Truck Day

Pantanal, Brazil

We leave a six am to start our first long drive of the tour (though Steve and I just did it a week ago). It’s about 2200 kilometers (at least like Seattle to San Francisco) and takes two full days. I used to sit up front for all of these drives, but it’s become a bit of a problem because I have a tendency to sleep most of the way and when I’m not sleeping I’m reading. For some reason this seems to annoy Steve (or whichever driver I happen to have), so I’ve taken to hanging out in the house (the pax area). This lets the pax alternate up front where the best views are and gives Steve somebody new to talk to every couple of hours or so.

In the back of Doris we have 34 comfortable-ish seats, with two tables for playing cards or whatever up front and a jack to plug in your Ipod. Each drive day I give a description about what’s happening, where we’re going and usually a small lecture on the history, politics or whatnot of the area. The first long drive day is always kind of a test for the pax as a lot of them are from the UK and have absolutely no idea how big South America is. For many of them a 40 minute drive is something reserved for vacations and in 18 hours they can go from the top of Scotland to the bottom of England (where they keep trying to convince me are some lovely beaches. I don’t believe them). Sometimes I’ll do a trivia game or something to keep them occupied. My last trip I made the mistake of having a truck sangria party on one of the longer days and had to deal with things thrown out the window, congo lines up and down the truck, and an absolutely destroyed house with sticky sangria everywhere which in some flash of insanity I volunteered to clean up. I have a feeling, though; this group is a little more relaxed.

After a long day of driving, we find a hotel at 11 pm.

Samba School

Paraty, Brazil

Today I have planned as a work day, though I get a late start because I need to take Alison to the hospital. Now that the sangria has worn off, she can barely walk a couple of steps. I get a taxi and take her down to the local clinic. Luckily for my dodgy Portuguese, it doesn’t take much explanation. As I feared, there didn’t seem to be much the doctor could do. He decides to clean and pop the biggest blister, but this turns out to be a very unpopular decision. It’s so painful that Alison actually screams at the top of her lungs at one point. So, the doctor prudently just put some soothing cream on the rest and bandaged them up.

Unfortunately, now Alison can’t walk at all, so once I get her in a cab, Steve and I actually carry her out and put her in our room. As all the passengers are camping here, we have the only room. I had planned to spend most of the day in my room doing accounts, but it looks like any computer work I want to do will have to be done at an internet place.

Before I do any of that I take the cook group shopping. On these tours, when we’re camping, all of the shopping, cooking and cleaning is done by the passengers. They have different groups and rotate jobs. The two girls who are cooking tonight are Claire and Kyanne.

After shopping it’s already 2 o’clock. The problem with this job is that you never seem to have enough time in the day and plans constantly change. I’m desperately behind in my accounting, but now I don’t have time or a place to do them. Oh well, I’ll save them for the Pantanal.

That as we’re cooking dinner we hear the pounding rhythms of a practicing samba school who are in the little stadium next door. We can’t see them from where we are, but it sounds like a band of about 120 people.

After dinner we go over to watch. These schools are all over Brazil. They practice almost every day from August until Carnaval in February, all for an hour and a half of entertaining. Though this school sounds much bigger because of the stadium acoustics and of enthusiasm put into their music, I only count about 36 people. Though when they march in parade they march line by line, during practice they situate themselves in kind of a spiral. On the outside are the 5 or 6 women of the group. Usually, women are reserved for dancing, but the drum groups always have a few shaking a kind of a tambourine like instrument. They stand with bored expressions shaking their instruments in perfect time. Because of their apparent indifference, they’re job looks easy at first glance, but if you notice they all have instruments of different pitch and they don’t just shake them through the whole song. There are very specific times when they have to shake their specific instrument. This goes for the drums as well. Even though you might have three or four guys with the same kind of drum, they won’t just be banging them at the same time. They’ll kind of alternate, so if you look at one person it seems pretty easy, but when you take in the whole section you realize it’s actually a very complicated rhythm.

In the middle is the leader. All eyes are on him. He is a flurry of sweat, movement and multitasking. The entire time he is blowing his whistle, signaling changes from different sections, waving his hands and glaring at delinquent drummers, and meanwhile dancing the whole time. All of a sudden on his signal the entire group will stop, he’ll bang out a quick complicated solo, and then group will beat out a reply, he’ll solo again, they’ll reply again, finally with a deft flick of his wrist the whole group will be back into the song again. It’s absolutely impossible to stand still while watching. Among the spectators you see children still in diapers dancing along while forming they’re life long addiction to rhythm and dancing. It’s a community event. In the small town of Paraty there are 6 or 7 samba schools and groups of friends will walk between each one laughing, playing and flirting while watching they’re free entertainment. These schools represent a single minded commitment that this country has to having a good time. I never get tired of watching it.

