How To Live Like a Rockstar When You are Not One...
Montevideo Party Time. March 30. Lazy, and out of bed at 12:30pm. I was tired. Irmante was sick as a sick dog because she did not starve herself from food and water to choke the sunofagun of a cold off. So, I went on a health shopping spree for her and tried to sort her future out. I drew a mustache on her with a marker. It was a rainy shitty day. I made buddies with the guy who runs...
Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. – (A proverb I got from an older black man in New York in 2004.) – I have done no research on this trip to Uruguay, and realised on the bus itself that we booked that we will be doing a lot of unnecessary backtracking because I did not take 40 minutes to look at the future of our plans and just booked a ticket from Asunción to Montevideo… I am pissed off...
Asunción: Cold Starve Works, But Wow it Sucks. March 28. When you do not drink liquid or eat food for 30 hours it really does terrible things to you. I could not sleep very well at all. I had been tossing and turning and I am sure everyone in the dorm stayed awake because of my mental battle to kill a cold with a Cold Starve. I was so thirsty, and my stomach ached. I actually peed in the middle...
Sickness in Asunción. March 27. I slept restlessly all night and did not get out of bed until noon. I wanted the rest to heal. My body has been trying to be sick since I was in London in early January, but I have been combating it with raw ginger and garlic. I have decided to let it come, and maybe I can process it and get it out of my system. I did not have time to be sick...
March 26. My day started with a questionable stomach, I developed a crush on a sweetheart waitress, and we decided to get out of town. So, we went to check on Gustavo, a rocker who we met last night who was going to try to get his hands on a Paraguay licence plate for me, but his buddy did not come through. I thought Gustavo was a super cool guy, but Irmante told me that she got a bad vibe...
Encarnación to Villarrica: The Hell Bus and Being Hookers. March 25. We were up at 7:30am to catch a bus to Villarrica. It was a seven hour ride on the oldest roughest bus in all of Paraguay. We were off the asphalt for most of the journey, driving down a red dirt road of washouts, dust, semi trucks hauling cattle liners, ruts, buses and people standing on the side of the road everywhere to flag down the bus. It was...
An Encarnación Celebration. March 24. Encarnación is a town that sells cups and bottles made out of a cows hoof. Really. I have never seen something like this before. The cup base it the hoof of the cow, and the drinking apparatus on the top is made out of a hollowed out horn. They are gorgeous and stylish for drinking terere. The woman who made them, with two thumbs on her one right hand, had also artistically crafted champagne or a...
March 23 Ciudad del Este to Encarnación. Ciudad del Este is not a necessary place to spend time, unless you want to hang out at a really cool hostel, which the Casa Alta is, and really nice people work there. But, we decided to get out of the second largest city in Paraguay to head to Encarnación. We went to the bus station and the man behind the counter tried to skin tax us an extra 10%, but Irmante caught it...
March 22. This date is usually a very crazy day for me. The life-changing event of 2011, 2012, and 2013 all took place on March 22. It is a weird day for me. It is also my brother’s birthday, and we had an awesome visit today, which is a nice way to have the day this year. It took Irmante and I forever to get moving as I have a million things to do before I could leave the hostel. Eventually,...
Rio de Janeiro to Iguazu Falls: Bus Ride. March 19. Irmante and I were up early to get ready to get a move on from Rio de Janeiro to Iguazu Falls. We said goodbye to Csilla and Cash and headed into the great unknown. We found out where the bus was to pick us up and waited at the stop. To flag a bus in Rio de Janeiro, we have learned that sometimes you have to step out into the...
Rio de Janeiro – The Calm Before the Storm. 18 March I am not hung over after St. Patrick’s day. What a treat! We had a relaxing one and we woke up in Cash and Csilla’s corridor sweatbox at about 10:30am. Cash and Csilla have a cat who was taken away from her mother too early, so she suckles on the fuzz of a teddy bear that they have in the house. Irmante has been trying to get the...
Rio de Janeiro: Stalking a Crippled Masturbator. March 17. Our friend Csilla from Hungary is an English teacher here in Rio de Janeiro. When she used to live in an apartment in downtown Rio, the doorman of her complex thought she was a prostitute. An eastern European woman who had plenty of male visitors in business suits, who would stay for an hour and then leave again… St Patricks Day No Way. I just do not feel like drinking right...
Rio de Janeiro Forest: After Ayahuasca. March 16. I woke up in my tent at noon. It was hot. Sweaty hot. I packed up my tent and went to find the others. It was the next day after ayahuasca and everyone was hanging out on the rock. I felt like an outsider because all I wanted to do was go home. So, I went to the church where the guitar remained from last night and I played it for a bit...
Rio de Janeiro Before Ayahuasca. March 14. It was hot and the mosquitoes who used to bite Csilla at night, have found me at the half way point to her room and, being lazy mosquitoes that they are, dine on me instead so Csilla no longer has bites in the morning. You are welcome! They were relentless to me last night and I could not sleep until 4am and I had to have a shower to make myself tired enough...
Rio de Janeiro – Cristo Redentor, March 13 Up at the crack of 10am, Irmante and I made it to the newly located Paraguayan consulate. The Paraguayans have not all gone home after all! We made friends with Emilio, who issues visas there and speaks excellent English. I had to fill out two pages of information for my Canadian nee-Russian passport to be issued a visa. The paper asked me ‘hair color,’ ‘eye color’ and a ton of other questions....
Paraguay Consulate is Where in Rio de Janeiro? March 12. Vacation means, “We have to get up early tomorrow to head to the Paraguay consulate,” and that means getting up at the crack of 10:00am dawn. And that is awesome! Life is good, even if I am still fired up of the hassle of this Canadian passport and the visa situation of this continent. We headed for the Paraguay consulate so that I could sort out a $137 internet informed...
