“DON'T. CATCH UP ON Lost SLEEP ON THE BEACH

a

‘Overdose of sun ‘no joke’
when you are on hol

A RECENT column: dealing with the dangers of overdosing -
.on sunbathing bronght some interesting comments — and a

few horror stories.
This one deserves to be passed

on.
My friend, Caroline Jackson, is’

a well-known writer and editor —
and a traveller of some distinction.
When she was about 18, she and
a girlfriend booked a charter flight
from their home in Britain to Tor-
remolinos, in the south of Spain.

Bad luck ,led them to a long
delay at the airport. So long that
exhausted travellers stretched out
on every flat spot the airport had
to offer, including the top of the
bar.

‘When they eventually reached
Torremolires, the sun-starved

tourists headed straight for the .

beach.

Caroline recognized a fellow
. passenger, a young man in his late
20s, a few yards away, stretched

out with the obvious intention of ©
making up for lost time, ' both ’

_ sleeping and sunbathing.
: Later that night, the regular
police patrol found the young man
“dead on the beach. His Meath was
‘attributed to heart failure, brought
on by the dehydration and rise in

body temperature due to overex-:

posure te the sua.

tnt

Travellers are generally tired
when they arrive at their destina-
tion. Who doesn’t spend the last
few days before. departure fran-
tically working to- ensure that
home and office are left in order?
‘Upon arrival, nothing looks bet-
-ter'than a “place i in the sun” with
nothing to do but rest. I know
. from one awful experience how
-that lapse in judgment can almost
ruin a holiday.

I arrived in Rio on a scorching
day in January, following approx-
‘imately 30 hours of interrupted
flights. Tired? I could have slept
leaning against a wall.

Instead, we transferred to a
- cruise ship waiting -o take us down
the coast of South America. t

. made the classic, all-time stupid,
inove. No quiet nap in my cabin
but, instead, I hopped into my
bathing suit and located a.deck
chair.

WALKING HOLIDAYS

England, Scotland
Wales, S. Ireland

Lake District

7 nights §230°

Garey Ss
. 731-8294.

When I woke up, every exposed

-. inch of flesh from my forehead to

my toes was scarlet. I had a
screaming headache and my
temperature soared. Sick?
Sunstroke is no joke. Aside from
the burn, headache and fever, the
nausea is awful.

Kt was nearly a week before |

travel
wise
Barbara McCreadie

could dress in anything other than
a caftan. The burns blistered and
wept, some becoming infected.
This led to a four-day course of
horse-sized antibiotic pills in-
cluding a rigid list of things I
shouldn’t eat or drink.
Some holiday.

aa’
- One more caution from a reader

whe took her small children to
Hawaii this winter. She really tried

‘to-do everything right, including

keeping the kids protected from
excess sun.

Each day, the family would eat
their meais in the shade of a patio
umbrella. The baby napped beside
her in a stroller.

However, the sun moved and the
baby didn’t. One lunchtime his
bare leg was exposed for probably
20 minutes before anyone noticed
and the burn that resulted in-
troduced ther to the local medical
facilities.

Infants and small children have
far more sensitive skin than adults
and burn much more quickly. A
child, too, has more skin area than
an adult as compared with total
body weight (or so my reader ex-
plained). Therefore, a sunburn is

much more serious.
Please take the sun seriously.

eee =<

Another reader has asked for
some instructions on ‘‘getting by
when I can’t speak the language.”’

Communication is one of the
major concerns for people travel-
ling to foreign countries for the
first time. It’s like that old familiar
nightmare — some emergency has
happened and you are trying to
telephone for help, but each time
you try to dial you push the wrong
buttons.

It’s easier than you think.

The first thing to remember is
that communication works two
ways and the person you are
speaking to almost always is eager
to understand.

It’s up to you to make it as easy
as possible.

On the chance that the person
can recognize a few words of
English, ask — speaking slowly.
Keep your words to a bare mini-
mum and use the simplest ones you
can think of.

The person you are speaking to
is probably not deaf. Yelling at

standing one bit -but simply fire
him with the desire to shake this
rude foreigner as quickly as possi-
ble.

.Once you have established that
not one word of English is com-
prekended, all is not lost. Between
pantomime and a pencil and
paper, much can be discussed. All
it takes is a willingness to lose a bit
of dignity, if mecessary, and
remembering to keep things sim-
ple. :

It.is unrealistic to expect every
traveller to study the language of
each country he intends to visit,

but learning a few key words isn’t

a bad idea.

For example, if I were heading
‘for China I'd try to find out how
to say “‘toilet?’? and to understand
the word meaning ‘‘fire!’’.

If I know half a dozen words in
Spanish it’s a miracle, but there is
one word I know very weil, even if
J can’t spell it. I learned it flat on

“my back.in a gutter in Buenos ;

Aires.

Phonetically spelled, it’s

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“Quithado” and it means ‘Be
careful’’.

1 learned it from the friend who
had just rugby-tackled me out of
the path of an oncoming bus.

He had seen me stupidly stepp-
ing off the curb and shouted 2
warning -— the emergency caught
him off-guard and he yelled in

“Spanish. Fat lot of good that did.

The tackle saved my life if it did
nothing for my dignity. Worse, he
made me sit in the gutter until I’d
repeated the word for “Be
carefull’? enough times that it’s
engraved.

I wonder how you say it in
Chinese.

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