A question for those of you who have done Southern Europe or the Middle East.
Have you ever parked up on a hot, sultry night, leaving your windows or sunroof slightly open, and then ended up with a mosquito or two in the cab, being driven mad by that high pitched whine as they fly around looking for a bare patch of your skin? Have you searched the cab desperately, trying to whack the little bleeder with a rolled up newspaper?
Or, if you’ve done the Middle East, have you ever woken up to find you’ve been sharing the cab with a massive Scorpion or some other multi legged intruder on your pillow?
Does the sound of those Cicadas (Crickets) in Southern Europe send you to sleep or keep you awake all night?
I’m sure Toby1234abc will recall some insect tales !
Pulled over end of the day half way down Italy, open the window just a crack, within a nano second 4 mossies lined up on the dash looking at me, thier meal for the night.
We used to have what we called “mozzie burners” that plugged into the cigarette lighter and heated up a blue tablet ( the name escapes me) that gave off a repellent aroma that kept them away. Most effective too. In 12yrs down souther Spain, Portugal etc etc I rarely got bitten. One place we used to load sweetcorn from called El Portal aka “the green doors” south of Jerez used to get so hot we regularily slept with both doors wide open after an evening on the tinto de verano
Was quieter than running the engine with the aircon on (after we got motors with aircon of course). And as we were miles from anywhere there was no one around to worry you. That was back in the late 80’s/90’s mind you. Bit different now I guess.
FLIP:
We used to have what we called “mozzie burners” that plugged into the cigarette lighter and heated up a blue tablet ( the name escapes me) that gave off a repellent aroma that kept them away. Most effective too.
Hi FLIP,
It was called a “UFO” because the burner resembled a flying saucer.
Cheers dave.
Think mine’s up the loft in my “old continental days” box.
Might even be half a bix of tablets. Can’t recall the brand for the life of me but remember a dark blue box and the tablets individually wrapped in silver foil.
Still got all my old change pots/leather purses full of Pesetas,Escudos, Lira,Dirham etc etc.
Happy days!!
The Mozzies in the TIR parking at Alverca were evil and cunning.
Buz around the cab all night.Never find them.
Big stinking river that was a sewer.
The smell would give you a headache.
If bitten by these Portuguese mozzies,they would give you flu like symptons.
I was down at a ship building yard near Seville,mozzie attack again,so i sprayed the cab with Cs pepper spray.
Returned home after a trip to Itie and asked the missus to check what felt like a spot on my back.
Had it for a few days,it itched like ■■■■ and didnt feel like normal mozzy bite.
On closer inspection,with the aid of a pair of tweezers she removed what i can only describe as a barbed/fishook thingy.
Hornet sting?
Can still remember the sigh of relief when she pulled it out(ooh err) and with a dab of Savlon the spot dissapeared within a couple of hours.
plenty of mozzies in this country,especially near water.
i do alot of night fishing in summer…sometimes they bite me,sometimes my mate,sometimes both of us sometimes neither.
sometimes the bites are hardly noticable…other times they come up like boils
worst i ever had,was about 200 boil size bites which you could see through my clothes.the missus did`nt get one
there are hundreds of different kinds of mosquito…some even live in winter.
Alverca was a dump toby but good times in the bars round there and yes the Tajo or Tejo river stank but whilst some suffered the mozzies there never bothered me.
As another poster has mentioned there are many strains of mozzie. The only ones that ever bothered me personally and caused a reaction were around the orchards in ghe Avignon area. Every time I loaded around there I got bitten to hell. Otherwise no prob’s
Not even in Morroco!
El portal was "the hole in the wall " FLIP. The “green doors” were in a village top side of Seville IIRC.
Your right about it being bloody hot down there though. Back in the late 90s I too would sleep there with the doors wide open. It was beautiful and quite of a night being in the middle of nowhere.
I well remember the flying saucer mossie burners. The company that made them also made a mossie spray that was deadly to anything that breathed air. Didn’t stop the little blighters getting in but a good dose of the spray would have a buzzing cab silent within seconds. Trouble was you had to leave it 30 mins before getting back in the cab yourself.
Parked up one night in Southern France finished early and went out had a meal and a few too many returned to the moter stripped off and got in the bunk, heard the dreaded mozzy buzz got rolled up news paper and proceeded to attack the same. One b… must have had flying goggles on so i spent a bit of time trying to swat it until with great happiness i got him !!! Threw the paper down with a flourish and became aware of the sound of clapping and cheering and turned round to see 10 /15 people in the local cafe sat at their tables applauding the mad English man in his truck stark naked with the curtains open entertaining them !
The worst place I have ever been attacked by mossies was not any where at all exotic but Pimms wharf in Barking creek, the little buggers came at me from across the water at the sewerage works, one of the bites I had on the eyelid meant I couldn’t open my eye for nearly a week but I do react to their pesky bites. For real mossies go down to the tropics during the rainy season but I got off scot free down there with not one bite, mind you with the amount of repellent I had on me they were dead before they got anywhere near me !
Any mozzies that are near sewers can make the person bit by them,feel not well.
Norfolk’s post is very funny.
The mozzies know you are hunting them and hide.
How do they vanish so fast.
They fly up to the top bunk.Then behind the cab curtains…They do have flying goggles.Luftwafte ones.
On a tv programne about tropical diseases,an oil worker who traveled the world, got biten by some sort of fly.
The fly bite turns in to a worm that lives for years in the bloodstream.This man had worms living in his eyeballs.He was biten in Africa.
We had a driver who was not very good in the housekeeping dept. I got stuck with his truck on a night out when mine was in for MOT and he was on holiday. I turned the interior light off that night and I swear that 500 pairs of tiny eyes were twinkling in the darkness back at me…The whole truck interior was alive
Bang on neilf!
When I wrote the green doors I had second thoughts. I can picture that village now nyh if Seville but cannot recall the name. El Portal was cracking though. Had a few boizy evenings in that bar/restaurant topside of the level crossing then bobtail back to the farm.
Happy days mid-late 90’s.
That spray was evil wasn’t it. I don’t think even Kwozzy or Mappo could’ve breathed that in and lived…
