In the 2000s, there was a brief craze of unhygienic places having footbaths of water in which you could put your reeking feet in order to have fish nibble at them. This seemed to me like 1. fish abuse, and 2. a good way to catch foot diseases.
When I went to the beautiful Kazdağı National Park in the mountains above the Aegean coast of Turkey, I found that the fish were willing to do this pedicure treatment in the wild. Normally, fish scatter and disappear when you swim in their river. However, just dipping your feet in the river in the picture above would bring a swarm of tiny fish to you. They would chew on your feet if they could get to them. They would also nibble at any part that you put in. A bit off-putting at first, but they never seemed to get hurt by limbs flailing about when I was swimming. Eventually, I just got used to being surrounded by a cloud of orally familiar fish.
There is a place near Sivas in Turkey that claims to use temperature-resistant fish for treating psoriasis. Go for it.
Now, the crabs. The east coast of Yorke Peninsula in South Australia has crystal waters and a high tidal range. If you go for a walk on Sultana Point near Edithburgh at low tide, there is a fascinating array of marine life to see. My 2-year-old daughter and I were eating razorfish (Pinna bicolor). This necessitated cracking open sharp shells and doing a lot of cleaning of stuff inside. After a bit of work, we would get an edible morsel that she would eagerly chew before demanding more. The detritus would attract all sorts of animals, including some small mud crabs.
When the supply of razorfish guts ran out, the crabs would nibble our feet. They were quite insistent with some bits of loose skin but never went as far as causing pain. I don’t know whether the concept of crab pedicures would take off like the fish ones did. There’s a business idea for you.
I suppose these foot-loving creatures would correctly be called pedophiles. Not paedophiles.
Posted February 3, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
This was in the Kaçkar Mountains. One of the blokes I was climbing with was a mad Israeli who took every opportunity to leap off, dangle from or squeeze into anything that shouldn’t have been touched.
We saw this. Ilan dug his elbow into my ribs and said ‘Come on’. We plunged into the stream and rock-hopped into darkness.
It looked like this inside the entrance. The ceiling was made up of packed snow which had consolidated into a frozen mass over the months of winter. It was now July and the ice was melting. It had dug this tunnel out of the ice and now the roof was melting. It showed this by occasionally dropping an ice boulder from overhead. This explained the strange structure of the roof of the cave.
We had torches so we went on until we couldn’t any more. When we walked back, ice boulders seemed to drop randomly around us. We got wet but not killed. We carried on up the valley, which ended up with a glacier nestling in a col near the summit.
Posted February 3, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
In the 2000s, there was a brief craze of unhygienic places having footbaths of water in which you could put your reeking feet in order to have fish nibble at them. This seemed to me like 1, fish abuse and 2. a good way to catch foot diseases.
When I went to the beautiful Kazdağı National Park in the mountains above the Aegean coast of Turkey, I found that the fish were willing to do this pedicure treatment in the wild. Normally, fish scatter and disappear when you swim in their river. However, just dipping your feet in the river in the picture above would bring a swarm of tiny fish to you. They would chew on your feet if they could get to them. They would also nibble at any part that you put in. A bit off-putting at first, but they never seemed to get hurt by limbs flailing about when I was swimming. Eventually, I just got used to being surrounded by a cloud of orally familiar fish.
There is a place near Sivas in Turkey that claims to use temperature-resistant fish for treating psoriasis. Go for it.
Now, the crabs. The east coast of Yorke Peninsula in South Australia has crystal waters and a high tidal range. If you go for a walk on Sultana Point near Edithburgh at low tide, there is a fascinating array of marine life to see. My 2-year-old daughter and I were eating razorfish (Pinna bicolor). This necessitated cracking open sharp shells and doing a lot of cleaning of stuff inside. After a bit of work, we would get an edible morsel that she would eagerly chew before demanding more. The detritus would attract all sorts of animals, including some small mud crabs.
When the supply of razorfish guts ran out, the crabs would nibble our feet. They were quite insistent with some bits of loose skin but never went as far as causing pain. I don’t know whether the concept of crab pedicures would take off like the fish ones did. There’s a business idea for you.
I suppose these foot-loving creatures would correctly be called pedophiles. Not paedophiles.