On Creepy Crawlers When You Travel

Call me a girl, but I don’t deal well with creepy crawlers – especially when they’re around my sleeping area.

My trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs took me out of my confront zone. One reason why it was out of my comfort zone was because I encountered many creepy crawlers.

Almost all the restroom stops we made had spiders, moths flying around, and other types of bugs.

When we settled into our campground in Uluru for two nights, I couldn’t sleep because I was sleeping outside on the ground with deadly snakes just slithering around. Of course, I didn’t see any. However, our tour guide did find one and then came up to the group and said “Who wants to see a snake! Follow me!” Almost everyone ran after him to see the snake. Normally I would have too. But I was already having a really bad day, and I was in no mood to see a snake in the open where I would be sleeping.

There were bugs everywhere. Honestly, I thought I was bad when it came to creepy crawlers. But then I met a girl, Anne, who was in my group. She screamed louder than I ever did. She refused to sleep on the ground and slept on top of the trunk of our tour bus.

I was just as scared as Anne and even refused to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (especially when I didn’t have a torch).

When I showered on the campground (yes, there were showers) there were tons of creepy crawlers crawling around. There was one about the size of my finger that I thought died when the water fell on it (hey – I didn’t purposely try to kill it!) but then it started moving in the water! Yuck.

By the end of my Outback trip, I appreciated a hostel bed with proper running water a bit more. I appreciated not having creepy crawlers in my room except the few in the hostel room I saw in Alice Springs my last night, which was nothing compared to what I experienced on that campground (i.e. creepy crawlers falling in our plates during dinner time – protein has new meaning).

After that experience, I feel like I can handle anything… until I run into another creepy crawler.

In Fiji, while staying in my Dad’s friend’s house in Suva, there was a mouse. It was small and I saw it every night. I didn’t want to say anything because they were being so nice to us and even gave me a whole room to sleep in. Also, in past experiences, no one really cares about the mouse except me. And, also, in past experiences, I’m the only one who notices such things. And, also, it’s Fiji. There are creepy crawlers everywhere.

The first night, I was headed to the down their hallway and saw it running towards me. It stopped when it saw me and ran the other way. And I almost had a heart attack. I also ran the other way and back into my room and shut the door and wondered how I was going to survive the next few nights. I wondered how I was going to sleep. I turned on the fan to cool down from the heat, and tried to stay away from the walls (I also saw a lizard thingie crawling on the walls earlier and I don’t know the proper name of it). I put a sheet over my legs and slept.

I also refused to go the bathroom in the middle of the night and stayed in my bed as long as I could in the morning until I really had to pee. However, I slept way better than I did in the Outback so that’s a good thing, right?

I’d always carefully looked around before going to the bathroom or heading down to the creepy dark hallway that led to the room I slept in. I saw the mouse every night I stayed at my Dad’s friend house (I saw the lizards, too). And I always kept the door of my room closed until I learned that the mouse can actually travel through the small crack of the door.

One night, when I saw it in my room, I stood up on my bed and I was going to hop on the chair and open the door and yell for my dad (until this point I kept my cool and didn’t say anything to anyone about the mouse but it was in my room!) and then it quickly ran through the small crack in the door when it saw me standing on the bed. Perhaps it thought I was going to hunt it and eat it. I am, after all, a giant to the mouse.

Traveling with creepy crawlers is not my thing.

In the hotel we stayed at for the second half of our trip in Fiji, I showered with a spider and experienced ants in the room. One hostel I stayed in Sydney had cockroaches (and ones the fly!). Though to be fair, Sydney is filled with cockroaches. And those times I visited India… let’s not go there.

So, yeah. I don’t deal well with creepy crawlers.

Do creepy crawlers freak you out? How do you deal with them when you travel?