I'm on a Boat!

Paraty, Brazil

Paraty is a colonial town on the Emerald coast of Brazil. It has cobblestone beaches and colonial architecture. It used to be the port used to export gold and coffee back to Portugal. The one and only tour that we offer here is a day on a yacht out to a couple of beaches and a spot where the pax can swim with a school of fish.

Steve and I make our famous sangria punch. This usually consists of white wine, red wine, apple champagne, vodka, rum, some tropical citrus juiced and sprite. It tastes like punch and inevitably somebody will ask me if there’s any alcohol in it. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a dreary day with intermittent rainfall, but we gamely make our way to the boat and start mixing up sangria.

On the way to the wharf I realize that one of my pax is missing. It turns out that it’s Allison. The day before the tour started she went out to Copacabana without sunscreen for about a half an hour. Now her sunburn is so bad that big blisters are bubbling up on her feet. She’s in a lot of pain. She does make it to the boat, though, and immediately starts downing sangria.

This excursion is one of my favorites. It’s always either at the beginning of a trip or at the end so it’s a great time to either bond as a group or have a final party before the end. This time it’s at the beginning, so I’m hoping that everyone will get to know one another and enjoy themselves.

Usually, the sun is shining and everybody plays on the different beaches that we visit. Today, however, we spent most of the day standing on beaches in the rain and drinking beer. This wasn’t the start that I had envisioned, but by the time the boat had returned to the port almost everybody was feeling good and even had had a ‘bucket scull’. This involves sitting down with Steve and I opening the tap on the Sangria bucket and pouring it straight down your throat.

That night, for some reason, ended up being a very early night.

How to Weazel Out of Paying a Bribe... In Portuguese!

I woke up a bit groggy this morning, the taste of last night’s tequila still burning the back of my throat. I go downstairs, pay for the hotel for the last three days and have breakfast. Then we all pile on to Doris and away we went on the way out of Rio. After giving the troops a brief description of the truck I hop in front with Steve to help figure our way out of the city. Rio is not somewhere you want to get lost in a bright yellow truck full of gringos.

On our way out of town a cop waves at us to pull over at a check point.

‘Sons of bitches,’ I thought. I had dealt with these guys before. The last time I was coming out of Rio it was Carnaval and there were 5 trucks going the same way. They pulled us over, started looking over the truck and eventually found that we weren’t using a tachometer card (a little card that sits behind the tach that records driving info), which at least for South America is a very obscure law. The seedy cop told us that if we didn’t give him $5,000 he would take our truck away. I laughed and tossed him the keys. After about an hour of haggling (with our brand new passengers baking in the truck, we got him down to $300.

“Just give him the money,” my driver said through clenched teeth.

The cop smiled through his mustache and put the money in his pocket.

We heard later that a couple of other trucks ended up paying $500 or more and then in one case $100 and a flash from the female tour leader.

This time I was determined not to pay a cent. The cop started carefully checking through the likely offenses. After checking our fire extinguisher and first aid kit, he pulled back the tachometer with a flourish. His face fell. This time we had a tach card. He decided to go over Steve’s license again, this time corners of his mouth turned up slightly and he asked us to join him in the stuffy office.

Flies buzzed through the stifling air as he sat down at the desk. He shuffled some papers, looked at the license and then shuffled the papers again. I crossed my arms and got ready for a fight. I wished that it was going to be in Spanish. Arguing in Portuguese is not my forte.

“This license is not valid in Brazil,” He said, poking a meaty finger at Steve’s international truck driving license. “It’s not translated to Portuguese.”

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘He must be really desperate.’ This was the flimsiest shakedown attempt I’d seen.

“What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous.” I pointed at the permit that we had received at the border. “That makes it legal. They gave it to us at the border. If his license wasn’t legal, why would have they let us in?”

He pondered that one for a second. “No… that license is only legal for countries like Bolivia.”

Bolivia, of course, is the South American whipping boy. Brazilians shudder to think that something that could be used legally in Bolivia could also be used in their country.

We went back and forth a bit. The fact that he hadn’t actually given me a figure made me feel fairly confident.

He made a last ditch attempt. He pulled out the English law book and pointed at the offense he considered us to be breaking. I read it. It said something like ‘…you must have a license that is translated into Portuguese, unless you have another official document excusing you.”

I smiled and pointed at the law to Steve. He snatched up his license and Brazilian permit.

“Thanks!” we both said in unison, as we strode out the office.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. It wasn’t going to be that easy. He took the permit back, read it, consulted his guide book, looked back at it, scratched his chin and consulted his guidebook.

Sensing victory, let off a litany. “It says it right there!” I stabbed my finger at the permit. “Right there, you know it’s not an offense. Give it back, we’re leaving.”

