How To Live Like a Rockstar When You are Not One...
Rurrenabaque: My New Little Circle. May 15. I like walking down the street and dudes on motorbikes wave at me because I kicked their asses in pool last night. I like this Rurrenabaque. I could spend two weeks here in Rurrenabaque. There are red parrots in the trees that scream like children, in several different tones, and they tease the dogs who howl along and bark with the parrots. It is obvious that they love taunting the dogs. This went...
Rurrenabaque Hostel Take Over. May 14. After I found a Rurrenabaque hostel, I had a look at this quaint little town trying to make a decision whether to head straight into the jungle in the morning, or to just hang out for a couple of days and take over the town. It has been a long time since I tried to take over a small town to make it mine, and I kind of need that. So, I am just...
La Paz to Rurrenabaque: You Got to Get Out of Town and Get Filthy! May 13 and 14. The idea of moving out of my private room and into a dormitory in my hostel was so unappealing that I decided to just get out of town. I need to get to the Amazon anyhow, so I weighed my options. All the planes leaving from La Paz to Rurrenabaque were full today, tomorrow and there are only a few seats left...
La Paz: How Did it Get to This? May 12 Well, it got ugly last night in La Paz. I had altitude sickness all day after we got down from Huayna Potosi, but my night time I was feeling quite celebratory. The English boys and I got at the booze, and I decided to drink hard liquor, which never works out well for me. But it was my birthday at midnight. I blacked out most of the night, but I...
Huayna Potosi – Climbing a Mountain…Really…. 9-11 May. My friend Ben and I drove breakfast into ourselves and got into a van that took us to the mountain climbing supplies agency store. I have no idea why I actually signed up for this, but here I was. It was terrible to get the supplies. I guess there have been so many gringos to come through the agency that they do not care and were not much help at all to...
Mountain Climbing – Huayna Potosi, Bolivia. My friend Ben and I drove breakfast into ourselves and got into a van that took us to the mountain climbing supplies agency store. I have no idea why I actually signed up for this, but here I was. It was terrible to get the supplies. I guess there have been so many gringos to come through the agency that they do not care and were not much help at all to get me...
La Paz: Death Road. May 8. There was no way I was willing to hung over for today, so I was a very good boy last night. Not all of the boys were though, and there were some hangovers as we headed out of La Paz to Death Road. It cost us 450 Bolivianos for a downhill suspension bike, all equipment, two meals, and a van to follow us on the drive. It was cold at the summit where we...
Beautiful La Paz. May 7. If you are looking for a pretty city, go and check out Beautiful La Paz. It is sort of in a bowl of a mountain and the city climbs high with earth brown houses all around it. It is one of the prettiest cities that I have ever seen in my life. I was hanging out with the English boys and sort of talked myself into climbing a mountain with them. I am getting fat...
Cochabamba to La Paz: Living on Buses. May 6. We arrived in Cochabamba at about 6am. I ran into an Israeli/Dutch girl in the bus station there that I knew from Potosi and Sucre. The Dusty Gringo Trail… We caught a taxi to a hostel that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, which also seemed to be in the richest area of the city, which we assumed was the part built with cocaine money. We stayed at the...
Potosi to Cochabamba: A Connection and a Near Miss. May 5. Last night after we got back to the hostel in Potosi, I had a visitor who asked to remain anonymous because of this blog. But it was really nice to have her over and spend some time with her. She actually did not even want to be mentioned and told me to write about everything except her, but I can not change what I have been doing for 9...
Breakfast was at 8:30am, and I was the last to arrive. I was still feeling effects of the chicha, the local corn-moonshine we had been drinking with the locals last night when the fiesta began. It was a breakfast that would have pleased me had it been a couple of hours later. But, after a quick meal of bread and jam, my Swedish friends and I headed towards the square to see what was taking place.
Tinku Festival in Macha, Bolivia. Part 1, The Fighting Fiesta Build Up (Click here for Part 2 – The Fights) May 3 As I went to bed early to get a good night of sleep in the dorm of my hostel, a couple followed me into the room. As I came out of the bathroom, they were standing there with the lights on making out like I was not standing in a proximity too close to be making out so...
