The story today takes place somewhere out there, 107 countries later... Blog
We were up early to meet a group of three other gringos at Central station at 10am. We were early. We were tired. We caught an air conditioned seat reclining nearly empty bus to somewhere outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I was not in charge so I had no idea where we were going and I did not really care. I just knew that the road was taking me to a place I have never been to in my consciousness.
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 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...
Colt 44 in the House [su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]o live with 20 year olds is to live among dangerous stupidity sometimes. This will be my last segment of this adventure as we are/have all moved out of the house. This is from a couple of weeks ago… We have a new guy who moved into the house a couple of days ago named Walter. Walter is an old friend of the boys, well as old of a friend as a post high-school friend...
A Goat for a Wedding Present It was a Friday afternoon when Fatty called me and asked if I want to go 50/50 in buying a goat with him for our friend Luke’s wedding present. Fatty had originally asked Luke if he wanted a raccoon or a badger for the nuptial tribute. Luke jokingly said, “A badger.” But, short of time to try to catch one of those, Fatty came up with this other fantastic idea. Gifting Luke and Kimberlee...
Bucerias, Mexico. Condo for rent! Your home away from home in a home… Yes, that is your potential swimming pool. See that patio? That is ‘the’ patio where you could be squeezing your own limes into Coronas and margaritas! This condo is on a perfect beach, 15 minutes away from Puerto Vallarta. Just 200 romantic paces from the sandy beach of the Pacific Ocean! ↓↓↓ This beach here ↓↓↓ This is Bucerias beach. It also looks beautiful...
Backpack India 42 Hours of Transportation Hell… Arambol, Goa, India. April 9 Before Vova left yesterday, he found my snake-charmer friend. Vova wanted pictures of the snake-charmers and their cobras, but he did not have any money. So, he gave the snake-charmers the shirt he was wearing. Russians always seem to make due somehow. They backpack India on nothing and have a blast. When I came back to my guesthouse after lunch, my next door neighbor had a king-cobra locked...
Local Area Man Rejected by Prostitute. Business guru, David Rempel was in for quite a surprise last night after a long day a work and a couple of stiff whiskeys. As Rempel drove his car down to a seedier area of town in hopes of finding a way to wind down, he maneuvered his car towards a woman of the night standing on a street corner. Rempel, recognizable for his eccentric hair and extensive beer belly found what he described...
Want the recipe for a fascinating day? This one serves three:
Step One – Get Ingredients and Heat up the Oven
It started when Carlos and I went out for breakfast, got Karel from the beach, ate lunch, and had a small talk about my idea. When it seemed like a good idea to all three of us, we went and bought LSD from ‘Blue Diamond’ restaurant for 1500 rupees each.
House Keys – Irish Coat Hanger Manipulation [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap] have painters at my house. They have been here for two days. This morning Mark and I had a small conversation about how he would not be home tonight, as he has to do something somewhere else in Ireland and he will be home tomorrow. He gave his house keys to the painters, and he told them that when they finish at the place, to take his keys, and lock the door from...
Food, Travel, Girls and Rock and Roll [su_dropcap]F[/su_dropcap]ood is an important part of life for most people. For me, meals are like quick stop at a petrol station when you are on a long trip somewhere. I just use food as fuel to keep me going. But, time has changed and I have become very aware of how important good fuel is for performance and my eating habits have adapted so over the past few years. I would not burn...
I was up at 7:00am, showered, packed and caught a bus from my hotel to Hyun Jin’s place where she fed me breakfast. She was alone. She is never alone but her whole family had other plans for the day. Amazing luck. I needed a nap and lay down on her bed. She joined me. She kissed me. Well, one thing led to the next and we got naked. That girl…that horny girl. She is so beautiful. Those boobs and that vagina… Wow. So,
Guitars Trump Cars The Dave Deighton Transcript: [su_dropcap]W[/su_dropcap]hen we were a lot younger, my grandmother gave us some money. She had these bonds, so she’d put some kind of money away. She did not have a lot of money, so when we used to go over there the only thing that we would usually get was, “Here’s 50 pence for an ice-lolly.” And at that point, we didn’t have a lot of money lying around when we were kids so that...
Steel Panther/Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard – December 11 and 14, 2011 [su_dropcap]W[/su_dropcap]ell, there are very few things I like to do more than attend rock concerts. My favourite thing to do in the world involves a girl, but my second favourite thing to do is to rock out at a concert. So, when a show comes up, I am usually in attendance. In September, tickets for Steel Panther, Mötley Crüe, and Def Leppard were released for sale here in London. It...
Paul McCartney, London, England [su_dropcap]W[/su_dropcap]ell, finally it happened, and the day came for me to see Paul McCartney at the o2 Arena in London. For years, a Paul McCartney concert has been very high on my list of shows that I needed to see. A former Beatle…, I spent 111 pounds ($172) for my ticket. The money would not matter in a month, but being at that concert would… There was no opening act. To keep us at bay while...