I don't recall if it was Costa Rica or Nicaragua, but a high school teacher of mine vacationed there and went swimming....when he noticed a huge pipe down the beach. He found that it was raw sewage being pumped into the ocean from a nearby town.
That freaked him out, but didn't think much of it. He returned home and started having really bad headaches. He went to the doctor and they found he had picked up a parasite (most-likely from his swimming antics). He ended up taking some kind of pill to kill it off, but then said the exoskeleton was still in his head somewhere. No joke....pay attention to where you decide to swim in 3rd world countries.
I swam in water like that already. Picked up a parasite called "Strongyloides stercoralis"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongyloides_stercoralis
This is the scary part.
'Persistence of infection is the first of these important features. Because of autoinfection, humans have been known to still be infected up to 65 years after they were first exposed to the parasite (e.g., World War II or Vietnam War veterans). Once a host is infected with S. stercoralis, infection is lifelong unless effective treatment eliminates all adult parasites and migrating autoinfective larvae."
I discovered it by accident while doing a routine check up that included stool and urine samples. These critters were probably living in my system for at least 4 years considering the type of rivers I was swimming in at that time.
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