Dengue Fever

We had prepared everything, for months we were dreaming about this trip, Crooked Island, Bahamas. We planned everything, we were going to take pictures for the Howler Bros shirts, we had all the Loop Cross S1 Flatsman series to try all kind of fish, from bonefish to Shark including trigger fish, barracuda, permit and tarpon, the whole range of tackle to be tested. We had an extra luggage of flies and gear, we were all set. Crooked Island was ours. We had sunscreen, sunburn cream, and, since we think we are cool and eco-freindly we had a organic NON DEET mosquito spray… F#?%k that Sh%t! Those mosquitos, they don’t care about that non deet stuff, they probably even find it tasty! But you know what, as soon we arrived in Nassau we got bitten, not once, but an all army of mosquitos raided on us… the next day, and our first day, on the boat, my wife who is also our fotographer and writer, started to feel a terrible headache…we thought it was a sun stroke, so we headed home around mid day. After a night with fever she still had that terrible headache and pain in the joints. That’s when we decided to call the doctor… there are no doctors on Crooked Island. So we called Nassau, and guess what happened. They sent a medevac plane, and we were done with our fishing trip! Back at the hospital, the declared it was Dengue Fever and we were in a plane back to Europe! Really? All of that because of a mosquito?! So for you all our tropical fly fishing readers; just to let you know that this sucks big time, now I know everything about Dengue Fever. From 500 000 to 1 million person have it every year and there is a massive epidemic in the West Indies from Cuba to Bahamas, and there is no cure nor vaccine, your only friend is DEET!! In the meantime, my wife is still in bed after two weeks and it can take a month before she fells better…And I thought Dengue Fever was a dance…

So our advice is don’t go tropics without serious mosquito reppellent and serious clothes protection ! Deet is our new best friend. We’ll keep you posted with our next troppical trip, we’ve got all that gear to test and all those pictures to take!  In the meantime, here’s the famouse Zao and his song Mosquito ! [youtube=https://youtu.be/iWlVM3Q7BKM]