Drinking Water

Since we left Paris, the tap water has not been safe to drink without treatment. You don’t really think about how much water you drink or use in a day until every time you need to brush your teeth, take a malaria pill or just have a quick drink you have to locate a water bottle. I’d estimate that not counting other drinks (beer, soda and fruit shakes), we are drinking/using between 6-7 liters of clean water daily.

At $1 a bottle, the costs start to add up, but a bigger issue is the environmental impact of all those plastic bottles. I feel a certain amount of guilt at contributing to the garbage load these countries are suffering from, especially since garbage collection is much less thorough than we are used to and plastic trash is everywhere. If every tourist here is using that much water, the trash load is horrible to contemplate.

In good news, we are traveling with a nifty gadget known as a steri-pen. When the button is pushed, the glass rod emits a UV light. Stir a liter of water with this light for 90 seconds, and all the buggies in the water are dead and it’s safe to drink. This tool was originally designed for back country hikers, but it works for travel.

In spite of having it though, we’ve still been buying much of our water. In part because we buy it to accompany meals or deal with walking in the heat, but in part because I find myself unable to fully trust the steri pen. No one’s been sick yet, but each time I stir up a liter of water I worry that I’m not agitating it enough and that there will be some nasty bug hiding at the bottom of the water bottle. I need to get over this.