Rio de Janeiro on a Canadian Passport. 11 March So, I am in Rio de Janeiro on a Canadian Passport. Having a Canadian passport in South America is terrible. I am travelling with my friend from Lithuania, which is in Eastern Europe, and she can show up at any country in South America and she is stamped on arrival and allowed into the country. Not Canadians, the USA, Australia, or New Zealand. It is a nightmare. I have to find...
Rio de Janeiro Hangover Post-Carnaval Monday New Year. March 10. A loungy day. Necessary. So exhausted. Slept until 9am. Showered. Slept again until noon. My body needs rest. It is the Rio de Janeiro hangover after carnaval concludes… The house got moving around 13:00 and we had breakfast. Every morning for breakfast everyone has to dig ants out of their coffees. Ants love stored sugar. I cooked breakfast for the household. I made an omelette. I thought I knew what I...
Rio de Janeiro Botafogo vs Flamengo. March 9. It was a lot of work to get Irmante moving today, as we did not get home until 6am, and the party was to start at 9am and go until 3pm. The Brazilians know how to party. They set alarm clocks to be able to get up in the mornings to party in the streets. There were to be 500,000 people at the Carnaval Monobloco Finale party and I was not missing...
Rio de Janeiro Carnaval Parade E Samba Finale. March 8. It rained like crazy all day. When we had the door of the house open when a cockroach the size my pinkie finger decided to have a meander in. So, we got the cat, who caught the cockroach in her mouth, and then we carried the cat outside. The cat dropped the cockroach in the rain, and we picked up the cat and brought her back into the house. Eyebrows...
Petrópolis to Rio de Janeiro Vomit Drive. March 7. Irmante and I woke up in a very hot car in the downtown of Petrópolis at 10am, and there was a parking ticket on our window. So, we took it off and walked to the hotel where Scottie and Shanna were staying. Scottie looked terrible, like a man who drank a lot of tequila the night before. He tried to shower off the look and the feeling, but it did not seem...
Driving in Rio de Janeiro to Petrópolis. March 6. We rented a car today in Rio de Janeiro. The idea of driving in Rio, seemed terrifying, but also an adventure… It turns out that one person in your group needs all of, a) passport, b) licence, c) credit card. There were four of us, together and two of us had forgotten our passports and the other two had forgotten their licences. We could not mix and match, so we had...
Rio de Janeiro: Carnaval Partying. March 5. Cash, Csilla, Irmante and I met with Scottie, Shanna, and Marie in the afternoon to do some sightseeing. Scottie told me that he was having a hard time calling the car rental company. He took the phone number down the the front desk at his hotel to ask some questions and they told him he had been calling the postal code… Awesome! We had a beer and sightseeing turned into partying instead. We...
Rio Carnaval Block Party Listings: Rio de Janeiro. March 4. The day was a bit of a sleeper that dragged into 3pm before our world showed signs of life. Carnaval is a exhausting when you live it ‘full blast.’ So, we just kind of licked our wounds today and I made this video of ‘Scottie, Sloth and the Cross-Dressers.’ We found out that the samba school coordinator was really happy with our performance in the parade. That is great news....
Rio Carnaval Party Time: Rio de Janeiro. March 3. The Rio Carnaval Party is totally insane. Today I had to rally the troops of my group as they were not motivated to party. There were some that wanted to go to the beach, but I wanted to go to the Sergeant Pepper bloco party, that was a samba band that played only Beatles cover songs. I put on a bit of pressure and nine of us went to Parque do...
March 2. Rio de Janeiro Carnaval. After a late start, Csilla, Cash, Irmante and I got down the hill to meet Scottie, Shanna, and Marie. It turns out that Christine is Marie. I blew that. We went and found a blocko party and a band was on a tall trailer, and they were called New Kids on the Blocko. They played New Kids on the Block, Spice Girls, N-Sync, and Backstreet Boys. The music was terrible, but the party was...
Rio de Janeiro Favela Party. March 1. Well, for starters, I found out that the word ‘sperm’ is used as a swear word in Brazilian Portuguese. You might say, “Where in the sperm is my camera?” That is funny! We had lunch and then we went to meet with Scottie Duncan Smith, a friend form Fillmore, Saskatchewan, who is here in Rio de Janeiro with a girl from Saskatoon and a girl from Sweden. So, we met up and we...
Rio de Janeiro Hooker. Feb 28. We got moving late today. It is a zoo in this tiny little house with a dog, a cat, Csilla, Cash, and Irmante and I sleeping on mattresses in the corridor. It was hot…about 39 Celsius today…so we had a sweaty wake-up. Cash took Irmante and I downtown to look at the area and the market, and I wanted to see a Rio de Janeiro hooker or two. And, wow, there were some dandies....
Rio de Janeiro: Carnival Build-up. February 27. [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap] got up at 7:15am and went with Csilla to the international airport to pick up my special Girmante Sangrialatte from Lithuania. So great to see her face at the airport. The journey starts now. I like to describe her as ‘Me with blond hair and boobs.’ How will her and I, two such similar people travel together? That is going to be fascinating! I can not wait to see how people who...
São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro. February 26. [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap] got up at 7:45am to pack at Carolina’s place in São Paulo, Brazil to pack. I told Carol that I am worried about how my partying and sleeping around is going to bother her and I never want her to feel shitty. She told me, “Don’t worry about it. What you have when you are is what you have when you are here, and this is why is works.” Wow! Wow… An...
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