Bottled Water While Travelling
By Jenn (TinyChoices.com) | September 2, 2010
We certainly don’t have to repeat this: Team Tiny Choices is very anti-bottled water. But during my recent travels in Central America, I drank more of the stuff than I care to admit– and this was also the case when I visited India last year.
It nearly killed me, buying so much of the stuff, but the option might very well have actually killed me. It’s easy for my NYC-dwelling-self to forget that most of the worlds’ population does not have access to clean drinking water. And while this is a sad but true statistic while I’m at home, once I put myself on the map in one of these places I become one of those numbers– a human being who needs water to survive, yet can’t drink what comes out of the tap.
While I was at surf camp in Nicaragua, there was a big 5-gallon purified water bottle which we all refilled our smaller bottles from, so although this used transportation & purification energy, at least we weren’t creating more plastic waste in a location which isn’t really equipped to recycle it properly. I then moved on to Santa Teresa, Costa Rica with a friend, and from the local market we carried home another 5-gallon jug of purified water which we decanted from for the next week.
And then I was on my own, in another Costa Rican surf spot paradise, where everyone was telling me the tap water was safe to drink. Really? Once you’ve been sick with a stomach bug in a foreign country, it’s a little difficult to make yourself take a leap of faith such as this. I’d have glasses of sparkling tap water set in front of me at restaurants, and I’d eye it suspiciously. I kept buying the largest bottles I could find– 6 liters– and decanting them into my smaller bottles for everyday use. But even this disturbed me, and I just wasn’t drinking enough water because it hurt me to buy this much bottled water.
So, I ended up getting slightly dehydrated. Partly this was due to crazy amounts of sun exposure, but it was exacerbated by the fact that I just couldn’t buy enough water to keep my fluid levels up. So, I started drinking the tap water. I’d met at least a dozen travelers who agreed that the tap water was fine in this town, so I chose to believe them and chose to believe in my digestive system, and started drinking the stuff in huge quantities.
And it turned out to be fine! What a relief. The remainder of my trip, I didn’t have to buy another bottle of water, and after a few listless days I got my energy back up and moved on to the mountains and out of the sun.
The next time I travel, I’m bringing my camping water filter with me– it would make most any tap water safe to drink, it’s an appliance I already own, and would completely remove the issue of bottled water from the equation. I felt foolish that I had left it at home during this trip but look forward to this solution for my next journey.
Have you had to rely on bottled water recently? How do you deal with this issue while you travel?
[Image by Moffitt via Creative Commons]
Topics: Food, Waste | 6 Comments »
This is somehting that is hard to deal with while travelling. Our best find for water was Rome. While the water in most European countries is of excellent quality from the tap, Rome has something that on a hot day ROCKS. While walking around you see these little fire hydrant like things with a little spout coming out of them. They are around knee to waist high and the water is ice cold and totally safe to drink. Totally free and located all over the city!
This is a wonderful opinion. The things mentioned are unanimous and
needs to be appreciated by everyone.
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One of the travelers I meet in Costa Rica never bought water while he was staying on the coast. Instead at least once every couple of days he would walk along the beach and collect coconuts. He used to drink the Coconut milk rather than buy water. Seemed like a reasonable plan as long as he could locate enoough of them. Someone told be once coconut milk is almost identical to a sports drink.
The other thing that got me out of buying water in some places was that some of the hostels collected rain water. Depending on where you are it might not always be the best idea. need to assess each system in turn.
I spose the last thing would be to just boil all your water, with a little planing another good option.
I use a SteriPEN water purifier, it’s incredibly convenient. It’s not cheap but you save money over the long run!
Hi Jenn. Yes, it’s a huge ethical concern and i don’t want to support bottle water companies when i am traveling in places where access to clean water is difficult, b/c bottled water is part of the global water crisis/problem. When I was traveling with my friend in Rwanda, we would order l’eau chaude or maji moto (hot water/boiling water) and let it cool and transfer to our water bottles. boiling was the solution. in india too, we had access to boiling/filtering.
I did buy a SteriPen, but haven’t had a chance to use it.
We recently dealt with the same issue while in Greece on our honeymoon. I was insanely dehydrated because I too had a hard time purchasing the bottled water! I will definitely be investing in one of those pens for future travel.