right at that moment, there was pain.  "No a shark."  I say to myself.  Again pain.  This time on my right arm, although, I look to my left because the pain has not stopped there.  I just know what I am going to see.  Instead, I see something else.  It is blue and very small.  Floating just below the surface of the water.  Maybe three inches below the water.  It was about 1 inch in size.  It.

Now the pain has completely surrounded my upper body and my mind goes back to the shark idea.  Completely confused and suddenly frozen, I say to Jason, "something just bit me".  He says to me, "get out of the water".  Not panicked but concerned.  I can see it in his face.

I cannot move.  Not out of fear.  I am just unable to move.  I realize that there is something wrapped completely around me.  Fishing line?  Uh no.  Not fishing line.  Clear and stringy though.

This hurt. A lot.

Excruciating pain.  Jason realizes that I cannot move.  I am not even sure if he is saying anything to me now.  I sort of get mad.  Not at Jason.  But at whatever just bit me and is still trying to bite me.

Meanwhile in the back of my mind, "It was a jellyfish.  But, it was blue.  Jellyfish are not blue.  At least not the ones I know of.  I scanned the shore.  I know I did."


I realize I am being dragged back to shore by Jason.  Then I am being washed up on the shore by a wave. I am in the sand.  Grateful for the rough sand.

"What was it?"  Jason says.

"It was BLUE!"  I say.  Barely able to speak and still grateful for the rough sand.  A blue devil is what I think to myself.  Lucky for me, we are only steps from our front door.  It felt like a mile.  As soon as we get home, Jason starts to apply a series of remedies that most everyone who grows up near the ocean knows.
1. Remove stingers (tentacles).
2. Rinse the affected area with vinegar.

The stingers were pretty much already gone.  Probably into my skin.  So we moved to step two.  Vinegar.  That does nothing to help.  Jason gets on the internet to look up remedies.  We are in Ecuador, not Florida.  Maybe there is something else that we should be doing.  As I am heading upstairs to start step three of the remedies;
3. Shower in hot water.

Jason asks me what they (IT) looked like.  I say, "It was BLUE and very small".  (Except for that long stringy thing that wrapped around me about one hundred times.  Okay.  It was just once but it felt like one hundred.

Step number three helps a little.  I come back downstairs and Jason is looking up "blue jellyfish in Ecuador".  Meanwhile I move to the last step of remedies that we know.
4. Take an over the counter pain reliever.
 

A little better on day two

I swear the pain is actually getting worse. Jason finds a number of pictures and websites (a lot of blogs) that show or discuss this horrible blue jelly creature.  National Geographic website had the most in depth information.

Not a jellyfish.  A Portuguese Man o' War.

Affectionately known in South America (and Australia) as a, "Bluebottle". That is what it was.

A Bluebottle.

BlueBottle Diablo is a better description.

Remember that Benedryl I mentioned earlier?  Apparently vinegar does nothing but make the stinger release more venom.  Anti-allergy medication is what I needed.

You can get Benedryl in Ecuador.

You just can not get it at that moment.  The moment you need it the most.  The moment when you think you have never felt this much pain in all your life.  Of course this is not true.  It just feels that way at the time.

So now we have the remedy checklist.
1. Remove stingers (tentacles)  Check!
2. Hot shower  Check!
3. Anti-allergy medication - like Benedryl  Check!

If I ever get stung again, I am ready.

Ready or not, I hope I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, get ATTACKED by one of those Blue Bottle (diablos) again.

Never.

Wilson!!!

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