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.