Shoo Fly!

What to do when you are heading to jungle and normal insect repellent won't cut it with the super-powered mosquitoes?  Make your own!  When I went to the Amazon several years ago, the following recipe was recommended, and, while not the best cologne, is quite effective.  While it does contain some suspect ingredients, it contains no DDT or other known carcinogenic substances.

Since I will be heading off to the tropical forests of the Caribbean, south of Santa Marta to hike Ciudad Perdida, and several friends are heading down to Leticia, we gathered after school one day to concoct our repellent in my science lab.

INGREDIENTS:

• 250 mL alcohol
• 250 mL "menticol"
• 6 camphor tablets
• 1 oz. 10% "Eurax"
• 2 Tbsp citronella essence
• 3 Tbsp Johnson's baby oil
• Nopikex soap

WHAT TO DO:
Other than crushing the camphor tablets and breaking the soap into smaller chunks, the basic idea is just to combine all the ingredients together.  The originally recipe calls for the use of a blender but I don't think anyone would be willing to drink juice out an appliance that at one point created this mess!

Using mortar and pestle to crush the camphor tablets. 

Mixing, mixing, mixing...

The finished product...before it got rebottled.

*No one had a camera so I used my computer's camera, thus the low-quality and backwards images.