soooo...it's been a while.
First off let me say this: Gripe is NOT the same as the flu...it is MUCH worse. It is a mixture of cold and flu which changes depending on the person and the incident. It typically lasts 3-7 days. In my case it was accompanied by vomiting, cold and hot sweats, headache, body pain, extreme fever, and lack of brain functioning...ok the last one was just a result of all of the other things...but seriously. NOT FUN.
On a high note, however, it was not Dengue fever, which has been increasingly prevalent recently in Costa Rica, especially in the Guanacaste region and in my neighborhood in particular. This I attribute to the open-air housing that we have which allows the mosquito creatures free access to our bodies, the way in which Dengue is transferred.
Needless to say, after my experience with gripe...which started out as the sniffles and ended by knocking me out of commission for 2-3 days, I do not want dengue and I have stopped using repellant sparingly.
