Happy Fun Day!

Sucre, Bolivia Ok, Ok... I am alive. I haven’t been gunned down by Colombian drug lords, I haven't been kidnapped by terrorists. You can stop worrying. I'm very sorry that I haven't been updating all of you on my adventures, but like I said, it's a bit different this time, as I'm actually working down here rather than laying on a beach all day thinking of clever ways to entertain y’all. However, the other day I had a random enough experience that I just can't help but share it with you. When I finally woke up, it was just past noon. Last night was Friday night and for my small 7 passenger, mostly English group that means one thing: Partying until dawn. More accustomed to groups of 20 or 30 people, I have been enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of this trip, but their hardcore attitude towards making the most of their vacation has still left me dying for a good nights sleep. As I tried not to shock myself on the electric head of my shower, memories of the previous night came flooding back. We had arrived in Sucre, Bolivia in the late afternoon and had headed to the Joyride café. A café known for its Dutch ownership, good pasta, and my favourite: homebrewed beer. After dinner and drinks, the night involved more drinking, lots of dancing and a Queen cover band (don’t ask me why). As I dressed, I tried to resist thinking about what lie ahead that day. All my passengers had gone off on tour that morning, 5 of them doing a bike ride to a ranch and the other 2 doing a horseback ride to the same ranch. Afterwards, they were to do a hike up to some waterfalls and then return to the ranch for a big BBQ lunch. Because they were gone for the day, I would finally have a chance to catch up on my accounting that I had avoided for the past week. Basically every time I pay for something, such as a hotel or diesel for the truck, I have to get a receipt and enter it into a spreadsheet and I had about 2 weeks of receipts to enter. Bored yet? Well that’s what I had to look forward to. Finally, I dressed and shuffled off through town crossing the beautiful central plaza with its beautiful green trees, numerous park benches and a commanding statue of Mariscal Sucre, the hero and liberator of Bolivia. At this point I could never imagine the commotion that I would help cause here later that day. Eventually, I came to the Joyride café who also happen to be known for their sumptuous breakfasts and where I was to meet Ed, my new driver (new to you anyway). It turned out that I was too late for breakfast, so as I slumped into my chair I ordered a sandwich and a coke. Ed wasn’t there yet, so I sipped my coke by myself and tried not to concentrate on my splitting headache that was half hangover and half the thought of doing accounts. I had a table upstairs above the bar that overlooked the mainly dark brown wooded room. Random objects like golden trophies and wooden Dutch shoes hung off the ceiling and huge black chalkboards covered in daily specials lovingly done in colourful chalk decorated the walls. I looked at the drinks specials…4 Jagermeisters and 2 Redbulls it proclaimed, only 45 Bolivianos. I shuddered involuntarily. It was then I noticed two gringos walking through the bar dressed in outfits that were so ridiculous that they immediately cut through my hangover and made me laugh. They both wore ponchos, the guy in red poncho and the girl in a rainbow one. The guy had on silly striped pants that are normally reserved for only the most inexperienced traveller, while the girl under her poncho wore the most unflattering black local dress that almost any traveller no matter how green would never dare touch. To top it all off they both wore sunglasses and cowboy hats. They heard me laughing, looked up at me and then disturbingly headed for the stairs. It wasn’t until they were half-way up the stairs that I realized through fog that enveloped my brain, I knew these people. They were Loretta and Matt, two of my passengers. “I thought you guys went horse back riding.” “Yeah well,” said Loretta. “The horses were sick. So when they gave us our money back, we decided to have happy fun day instead.” “Happy Fun Day!” said Matt in a high pitched voice, his face lighting up. “Wait, wait,” I replied as they took their chairs. “I thought today was shitty hangover day. At least that’s been my day so far.” “Nope!” said Matt a little too loudly, indicating that despite the hour, happy fun day had started with a couple of beverages. “Today is happy fun day. The way we see it, the money they gave us back is free money. So we got dressed up and we’re doing whatever we feel is happy and fun with the money.” Despite the 20 piece orchestra still pounding away in my head, their enthusiasm was infectious and the fact was I was diggin’ their attitude. On my last trip had something like this happened, I never would have heard the end of it. They would have seen through the very skimpy excuse that the horses were sick and realized that the tour company had just overbooked. There would have been letters and emails directed towards my bosses (seriously). Loretta and Matt decided that they had to go back to the hotel for a few minutes, but not before they procured the promise from me that I would join their happy fun day. When they returned they said that they would take me out and dress me up, at the expense of the happy fun fund of course and we would walk around Sucre like knob heads, making total fools of ourselves. Well, I thought while ordering myself a beer, it beats doing accounts. Finally Ed came in. He had just spent the morning working on the truck and he didn’t look like he was in a happy fun mood. Ed’s the kind of guy who never stops moving. He’s really only happy if he’s tinkering, cooking or fixing something and since I’m not big on any of those three, it works out just fine. But I have made it my mission to teach him to chill. I figure if anybody can do it, I’m the man. “All right,” he said, sitting down, his large paperwork folder whumping on the table. “Ready to finally get these accounts done?” What Ed really meant was: ‘are you ready for me to give you all my receipts so you can pay me what you owe me and then begin the arduous task of putting them into the computer.’ “Um…well Ed,” not really knowing where to begin. “It turns out that it’s happy fun day.” “Happy fun what?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Fuck, we got get this shit done.” (In Aussie tradition Ed swears like a sailor. I’ll try to leave it out from now on, but you have to have some sense of who he is). Once I finished explaining what had happened, he still seemed a bit sceptical, but at least he ordered a beer. Then the door crashed open and in burst Matt and Loretta. Talking a mile a minute once again their enthusiasm won the day and before Ed or I knew it we had down a couple more beers along with a couple of those Jagermeister and Redbull specials and suddenly found ourselves walking down the street in Ponchos, ultra-gringo pants, funny hats and sunglasses, flipping one Boliviano coins to beggars, handing out high-fives to bus drivers and pretty much freaking out everybody in 30 meter radius. We headed for the busiest market street in Sucre, after all when dressed like this it is attention you seek. The busy street slowed down to a crawl. Though most of the shops hawked what we were wearing, it was apparent that none of them had ever seen anybody wearing everything at once. A little girl walked by with an armload of little drums on a string. We had already talked about the possibility of busking (singing for money) in the plaza. All we needed were instruments. I called out to her in Spanish, “Excuse me Miss, we would like to by some drums.” The girl took one look at us and started to walk the other way. We thought that maybe she didn’t see us and hurried after her. She looked behind her shoulder and saw four obviously mental gringos following her and started to run as fast as her short Bolivian legs could take her, her drums swinging back and forth wildly. Luckily, a shop owner stopped her and her horror slowly evaporated into a smile when I told her as gently as possible that we were interested in purchasing four of her lovely drums. Well, damn, now did we not only look like we had just escaped from a clinic that holds people who think that they’re the last Incan emperors, but now we were stopping traffic with our abrasive crooning of whatever song came into our head and the completely off-beat pounding of our 5 boliviano drums. “Where should we go?” somebody asked. “To the Supreme Court!” I replied. Sucre started out as the capital of Bolivia, though slowly but surely La Paz has been taking over that honour. The only remnant of capitalhood left in Sucre is a stately building in front of a large plaza (not the central plaza) that holds the Supreme Court. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) court was not in session and the building was closed. However in the plaza was somebody renting out quad bikes and soon we zooming around the plaza with our beers and drums resting precariously on our laps and our ponchos flapping in the wind. Two lovers were making out on a park bench, but when the man saw me zipping by on a quad bike, a beer raised triumphantly over my head, jabbering at him in a foreign language, his jaw dropped leaving his girlfriend kissing only air. Eventually, she turned to see what could be distracting him from her amorous embrace and her jaw dropped in a harmonious expression. Giggling like schoolgirls on a mountain of speed, we dropped off the quad bikes and set off for the plaza. Before the plaza we decided to pick happy fun juice at a liquor store and deposit what we had already consumed at the Joy Ride café. Stumbling in to the café, I couldn’t believe that only a couple hours earlier I had been here feeling sorry for myself. After using the facilities, we treated (perhaps a bit of an optimistic word) the patrons to “You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling” the only song besides “Living on a prayer” that we could all agree on and actually knew most of the words to. Afterwards we passed around the hat and actually made about 60 Bolivianos, good enough for a bottle of vodka at some point. At the plaza after disturbing the peace for quite sometime, we were surrounded by shoe-shine boys who realized that we were giving away whatever Bolis we earned from our pity-eyed audience and orange juice salesmen who realized that we needed something to go with our Vodka. On and on we sang, at times entertaining and at times horrifying our crowd. Amazingly we didn’t get arrested, but then again in Bolivia a gringo pass goes a long way. At some point we realized that the other passengers we probably back from their tour and back at the hotel we found them exhausted and dirty. The poor guys were relaxing or sleeping when we burst into their rooms singing some obscure (and probably obscene) song and babbling incoherently about our day. It turned out that the enthusiasm that was so persuasive earlier that day was now more annoying than anything, but eventually we pestered them out of bed and back to the Joy Ride. Now, however, it seemed that the charm we once had was lost. It probably drowned in beer and Jagermeister. We sang one last time and received in our hat one straw, a cigarette, maybe 4 Bolis and two unidentifiable objects that I think were ravioli. Though happy fun day had come to an inevitable end and shitty hangover day was drawing nigh, we still enjoyed ourselves and let happy fun see us through. All right, there you go. I hope that story entertains you. Of course, looking back on this email I realize it’s just about me being a drunken fool, but what are you going to do. Believe it or not, I do actually have to work hard, but I figure you guys think about work enough, so I’ll spare you the details about accounting (I then multiplied cell H9 with cell N14, ooohh). Despite having to do accounting, I’m still enjoying the job and I’ll probably be down here for at least another year. I’ll try to be better about writing. Have fun. Moe

