Among the things your mother never told you about fishing in the tropics is that, unless you were born there, the climate may drop you before you land your second fish. At the very least, the humidity will make your shorts too sticky for comfort. And comfort, for the average North American fishing south of the border, gets harder and harder to come by as you head into the 90s (that's 90-degree heat and 90-percent humidity).
Maybe sports from Florida or the Gulf Coast don't mind the change in climate, but when a northern-tier guy like me (Washington State) steps off the plane the effect is not unlike that of a blowtorch on a wax candle. If you couldn't lean on a stout rod case, the heat and humidity would melt you away like Oz's water drenched Wicked Witch of the North. If you should run low on liquids and forget the sun while hooked up to one hot-running, powerful game fish after another you can, well...even if there is a hospital that treats sunstroke you probably wouldn't want to go there.
First emergency Spanish words to memorize: Frio cervesa por favor. Translation: "Cold beer please." You can toss in a pronto or ask for water (agua) with the same sentence. And make sure whatever you drink comes in a can or a bottle.
Having just returned from Venezuela's rain forest, I have compiled the complete list of preparations, paraphernalia and precautions that, should I head south again, will make it possible for me to have even more fun--the point being that an angler cannot enjoy what his body cannot endure. Here , then, is an enemies-of-comfort list, together with remedies or antidotes.
THE BUGS. OF COURSE EVERYONE KNOWS enough to pack insect repellent for a trip to the Amazon jungle. What you may not know is to put it on while you are still on the plane, just before landing. You guessed it--the welcoming committee typically consists of squads of bloodthirsty no-see-ums. South American no-see-ums should, since you can damn well see them, be called no-feel-ums. Because you don't feel 'um until after you start to scratch, by which time it is too late for repellent.
Mind you, these are bad bites. We're not talking about a North American mosquito equivalent here. Once bitten, all people itch; most scratch their hide off and suffer like the dickens; some people swell; a few get so sick they have to be evacuated to a hospital.
When I fell asleep in the jungle after lunch one day, a swarm of no-see-ums had their own lunch on my unprotected forearms--the itch and welts lasted six weeks. interestingly, and according to jungle lore, a can of RightGuard spray deodorant was about the only thing that stopped the itching.
Long sleeve shirts and long pants--clipped or buttoned at the bottom--will leave fewer landing zones and should be a part of everyone's Anti-Bug Dress Code. Same with lightweight gloves, tall cotton socks, and a bandanna around the neck. (I'll return to the wonders of a bandanna in a moment.)
Buy the most powerful DEET-based repellent you can find, lay it on generously, and reapply several times a day (it wears out, rubs off, and sweat dilutes it). Carry some with you at all times and share it with your guide. Most guides can't afford repellent and are happy to get some, and happy guides catch more fish. Failing all these precautions, pack some calamine lotion. Fortunately, there are no biting insects around after night falls. Then again, maybe there will be when you're there.
THE SUN. AS NEAR AS I CAN TELL, they use the same sun in the tropics they used to fry Peter O'Toole in the movie Lawrence of Arabia . We're talking griddle temperatures here. And since there isn't a nice protective layer of city smog to slow down the radiation, we're talking serious rays.
Sunscreen is not optional , and daubing a little on won't do. The operative verb is "slather." You slather on sun block. If you're fair skinned and if you came to fish rather than fry, you might just paint your skin until it resembles white stucco. If you don't do this (several times a day when you're under the big X-ray machine in the sky), one day you get to have a biopsy for skin cancer.
Sunglasses? A trip to the tropics is all the excuse you will ever need to buy the finest full wrap, polarizing sunglasses you can find. and be sure to take a back-up.
More cover-up: Starting with the noodle, the first thing to get is a straw hat with a huge brim, or one of those new tropics caps with encircling brim, long bill, and neck drape. A couple of hours under a sun you can reach up and touch, and you'll soon find your Elmer Fudd baseball cap nothing if not dangerous--especially if it doesn't breathe. Heavy canvas river hats do not breathe sufficiently to let the heat out (not for me at any rate): thus the need for excellent venting.
I'm not sure anyone has yet made the perfect tropics hat, but here are my specs: light weight, light color (white is best), vented like crazy, dippable in water without losing its shape, unsinkable, and complete with chin strap. You need the chin strap to keep it from blowing away on fast boat rides, and it needs to be unsinkable because you will forget to use the chin strap.
Even more cover-up. The arms, legs, and body can be protected with very light and light-colored cottons, Supplex, or any of the super new fabrics being developed for hot-weather comfort. The trick is to stay away from dark colors and to keep garments loose. Skip pride and consider buying duds one size larger than usual.
Feet? Keep them well covered in tennis or deck shoes and wear socks (to avoid precooking skin for no-see-um banquets).
Hands. Nobody thinks much about their hands. But for fishermen, casting and reeling all day, the tops of them are constantly exposed to the sun. Worse, sunscreen on the tops of your hands gets rubbed off by long-sleeved shirt cuffs. Solution: lightweight fingerless gloves. Another solution: take a pair of white cotton socks, cut a thumb hole in the toe, insert thumb; then cut a three-inch slot for the rest of your fingers. Rig both hands the same way and voila! you will have no burned, blistered, or ruined hands.
Lips. While you're not likely to get lucky in the middle of a rain forest, a stick of lip balm with sun block can keep you kissable. My solution to poor memory is to attach one to the fishing lanyard around my neck.
THE HEAT. WHAT CAN YOU SAY about the heat? Actually it's heat plus humidity. This is the source of the sticky shorts problem. One way to beat sticky shorts is to skip them. I mean don't wear any underwear. Who's to know? Who cares? Your mother will probably never find out.
The only real solution: stay hydrated. Don't stop drinking water. Drink early in the day, at the first hint of thirst and all day long. You can't drink too much water. Or soda. But you can drink too much beer. Some sports rehydrate with beer, keep rehydrating, and then rehydrate some more until, pretty soon, they fall out of the boat and are devoured by piranhas. Sort of a cocktail olive with legs. Beer is a poor substitute for water, as any recovering alcoholic will tell you.
Next to plenty of water on the inside, there's nothing like a little water on the outside. This is where the bandanna comes in, serving as a kind of portable radiator. Dip it in the river, lake, or ocean, wring it out, and wash your face for a refreshing moment. When moving between fishing holes in a fast boat, dip it, wring it out, and lay it on your face so the breeze can whip through and cool your bean. Keep it tied around your neck to keep off the sun and bugs and, with a little tail of it flying, you will show up wonderfully stylish and rugged back home in your photo album.
A couple of finer points: no one in the Spanish-speaking world has a bottle opener. Worse, they have not yet invented the twist-off cap. Since you'll be drinking bottled this and bottled that all day and night, make sure you carry a bottle opener of your very own, or a pair of fishing pliers that will do the job. A bottle opener kept handy on a lanyard should give you at least half a day more fishing time.
These, then, are the main discomforts and their remedies. However, to keep the trip of a lifetime from becoming the nightmare of a lifetime, here are a few more tips:
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