March 23; Camp Hygiene
We have tried to be good about this, really! It has not always worked out the way we wanted to but at least we have found a way which keeps us reasonably clean and keeps the food we eat in an acceptable state.
To start with ourselves; we have averaged about one shower per week, although we have gone without a shower for longer at times. We regularly wash ourselves in the sea but since this leaves one feeling somewhat sticky with the salt on one’s skin we have not gone out of our way to do this on a daily basis.
The result: we do not necessarily feel terribly clean and a hair wash with fresh water would certainly increase our comfort, but we do not smell and we have gotten used to the situation and it does not bother us.
We wash our clothes in sea water regularly and apart from the fact that everything is saturated with sea salt and is feeling like parchment to the touch from sweat after a few days, there are no serious issues with wearing dirty clothes. Fortunately most of our clothes are wash and wear, meaning, you wash them in the sea and wear them again one hour later; this certainly cuts down on the amount of clothes we need to carry in our kayaks, and since we see new people every day, who is to know that we have lived in the same clothes for a month?
Both of us have scrapes, cuts and bruises galore. My heels consist of cuts with the occasional bit of skin in between; this is extremely uncomfortable and hurts badly, but they all look clean; no infections in sight, and they heal properly.The only special treatment I give them is to keep them as dry as possible, which sometimes is only achieved at night before we get into our sleeping bags My hands are full of blisters and burn like they have been in a fire; I use alcohol wipes to keep them as clean as possible. Plasters and bandages don’t work in this environment.
We carry lots of alcohol wipes and use these liberally to clean our hands before we work with food. We also do this generally before we go to sleep, after eating and cleaning. These wipes are very small; one sheet is no more than two square inches but it is amazing how clean one feels after wiping face and hands with them.
Keeping our cutlery, cups and plates and cooking and frying pans clean is another challenge. In brief, we have not been successful at all in this endeavor. We started off cleaning everything thoroughly after every meal and putting them in different plastic bags. With the wind and the sand being what they are, within a few days sand was in every bag and even after emptying the bags, sand would still remain. After a while this became a real pain in the butt (another one) and we have not been able to find a good, simple solution so what we have started doing is the following: after use, we clean everything immediately, even if it sometimes means only wiping it clean with toilet tissues. Immediately before use we clean everything that we are going to use very thoroughly to give us the best chance of eating with clean utensils. Sometimes this does not work; when the wind is strong sand gets in everywhere anyway.
The cooking pots and frying pan are a different issue again; the scouring pads we have do not hold up in this environment. We need to wash in sea water with detergent which does not foam unless one uses a very large quantity, which we cannot carry. I have thrown out the scouring pads in the meantime and use the natural scouring material of which there is no shortage: sand.
I clean the pots and pans in sand, right at the edge of the shore. The scouring could not be better; I take a handful of sand and some water and get everything very clean. If anything is very dirty or greasy, I rub it in the sand at the shore break until it is clean. The pots, pans, plates and cups are always very clean after this and a good rinse in sea water.
To conserve the fresh water, as a rule, I only rinse in sea water.. We cook in the pots and fry in the pans and we need salt for cooking anyway so a little sea salt residue is not a problem and we have not tasted anything strange. However, if we are eating food that is not cooked in water, such as pancakes, or eggs, a final rinse or wash is done in fresh water before using the pots and pans.