i had to take flagyll a couple of months ago after i got back from my trip to peru. i was virtually certain i had giardia (someone in our group was hospitalized while there for it). nasty, hardy bug that giardia is. but the "bitter chalk horse pills," uh, i mean flagyll, wiped it out with no problem. i read that the protozoa can survive in fecal matter for up to a month.


by the way, has anyone felt confident enough with the UV-C products (SteriPen and AquaStar) to use that alone with no chlorine dioxide or iodine tablets? i just saw a local program on public television last night "California's Water," hosted by Huell Howser, in case you wanted to know, and he was at the orange county waste water treatment facility and they make extensive use of UV light to sterilize the water. obviously UV works very well, but for some reason i'm a little reluctant (maybe old fashioned) to rely solely on portable UV devices. anyone have field experience with these?

LED, I've had good luck with UV, haven't been sick yet. I use the steripen adventure and have extra batteries and solar backup+ I ordered a stainless steel 32 oz bottle (wider mouth) to replace the nalgine bottle so I could boil the water as a backup. Here's a link to the adventure if your interested.

http://www.equipped.org/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post81780

falcon, thanks for the info on the stock battery charger. i was wondering how long the recharge time was. ordering a faster charger from the manufacturer sounds like the only way to go here.

LED, Here is am example of what I did with the steripen, when I got the speed charger the extra batteries were cheap. The solar cells were $45 each at northern tools (20 Watts) but they stopped carrying them and on the net the cheapest I've seen now is $90 each
You might have to right click on the image and click view image to see it.

wow, nice setup. it looks like the stock charger would take years to juice up two 3V batteries. 90 bucks is steep but i'll keep looking. still, it would be a good investment. thanks for the photos.

Thanks LED, Just keep looking for panels, they go on sale from time to time, try to get 10 watts or more. I have 20 watts (4- 5 watt panel) and it works ok, I can run GPS's, recharge batteries for flashlight etc... and the fan around the house can be nice though I don't carry it.