Broome Adventures: Bouts with the Mozzies

I go to bed cradling a bottle of mosquito spray.

I know, it’s come to this.

I hold the bottle close at night so that when I wake up at 3am to pinpricks on my feet, be they real or imagined, I can re-apply without disturbing my dorm mates. I am determined not to let those mosquitoes have one more ounce of purchase on my feet.

This strategy isn’t entirely crazy. One of the windows in the dorm room is missing a screen (it does have bars to protect against thieving humans though, and also invasions of drop bears).

The bottle stays with me everywhere I go: the market, the hostel, the beach. And since there’s not much to do in Broome if you don’t have a job or a car (and, hey, I’m not complaining here), we mostly go to the beach everyday.

When I wake up, I put sunscreen on my whole body in preparation for the blistering sun, then I wait for it to soak in, then spray mosquito repellent everywhere. I’ve created some rationale for why this is the correct order, that like a game of rock, paper, scissors, sunscreen obliterates repellent, but repellent does not obliterate sunscreen.

Then I have breakfast. The food inevitably bears that slight hint of Picaridin. (So do my almonds, my apples, my water bottle, and anything else my hands touch.)

Eventually, because we’re on Broome-Time around here, I get to the beach via hostel shuttle. I usually lay out for awhile, then become paranoid about burning and the application ritual recommences.

Only now there’s sand involved. And because after a few days you build up a nice gooey layer of waterproof stuff, the sand sticks extra thick to you.

This makes for sticky sand, so you have to run to ocean for a diligent scrub, but some sand inevitably remains. Which means when I reapply the sunscreen, the sand exacerbates the bites I already have all over my feet and legs. The itching onslaught begins, this time I pull out the midgie Magic and put it on the most irate bites, then make sure to re-spray my legs with bug repellent. Because I won’t let them get my feet. Ever. Again.

This process happens at least once more over the course of the afternoon. I have the most well-exfoliated limbs in Australia. My feet also look like lepers.

When I get back to the hostel at night, I shower with loads of soap, just to get the layers of grime off. I emerge fresh and clean and stay that way for maybe a whole ten glorious minutes before those dastardly creatures begin to buzz again.

Out comes the spray, and thus the cycle starts again.

But hey, if these are the biggest annoyances in my life right now, I think I’m doing really good.