Vaseline and sea urchins - Weekly Travel Tale

This spiny villain will get you if you are not careful

Just when you thought the worst villain of your vacation would be your mother-in-law, you step into a coral bed and feel the burn of sea urchin spikes embedding into your foot.

Spending the rest of your vacation with a swollen foot isn't exactly a great time.

Its almost Friday and I'm leaving you this weeks Travel Tale.  This one is about my intimate experience with sea urchins.

If you've ever been stuck by sea urchins, you know the pain is truly unexplainable.

While snorkeling in St. Croix a few years back, I got trapped in some pretty strong currents off Point Udall. The best decision was to swim perpendicular to the currents and head for shore.  As I did this, I came up to a shallow bed of coral and froze still.  The waves started pushing me over and I had the choice:

Fall back onto fire coral or step forward onto what appeared to be hundreds of black spiny sea urchins. 

I didn't have to make that decision as a wave crashed over me and pushed me onto the urchins.  I took well over a hundred spikes in my feet and my hands.

My dive partner quickly came to my side and I sat on the shoreline with spikes and blood coming from my feet.

1. Urinate on my feet (Eeew!)
2. Grind my feet onto a hard piece of rock (Oww!)
3. Rub my feet in Vaseline then light them on fire with a candle (claiming this will pull out the barbs by suction)

Of course I knew that urinating was for jellyfish, grinding my feet was way too painful and so I picked the obvious choice.

My partner and I hiked/hobbled about 2 painful miles out of Isaac's Bay and got to the car.  We went to the local market and bought Vaseline, a candle, matches and a half gallon of chocolate ice-cream.

The next few hours were interesting as my feet got rubbed down with Vaseline and lit on fire, all the while I gobbled down the ice cream trying to mask the pain.  This did nothing but make the Vaseline ooze and boil onto my feet and leave me with an upset stomach.

We resorted to trying to cut them out with razors and tweezers and finally just resorted to wrapping them with gauze. 

My feet swelled up to twice the size and luckily I could wear my Tevo sandals.  St. Croix medicine is not exactly modern, so calling the local clinics and physicians yielded very poor advice. I tried to reach my Doctor in North America, however, they were unable to diagnose a Caribbean condition from thousands of miles away.

The catch with sea urchin spikes, is that they are not just smooth objects that can be pulled out like a sliver.  They are barbed so they remain in the skin (think similar to a barbed fish hook).  They are also calcium derived, so you have little exoskeletons underneath your skin only visible in xrays.  They are painful, but not poisonous to humans.

It wasn't until a month later that I was able to get proper medical care and by then, most had been pushed out of my body by small infections and my own handy tweezing skills.  I had a series of xrays taken and 3 still remained. Anything short of surgery, they were staying in my body.  My doctor and I concluded to just continue to let my body work them out on their own.

What started as a nice snorkeling trip, ended with over a month of dense pain in my feet.  My advice to every traveler out there is to know the areas you are going to swim in. Wear thick rubber or plastic soled flippers. Flimsy ones will not protect you.  Stay away from shallow depths of water with pitted coral shelves. These pits are perfect spots for sea urchins to hide out.

And remember, that when it comes to remedies, there are none. Time and patience.  Vaseline is not the answer.

Have a great weekend and safe travels to everyone!  May they be urchin free (other than in your sushi).

Check back next Friday for the Travel Tale of the Week.