Today I am not writing about reptiles because I believe this subject is important. Here in La Ventana/El Sargento, we are at around 24 degrees latitude, and this means we are very close to the tropics. We are lucky, for the most part, that there aren’t too many dangerous creatures in our area. Most of us are familiar with Black Widows and rattlesnakes, but there is one local dangerous insect that many people do not know about, and that is the Kissing Bug.
Kissing bugs are large, blood-sucking insects inhabiting much of Central America. Our local species, Dipetalogaster maxima, is not all that common, but I have seen individuals just outside of town. They are relatively easy to identify, as they are quite large.
The reason these insects are dangerous is because they transmit a disease called Chagas. The disease is not transmitted when they bite, but rather when they poop on you, which is basically whenever they bite. Chagas disease can be deadly. Learn more about it at the CDC.
Luckily, Kissing Bugs are nocturnal and like to inhabit rocky arroyos, so they are not often encountered. They only really feed at night so, as long as you are sleeping in a tent, you should have nothing to fear.
The moral of this story is: Never sleep outside without a tent in Southern Baja.
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