Sucre to Potosi: My Attractive Mental State. May 2. I joined Aafje for breakfast because I knew she was going to check out of the hostel. She told me that she had a dream last night where a wonderful and handsome boy crawled into bed with her in the middle of the night for a little slap and tickle. It was ironic because as at the same moment that she was finishing her dream of Mr. Wonderful crawling into her...
Sucre: New Holland. May 1. At Spanish class today, my teacher Edson mentioned the Mercado Negro in Sucre. I asked him if that was where I could go to buy a black person. Edson is a very sweet person who has probably never offended anyone in his life. I wish I was an artist and I could paint that face of confused horror which presented itself between his eyes and his chin. He took my question for face value and...
Sucre: Shitting on the Toilet, Pissing on the Floor. April 30. Brain exercise equals a very deep sleep. Last night I slept hard in Sucre. I would call it power sleeping. I can not remember that last time that I slept that hard. I usually wake up just before my alarm. I think I was actually in a coma when my alarm went off at 7:20am this morning. So that makes me wonder, do we have shitty sleeps at night...
Sucre: Unilingual Moron Near Brain Implosion. April 29. It has been a long time since I used my brain. Today all that changed. I had my first Spanish lesson. It was three hours of driving a language into a muscle that has been on autopilot for about four years with no new heavy lifting in the meantime. It is amazing how much the action of shaking up the language section of my brain alters my whole mind. Weird sentences from...
Sucre: The Gringo Trail. April 28. I hung out all day with a French girl. She speaks good Spanish and helped me to sort out some things that need to be done in my life. I do not speak good Spanish. That makes sorting out my life a bit of a hassle. It is just a bit tricky to try to deal with a guy in a shop about making new Beaver sticker and trying to get a camera man...
Bolivia is Beautiful. April 27. It was a ‘by-myself’ kind of day, and that was totally awesome. It has been a long time since I fought the Spanish speaking war alone. And I am terrible at it, but sometimes it is great to just get through it and try to communicate with my 36 33 word vocabulary without someone interjecting with their more useful and fancy Spanish words. Roberta was heading to Sucre as well, but I waited her out and let...
Potosi Mine and Removing Desert Grime. April 26. We slept in a nice hostel last night and I got up at 8am to have my clothes washed in two hours, so that they will be ready when I start my day. Cleanliness! Those jeans. Science might like them as there is sure to be something useful in that grime. They should have probably been washed alone. They were last washed in Buenos Aires and I think I have worn them...
Salar de Uyuni Salt Falts: Day 3. April 25. I slept a lot better last night as we approach the Salar de Uyuni Salt Falts. I was not afraid I was going to die of altitude suffocation last night…. Actually, considering I was sharing a room with Roberta, I slept much better than I would have liked. She reminds me so much of Fabiana in her mannerisms. That mold of girl that comes out of the machine is just not...
Salar de Uyuni Atacama Desert: Day 2. April 24. I had just about the worst sleep of my night last night in the Salar de Uyuni Atacama Desert. I went through hell and anxiety. My lungs hurt so much, that I can only take short breaths and I feel like I am suffocating. Because my lungs hurt so much, I could only lay on my back, but I can not sleep on my back, so everything was just terrible. And...
Salar de Uyuni Pink Flamingos: Day 1. April 23. I slept terribly last night. Two nights in a row like that. Am I stressed? Weird… I joined 11 others and we rode a bus and drove through a little of Chile until a sign showed an arrow to the right and said ‘Bolivia.’ That was were we drove off the highway and onto a dirt road that was no better than a farm access road that we have on our...
San Pedro de Atacama Snowboarding a Dune. April 22 San Pedro de Atacama – The only place in the world where it is actually illegal to dance. Really. They want to preserve their culture. Dancing was not a part of it. Really! I had a kick ass day of getting things done. I think I got kicked out of my hostel this morning because I have not bought any trips though them. They were ‘full’ for tonight when I went...