A Dark and Stormy Night

Lima, Peru

Dave peers out the windshield and says, “Crikey, that looks like a ripper of a storm.”

I jolt awake and look out through the fat drops of rain splatting agains the glass in front of me. “Yeah, you’re right. What do you think?”

“I say we just push on through the night until we get to the beach”

“Well, you’re the one who’s got to drive it,” I say. “I’ll go back and inform the troops.”

We had started at 6am from deep in the South Pantanal, a spectacular wetland ecosystem in south-western Brazil with more visible jungle wildlife than I had ever seen in the Amazon or the Oriente. It had already been a long day, but Dave was stocked with plenty of Red Bull and seemed ready to do it. There’s a small door connecting the cab to the rest of the truck. Every time I go through, it’s a small adventure. The door seems to be built for a young midget, so when I squeeze through it, it appears the the cab is giving birth to a rather large funny lookin’ American tour guide.

With a final grunt, I pop through and stand up. Once the snickering dies down, I get on the mike and explain the situation. I expected to be somewhat of a backlash from the more grumpy of the passengers, but everybody seems excited to do it and get to the beach a day early.

I repeat the comic exercise of squeezing through the door and plop back down in my seat. “Their good to go,” I say.

Dave smiles, takes a sip from his red bull and says, “Sweetazz”


I sit back in my chair and think about the Pantanal. I think the most impressive part of the whole experience was what they called the jungle safari. Seven of the pax and I stood in the back of a 4x4 with our guide, wind whipping in our faces checking out the ridiculous amount of wildlife, including anacondas, marsh deer, monkeys, Capybara (the worlds largest rodent that kind of looks like a hairy pig), giant otters and so many cayman alligators that you stop pointing them out after awhile.

Eventually, we stopped at a little river to do some pirhana fishing. If you’re a impatient fisherman like I am, piranha fishing is the best kind of fishing in the world. You basically put some meat on your hook, cast your line in the water and within a second you’re already getting bites. That isn’t to say that it’s not frustrating. They work fast and if you’re not quick enough you end up with nothing. It’s also a bit more sporting since once you actually pull a fish out, there’s a very real chance of them biting you if you’re not careful. To add to the sporting part, there’s always three or four caymans slowly swimming back and forth looking up at you with a sinister eye like they’re trying to decide if they could eat you. The mosquitoes have no such dilemma. You could be wearing steel armor and they’d still bite you.


One of the passenger girls and I decide to stay awake with Dave to keep him awake. The only logical way to do this, of course, is to have a couple of light beverages which is legal in a country with no open container law. When we stop at a gas station. I go grab some rum and put her in charge of buying a mixer. Mistake. As we get underway, I pull out the rum and she pulls out a huge bottle of grape fanta.

“What the hell is that?”

“What? It’s good,” she says, pouting. “You just have try it.”

Um, yeah. I have had grape soda and I have had rum. I can pretty much guess what they’d taste like together. Oh well. We get drunk.

At about 4 am Dave realizes that he’s stuck in a very small space with two loud annoying drunk people with a real risk of spewing grape vomit all over his cab and decides to take a rest. We stop at a servo (as he calls it) with a restaraunt and he kicks us out.

I mosey into the restaraunt and order a beer and some food. A couple of the other girls stumble in sleepily. These were part of the contingent who thought that Patagonia was going to have a variety of tanning possibilites.

“You mean Ushuaia doesn’t have any beaches?” they asked me.

“Um...well it is the southern most city in the world.” Noting their blank looks, I continued, “So if you looked at the globe upside down it would be the most northern.”

“Ohhhh.”

Once we had made it into Brazil where it was warmer their combined wardrobe for an entire week could have fit into a change purse. The problem was that we weren’t on the beach yet. We were essentially in the jungle and though there was plenty of sun, there was also very aggressive mosquitos who very much appreciate a white fleshy buffet. So now these two girls look as though they’ve had a severe case of the chicken pox.

“What’s up Itchy and Scratchy?” I say smiling.

Their tired and don’t quite have enough energy to flick me off. They order some food and sit down with me. I finish my food and chat for a bit, until I realize that I’m wasting my only opportunity to sleep for the next day as we have to drive through the positively frighting town of Sao Paulo. It has 23 million people, a spaghetti of roads and countless dangerous neighborhoods who also appreciate a white fleshy buffet. It was my job to guide us through it and all I had my disposal was a map about the size of a post-it. As I was banished from the cab and didn’t want to sleep in the back with 21 other people, I rolled mat out in front of the cab, curled up and went to sleep.

I awoke to a bunch stares. Apparently they had never seen a gringo sleeping on pavement in front of a giant yellow truck. As we get underway I pull out my small map and started scouting the possibilities. There was no highway circumventing the city going where we needed to go. I did, however, get lucky and find the right highway without making any mistakes at all. Rather anti-climatic isn’t it.

So I hope that each and everyone of you had happy holidays. Right now, I’m at a small beach town south of Lima awaiting my next tour. It starts on Saturday in Lima and runs seven weeks ending in Rio for Carnaval. Stories ahoy. Moe.