How To Live Like a Rockstar When You are Not One...
Pablo Escobar Tour – 22 July 2014, The tour bus picked me up from my hostel. I was on the afternoon Pablo Escobar Tour because the morning tour was full, but there were only three of us this morning. That would allow me a lot of room to ask a lot of questions! I am a tour guide’s dream for a while. But then he tires of having to answer so many questions, many of which he has never had to...
Cotacachi: Inti Raymi Party of the Sun. June 30. Part 1: I met a random person in the Otavalo post office today who told me through my broken Spanish that there was a huge fiesta taking place in Cotacachi, a village 15 minutes away. Never interested in missing a party, I headed for the town on a $0.25 bus. Cotacachi is an almost entirely indigenous Ecuadorian community and it took me hours to find out what the peculiar festival taking place...
Isla Del Sol to Cusco – Country Number 60! May 27. When the sun shines during the day in Isla Del Sol it is intense, and it will burn your face, as it did mine, but you can also feel a cool breeze on the wind because it is an island in the middle of a lake at 3800 meters altitude. Isla Del So is that beautiful woman who teases you with her warmth and makes you feel so good,...
Isla Del Sol: Island Fun. May 26. A small boat took my grumpy-with-a-backpack-on friend and I on a two hour ride to Isla Del Sol, an island in the middle of the highest altitude large lake in the world, Lake Titicaca. I was not enthused about the idea of heading to a cold island in the middle of a cold lake, but warmed to the idea when we checked into a family guesthouse with a couple of cows who overlooked...
La Paz to Copacabana: Train Wreck of a Day. May 25. Neither of us could sleep at all. It was 10am and though my body was tired, and my brain was not racing, but it would not let me rest. And my stomach is still wonky. So, we decided to try to start our day which was actually just a continuation of the previous day. I felt terrible and there was no energy at all in my body, but we...
La Paz: Route 36 Cocaine Bar. May 24. I hit the free city walking tour of La Paz and it was awesome. – We started in front of minimum security San Pedro Prison, most famous for its place in the book ‘Marching Powder.’ There are only 15 guards at a time for 2,500 inmates, and the guards do not even enter the prison. The prison is totally policed by the inmates who establish rules and a hierarchy. All inmates pay...
La Paz: Israeli Manners. May 23. Two Israeli girls were sitting behind me on the bus. One of them kept on putting her feet up on the back of the seat so that they overhung where I was sitting to show her Israeli manners. It was driving me nuts, but I was tolerant. It was muddy outside and when a chunk of mud fell on my seat, I slapped her on the foot and told her to keep her...
Rurrenabaque to La Paz: Mucking Through the Muck. May 22. Yesterday we were on the incredibly rough road on the way from Santa Ana to Rurrenabaque. We were driving in a Toyoto mini-van. That road is one of the worst I have ever been on in my life and it destroys vehicles. I am not sure how tour operators can make money. Those mini-vans drive 3.5 hour into the Pampas every day and 3.5 hours back again on an unimaginable...
The Pampas: Amazon. May 20th and 21st. Five hours of sleep is not enough to keep my pencil sharp. I am dull and groggy. Keeping up a blog takes shitloads of time. I have written every day of my life for about 9 years, and it was all pen-to-paper journal business before. No problem. But, this internet business takes serious time. The writing part is the fast part. I would say it is only about 25% of the time of...
Rurrenabaque: Termites Taste Like Mint – Surviving the Amazon. May 17-19. As I met Maar-sneeze in the morning she told me, “I read your blog last night. You’re such an asshole.” I would learn to get used to being called an asshole in an unmistakable Dutch accent over the next three days. This would happen often… The Survival tour. Okay. We will see… Maar-sneeeze and I met with our guide, loaded into a long boat with a new friend, who...
Rurrenabaque: Dutch Girl Madness Plans. May 16. A late sleep in and like 9 hours of sleep happened! Those days exist for a vacationer, but they hardly exist for a traveller, and they are as gorgeous as a bright red apple on a tree with strippers climbing that tree when they do happen. I hung out and read waiting for a Dutch girl, my friend Maar-sneeze to arrive (Her name is Maartje, but I can hardly pronounce her name because...
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...
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