is there a way to purife water?

filter the sediemt thru your bandanna, then boil 9rolling boil). Add lots fo carbon chunks from the fire to sweeten the taste.
 
Hikerwa@mac You're thinking the MSR Miox.

The Steripen uses UV rays to scramble the DNA of nasties which denies them the chance to reproduce within your system. It works, but it takes a leap of faith: I take my Steripen Adventurer, dip it into a Nalgene bottle or cut off soda bottle/Platypus, dip it in and stir it around, watch the light go on and the water is now magically purified. You hope it works and reached every corner, but so far so good. It does not work with murky water, and obviously does nothing with chemicals, heavy metals etc. Also, it's battery dependent, although I have the solar charging case (which I haven't used yet).

Personally, I think it's ideal for travel to countries with questionable water sources, such as Brazil, Lazerboy2000. The UV purifiers from ??? are a part of the Nalgene bottle making them convenient for travel, plus the lexan bottle protects the relatively fragile UV bulb. Just fill it up and hit the button. It doesn't get any easier.

Just as an aside, one of the ways I got people to purify water for me when I was traveling in Asia is I would make them a gift of lemon grass. They were always pleased and grateful and they would make tea for us to drink, thus making them boil water for me to drink. Obviously any tea would work.
 
lazerboy2000 said:
I hate to steal this topic but I have another related question.

I'll be traveling to Brazil in July and will be staying with some friends of my parents, but i'm not supposed to drink the tap water for fear of getting sick. What filters can I can use to make this tap water safe enough to drink without getting diarrhea or something?
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I have lived in Brazil for more than ten years and never had a waterborn illness.

Here in Brazil most homes will have a ceramic/charcoal drip filter for drinking water. I take regular tap water and run it through the drip filter and have never had a problem in 10 years. Other homes will have a second faucet with the same filter element inside but the water comes out like a faucet with less pressure. This water is fine too. Sometimes people use an ozone purifier. We have one of these in the kitchen, it runs the water first through a filter then through the ozone element. The O3 kills off the nasties and dissipates in a few minutes.

In the local Pharmacy you can buy Clor-in 1 tablets. They dose the water with enough chlorine to sterilize it in a half hour. They cost about
R$7.00 for a packet of 30 tablets but make sure you check the expiration date as they only last 2 years. I highly recommend this product, I've been using it in the bush for several years and it works great.

In the same Pharmacy you can buy "Tintura de Iodo 2%". Add five drops per liter/quart of water and wait a half hour. The water will taste like a bandaid but it will be sterile. You can remove the Iodine taste by adding 50mg of ascorbic acid to the water after the half hour wait. The iodine taste and color will disappear. This is all that Potable Aqua Plus tablets are doing. Any "Farmacia de Manipulacao" will be able to make you up a bottle of these capsules for a few dollars. Just open the capsule, dump the white powder into the treated water, and shake.

Where in Brazil are you going? Mac
 
nemoaz said:
Where do you live? I see water purification tabs in every walmart in teh sporting goods section.

Next get a good survival manual and learn all the methods. You never know what will be available at the time.
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I live in the northwest subs of IL , I live by a dicks sporting goods, 2 walmarts, and a sports authority. I have looked all over and they don't have them. There websites do but when i go to the store, and look without seein any, Then ask, They tell me THey dont carry them. Me personaly, I dont think they know what there talkin about. But theres an REI about 40 minutes from me and from what i read about them they are pretty good at what they do.
 
Big philly 1 said:
I live in the northwest subs of IL , I live by a dicks sporting goods, 2 walmarts, and a sports authority. I have looked all over and they don't have them. There websites do but when i go to the store, and look without seein any, Then ask, They tell me THey dont carry them. Me personaly, I dont think they know what there talkin about. But theres an REI about 40 minutes from me and from what i read about them they are pretty good at what they do.
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A new Cabelas opened about 30mi west of Chicago. Around the corner of 59 and and I90 if I remember right. I've found Cabelas to be much less wussy than the other outdoors stores in the northern virginia area anyway.
 
pict said:
In the same Pharmacy you can buy "Tintura de Iodo 2%". Add five drops per liter/quart of water and wait a half hour. The water will taste like a bandaid but it will be sterile. You can remove the Iodine taste by adding 50mg of ascorbic acid to the water after the half hour wait. The iodine taste and color will disappear. This is all that Potable Aqua Plus tablets are doing.
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:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

Thanks Pict! My brother brought some Aqua Plus on our last trip and I was wondering what the "second" tablet was. Water ended up tasting just like well water instead of band-aid tea!

J-
 
Big philly 1 said:
I live in the northwest subs of IL , I live by a dicks sporting goods, 2 walmarts, and a sports authority. I have looked all over and they don't have them.
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I don't know why. They are usually in the sporting goods section in the aisle with the all the other small camping supplies, basically all that Coughlin stuff, hatchets, machetes, survival blankets etc. You are looking for this: http://www.potableaqua.com/potable-aqua-water-purification-tablets/ I usually see the one with the two tablets (one just helps remove the taste) for about 5.99. I've seen them from coast to coast including in Detroit and Milwaukee. I don't know why Chicago would be different. There's a good chance the people working in Wally have no clue.
 
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Along with my Brazil question:

I have a Katadyn Hiker filter pump that I bought for Philmont but never used it. Would this be good enough? I am staying in a good part of town, but I'd rather not take chances and this would be cheaper than bottled water.
 
Lazerboy,

The home you will be staying in probably has a system for cleaning up their own drinking water like I described above. I have had visitors from the US on many occasions and none of them got sick. I have a PUR Explorer and I have never used it in Brazil.

Just to give you an idea of how the water system works here. Water comes from the treatment plant heavily treated with chlorine. When it arrives on the street it is perfectly safe. I drink out of my hose all the time. The water then goes up to a tank on the roof where it can go bad. It gravity feeds down from there to the rest of the house. Taken from your home faucet and run through a ceramic filter it is safe to drink. That is what most people do here for drinking water and the home you will be staying in should be no different. I live in a city of 4 million people and they aren't dying from unsafe water. Lots of stuff is broken here but the water isn't that bad in developed areas. If your home has a ceramic filter or ozone machine you're good to go.

Where you have to be careful is away from home or while traveling because you don't know how well the water is treated. In those kinds of places you might want to use your filter or Clor-In 1 tablets that you can buy here. Or you can do like I do and buy bottled water or, even better, Guarana Antarctica, a drink you'll love.

SP is pretty chilly this time of year at night so make sure you bring warm clothes. If you're from PA think late September early October. July/August are the coldest months and it is colder down south than up here in Belo Horizonte. You can expect chilly evenings and mornings but comfortable daytime temps.

As for learning Portuguese it is one of the harder European languages to learn, about as difficult as French. The pronunciation is more complicated than Spanish. Mac
 
thanks very much! Feel free to email me any other tips you may have of things I should see/do/eat/drink while I'm there. Are there any cool Brazilian knives or things I could get and what are the knife laws there, if you know. Cheers
 
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