Yeah, I probably just need good advice from somebody who knows what they’re doing and where to REALLY go, not the crap tourist traps. In the Navy, everywhere tropical that we went was murderously hot, humid, and close to the equator, so the sun’s direct rays would fry you in no time. When I was there, I was dreaming of being in the mountains and it really steeled my desire to never go back to that kind of climate.
LOL...I operated out of Norfolk, so we went to the Med, not the Pacific, and even though we did go to Gitmo once, the beaches we hit in the Med were not tropical, even though I did get the worst sunburn of my life in Mallorca...
I burnt my ankles, calves high up near my knees and the tops of my feet so bad they turned purple, but I heard they were writing people up who got sunburned, so I wouldn’t go to sick bay.
It was awful, it took about a month for them to stop burning like fire, and I worked on the flight deck which is pretty damn hot on your feet in the summer heat. What a frikking miserable experience.
To this day, the smell of Noxema (that was all I could get from the ship’s store to help the sunburn) brings me back to that month and makes me feel like I want to puke. I couldn’t sleep, I was having nightmares, and work was excruciating wearing those damned boondockers.
Even now, forty years later, I am nearly manic about getting SPF 100 goo on my ankles, the tops of my feet and the back of my calves if I even THINK I am going to get sun.
I will say, though...being above the arctic circle on the flight deck in November was not very pleasant either-you know it is cold when you try to get as close as you can in behind a turning plane without the engine actually setting you afire! And trying to do mechanical work sucks when your fingers are so frozen they feel like swollen Jimmy Dean link sausages.
I love working in an office. I see those poor bastards out doing roofing on nasty, hot summer days, and my heart goes out to them. That seems to me like what the flight deck felt like, all that heat rising off the black non-skid and hot jet exhaust all around while you are wearing a turtleneck jersey and all that!
I see our troops over in Iraq where it has to be over 110+ degrees, all geared up, wearing body armor, carrying heavy crap, and I think “Yep. Those are real men there.” Don’t know how they do it. I talked to a guy who said they kind of adapted to it and “got used to it”...I would have to see it. That’s crazy.