Beauty tip: The Travel Sun Screen ABC

Sun – we all love it, but we need to protect our skin against that nasty UVB radiation when traveling in sunny regions!

Too much sun and not enough protection, we all know the results: that beautiful lobster color and the pain that comes with it. And on top there’s the risk of increases skin aging and even worse, skin cancer.

When traveling from one country to the next I realised that it is super different from country to country where you get what kind of sunscreen and how much you need to pay. Sometimes I wondered whether it is worth stocking up before changing the country or if I’ll get enough there anyway.

So here’s my little country sunscreen ABC (I will keep adding more countries!):

• Australia: Everywhere, use higher protection levels, 8-10€ per bottle (check Aldi to save!)
• Austria: Easy to get, ~5€
• Argentina: Easy to get, ~8€
• Bahamas: Difficult to get, ~15€
• Bolivia: Difficult to get, stock up before
• Brasil: Everywhere, many discounted offers, ~6€
• Colombia: Difficult to get, ~7€
• Costa Rica: Difficult to get, ~10€
• Germany: Easy to get, try DM or discounters for house brands, ~3-5€
• Mauritius: Difficult to get, head to Grand Baie, ~8€
• Mexico: Easy to get, ~5€
• New Zealand: Easy to get, ~10-12€
• Panama: Easy to get, ~10€
• Peru: Difficult to get, ~7€
• Rarotonga: Difficult to get, very expensive, ~15€+
• USA: Everywhere, CVS house brand ~8€, otherwise more expensive

I personally think you don’t need to use a specific brand but I was very happy with Banana Boat and Nivea – however I also use a lot non-branded ones. Generally most of them are waterproof anyway – but check just to be on the safe side! Even when you don’t plan to swim, waterproof sun screen is simply better due to e.g. sweating!

Oh, and let’s talk about the protection factor: basically this is supposed to tell you how long you can stay in the sun. You take your own skin protection time (based on your skin type and your tanning level – find out your type here) and multiply this with the protection factor (SPF) and voila, you got the minutes you are protected!

• Type I: 5-10 min
• Type II: 10-15 min
• Type III: 15-20 min
• Type IV: 20-30 min
• Type V: 30-40 min

So, say your skin is a type 2 (mine is e.g.) and you are not yet tanned a lot – so your skin has 10 min protection on its own. Then you apply sunscreen with a protection factor of 30 – this should in theory give you 300 min of protection! In theory. In reality, I personally would recommend to use sunscreen all 2-3 hours regardless of this calculation and avoid the direct sun between 12pm and 3pm (yeah, I know this sounds sooooo boring!). Which also means that there is no real value in buying a protection factor of 70+ – just get 30 or 50 and reapply! 😊