San Pedro de Atacama Astronomy Observation Expedition. April 21. Last night at about 11pm, I signed up for a San Pedro de Atacama Astronomy Observation expedition. San Pedro de Atacama is a very high desert. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world, there is no light pollution, and the air is very clear, so NASA has been doing things here to observe the sky. On the San Pedro de Atacama Astronomy Observation expedition, we got to look...
Chañaral to San Pedro de Atacama: Goodbye Girmante Sangrialatte. April 20. I got up at 6am with Irmante and walked her to the bus station. It was not a sad goodbye at all. I think we were too tired and still too drunk. So, we made a quick ‘Take Care’ and I headed back to the hostel to sleep for another hour. At 8:30am I got on a bus for 10.5 hours from Chañaral to San Pedro de Atacama. I...
La Serena to Chañaral: Hitchhiking, the Desert, and Beautiful Women. April 19. I woke up at 8:30am to have my first real shower in four days and to wash my hair. Clean hair feels about as good as anything when you have been living with it filthy for three days. The first handful of shampoo is just for grease removal. It is the second handful of shampoo that actually cleans. Irmante was slow moving, and it was 11am by the...
Santiago to La Serena: A Gorgeous Drive. April 18. Irmante woke me up and I was hung over. It was a really fun night. I sure would have liked to have had sex, but it was really nice to make-out with a girl last night. That is fun! I would have liked to have spent a couple of days with Annette if her and my travel circumstances were different as I found her very interesting. An attractive woman who has...
Mendoza to Santiago: Crossing the Andes and Bar Make-Outs. April 17. I woke up hung over, which was fine because yesterday was a blast. Irmante and I head for our bus Mendoza to Santiago that would take us from Argentina to Chile. As we boarded the Mendoza to Santiago bus, someone had their things in my allocated seat. A woman standing there told me that the people who had put their possessions there had not realized the seating. Then...
Maipú Mendoza Wine Bicycle Vineyard Hop. April 16. Life is a funny thing. Here we are on a rock flying through space, rotating on its axis at 1670 km/h. Some humans are in an office crunching numbers. Some are preforming surgery. We chose today to rent bicycles for $5 and ride around Maipú, Argentina, drinking samples of wine in a vineyard, and then riding off to the next vineyard, then drinking samples of wine, then riding…. What a day....
Mendoza: Do the Do. April 15. I woke up in a seat on the bus when we were two hours outside of Mendoza. The land here looks a little like the outback of Australia except the earth is not red. This is sort of miles and miles in all directions of vast nothingness and only bushes and shrubs for vegetation. There is an odd shack here and there, but there is nothing for people to live on here, so there...
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August 3, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand -Sex Show [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap]t was early August and my German girlfriend and I had just left Australia on a cheap flight to squeaky…
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January 10, 2017 Anyone ever heard of a band called Electric Eel Shock? There is a reason why you haven’t. The reason why you haven’t heard of…
May 4, 2014 Breakfast was at 8:30am, and I was the last to arrive. I was still feeling effects of the chicha, the local corn-moonshine we had…
July 26, 2014 I wish I could say that we were inside of a pristine shiny and sterile cocaine lab that I had pictured in my mind…
June 3, 2016 Convincing a 20 year old to get out of bed at 10:30 is no easy feat… It turns out that playing Slayer really loud…
March 15, 2014 We were up early to meet a group of three other gringos at Central station at 10am. We were early. We were tired. We…
January 30, 2015 My father was hanging out with me in the basement, and then he began getting his band equipment together to haul upstairs to load…
March 18, 2013 Want the recipe for a fascinating day? This one serves three: Step One – Get Ingredients and Heat up the Oven It started when…
January 24, 2007 Vang Vieng Paradise of Laos Girls [su_dropcap]V[/su_dropcap]ang Vieng. My paradise. Vang Vieng has a lot of things to do that can occupy a man’s…