Re: First Camino - The facts
Elzi, I see what you're saying.
Tia, I understand your point of view also, but I don't see how it makes a difference whether the pilgrim before you had a sleeping bag permeated with poison, or the bed was lightly misted. If you tell the hospitalera. what do you think they do? They grab that can of RAID and spray the heck out of the mattresses, the floors, the walls... and THAT scent lingers for hours! To me my way is better. The bed does NOT get wet at all. The droplets are a MIST and they dry and dissipate within 5 minutes.
Thanks, Falcon, for mentioning THE FACTS. You are so good at this!
Here are the facts as I see them:
Insect repellant is toxic to humans, animals, and other living things.
It gets into the food, water, and your bloodstream, brain, and organs when you use it.
It is measurable in the human system with the correct testing.
Bedbugs are nasty little critters that suck your blood while you sleep.
They, more often than not, leave you with painful, itchy, large red welts that put some people in emergency care.
They are said not to carry disease. The FACT is that they INJECT an anti-coagulant into your body. Common sense makes me wonder who they bit before they bit me? Did that person have a communicable disease? How many studies have REALLY been done on bedbugs passing disease?
Some people have little or no reaction to the bites.
There are several ways to deal with bedbugs, but the best way seems to be with poisonous toxins.
Although it would be nice not to use poisons, it IS possible to use the toxins more responsibly than not.
The mosquito spray I bought in the farmacia in Spain was unscented.
I bought it because I have multiple chemical sensitivities and am extremely sensitive to scents and chemicals.
Misting the bed with 2 or 3 sprays from a pump spray, 6 inches above your mattress does not permeate the room with any scent. If you do this in the afternoon when you arrive, the alburgue is often empty or the pilgrims are still spaced widely.
It is polite to ASK people in the room if they mind before spraying.
When you mist your bed LIGHTLY with this neuro-toxin, the bedbugs come to the surface within 5 minutes, giving you the choice of finding different lodging or a different bed.
If there is a bedbug in one bed, there may not be bugs in other beds, but I wouldn't place money on it.
Bedbugs, although small, travel quite rapidly...from one bed to another, from one backpack to another, from one pilgrim to another, from one alburgue to another.
I hate using chemicals, but in this case, I see no alternative except becoming infested, which I'm not willing to do.
You can also look for signs of bugs and almost always see them.
Look on the wall near the bed for black peck-peck-pecks like someone took a black inkpen and dotted the wall. This is their feces.
Look all along the seam running around the mattress. They like to hide in there.
Lift the mattress and look in the holes that hold the hardware for the wooden bedframe. This is a favorite hiding place.
If you find bedbugs, and ask for a refund, I never had it refused.
I always found other clean lodging close by.
Unfortunately, there really is no perfect answer. You are either willing or unwilling to be bitten.
I'm unwilling.
Here are a few more FACTS:
There is at least one person on Obama's cabinet who came to him from Monsanto, and he is Michael Taylor, appointed to the Food and Drug Administration, the same FDA that is supposed to be protecting me from dangerous substances in my foods. That does not do much to give me confidence in my government. :roll: Here is more if you're interested in reading the facts:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/article ... _18866.cfm
http://www.takepart.com/news/2009/03/09 ... or-change/
And the EPA? Here's some interesting reading about them:
http://www.verdant.net/monsanto.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-131639591.html
You'll notice Monsanto received the go-ahead from the EPA... for SYSTEMIC poisons in our food and fabric supply. SYSTEMIC means the poison actually travels into the body of the plant, and is now being thought to be related to colony collapse of honeybees, and now to the death of hundreds of thousands of bats. The poisons are time released, contained in polymers, and you may want to think about how they could affect YOU if you are eating them?
This is an interesting article with many links for the few who may be interested in becoming more informed:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Raids- ... 15-45.html
You are right, I'm passionate about my fight against Monsanto and I wish the world would wake up. But to call it rhetoric is simply not true. You can poke fun all you want.. it does not change the FACTS. You just can't wish facts away...
And the last FACT is, I walked for 90 days, misted each and every bed, not one pilgrim complained about the scent/mist, and I did not get bitten once. 
:::doing a happy Camino dance!:::::
:::edited:: The last last fact is this problem is probably not going away. I stayed at one alburgue where the week before, the owner had actually taken all the mattresses outside and sprayed them, and had taken a BLOWTORCH to the metal bedframes.... and one week later, he was again infested. ::shrug:: It's just a fact of life on the Camino so each person has to choose what works best for them.
