You flew in for the water. Your repeats did not.

A prescription written outside South Africa generally cannot be dispensed here for scheduled medicines. That is the rule and no pharmacy can work around it.

What we can do: identify what your medicine is called locally, tell you whether it is available, and help you see a local doctor quickly to get a valid South African script. For many chronic medicines that is a short appointment.

Send us a clear photograph of the box or the script on WhatsApp before you come in and we will have the answer ready. Bring your passport for the doctor visit.

Practical: keep chronic medicines in hand luggage, in original labelled packaging, and travel with enough for the trip plus a few days.

The south-easter dries out noses and eyes and carries pollen, sand and salt. Visitors often spend the first week with a blocked nose, a scratchy throat and gritty eyes and assume they have caught something on the plane.

Saline spray, eye drops, lip balm, and closing the apartment windows on the windy side. If you use hayfever medication at home, bring it or ask us for the local equivalent.

Cape Town tap water is safe to drink. Most holiday tummy here is a change in food, more alcohol, more restaurant meals and less sleep, not contaminated water.

Fluids and oral rehydration first, then plain food as appetite returns. Anti-diarrhoeal medicines are not appropriate for everyone and should not be used with fever or blood in the stool — ask us before you take one.

Blood in the stool, high fever, severe abdominal pain, symptoms beyond about three days, or a young child or older adult not keeping fluids down: see a doctor the same day.

Skin arriving from a European winter burns fast here, and the wind removes the heat that would normally warn you. Water-resistant sunscreen, a shirt in the water, lips, ears, tops of the feet. Reapply after every swim.

WhatsApp from the apartment with a photo of the packet, and tell us where you are staying. We deliver around Big Bay, Bloubergstrand, Sunningdale, Parklands, Table View and West Beach, and we can tell you which after-hours doctor to use if it is a weekend.

Chest pain, breathlessness, severe abdominal pain, high fever, dehydration, or running out of a chronic medicine such as insulin, an inhaler, epilepsy or heart medication — that is urgent care, today. Come in or phone the shop and we will point you to the right place fast.