The fact that this was all in very broken Portuguese reduced the effect somewhat, but eventually he admitted defeat. He gave us our documents back and we were on our way.

I’ve found that usually as long as you remain as confident as possible, to the point of yelling at them and then just make it very clear that you’re ready to stay there as long as possible, they’ll eventually get bored and let you go. Last trip I actually had a cop in Argentina ask me as a last ditch attempt to go on to the truck and collect 10 dollars from each of my passengers.

Sons of bitches.

Once we got to the campsite, Steve went over the truck with the new pax and I went shopping for lunch. Most of the rest of the day was spent basically just orientating everybody to the Budget lifestyle.

That night Steve and I did the cooking to show them how meals should be. Steve cooked a roast on a spit and I fried potatoes with peppers, onions and bacon, as well as made as salad. Afterwards, I took a couple of them down to the pub to watch some good ole American football. Great game (New England vs. Indianapolis), but I have a feeling they didn´t quite appreciate it the way I did.

The First Day

My hotel room Rio - 8:30am

I wake up to a loud knock on my door. I reach from my bed and open it to see a girl standing there looking a little bewildered. For some reason I think that it’s a friend of Steve’s (my driver) so I gesture her in.

“Are you Mike?” she asks, “My name’s Catherine. I’m on your tour.”

Oh shit. I just got rid of the last lot last night and it’s already begun. Questions. Never-ending, over and over, often the exact same ones, all day every day 24 hours a day. As a tour leader you get to hate the sound of your own name. mike, mike, Mike, MIKE . That’s all I hear. When I get home I’m going to change my name to something that cannot be expressed verbally, like Prince. I’ll be the guy formally known as Mike.

Anyway, that’s what going through my head as she comes through the door. Then I see her flinch and I’m flung back into reality. I realize what she’s seeing: a big sunburned lump of an American lying on his bed in his underwear. Clothes, beer cans, papers, more beer cans, all strewn about the room. She asks a couple of quick questions and scurries as soon as she possibly can. Worst first impression ever.

My outgoing crew had a bit of a party down in Ipanema the night before and I didn’t actually get home until 4am or so. But I haul myself out of bed as I have a bit to do today to get ready for the upcoming tour. Also, I would like to catch Catherine before she goes to the nearest phone and inquires about cancellation costs with the Budget Expeditions tour office. Catherine is nowhere in sight, but I see Steve, my driver having breakfast. I chat with him for a bit and have a feed before returning to my room to get my macroing done.

macro v. (mak-row) To do anything on the computer, ie: write up passengers lists, room lists, do accounting, etc. The word was coined by my first driver who found it handy to have a comprehensive word to describe computer work, as anything involving a keyboard was completely beyond him.

I save everything on to my handy dandy little memory stick and take off down the street looking for an internet shop.

Walking down the street in Rio is nothing like walking down the street in the States. Here you don’t just step out on to the sidewalk, you emerge into interactive world. At home you walk from point A to point B as quick as you can with as little interaction as possible. Here people will happily spend 45 minutes talking with you even though you don’t speak their language. They know that their purpose in life is definitely not sitting quietly. All the time they’re ready to smile, ready to talk, ready to dance, ready to fuck. They live life with passion and spontaneity that Americans would find naïve and irreverent. But here they don’t care. On this street it’s all smiles and flesh. It’s not: if you’ve got it flaunt it. Here you flaunt whatever you’ve got. No time for Old and Ugly, everybody’s beautiful.

I print everything I need out for the pre departure meeting tonight and I go back to my room and write this. Right now I’m looking over this email and realizing that I should be on the beach.

Copacabana – 1:00pm

Speaking of smiles and flesh, you´ll never see so much of either than at Copacabana. The sun is strong, the sand is soft and the people are beautiful. Coming out of the subway a few blocks away I was instantly pounded by the heat. Eventually I made my way to the beach and picked my way though row after row of scantily clad beauties, their white smiles from their impossibly bronze skin. I sat for a couple of hours sipping on the beer and the view, occasionally jumping into the freshness of the Atlantic. As started to make my way back to the subway to go back to the hotel, I ran into Andrew, one of the passengers on my next trip. So I changed my my mind and took in another 45 minutes of the beach. I think Andrew will be somebody I get along with. English guy, works in IT and is also an aspiring writer. Likes to go out at night, but doesn´t drink in the day as it knocks him out.


Welcome meeting and night out – 5:00pm

This is it. I always feel tired before these meetings. The last 4 months weigh me down as I prepare to do it again. As I usher the 13 new people into the room, noting their slightly bewildered expressions and nervous smiles, I seem to take on a personality not quite my own. A little too eager and a little too enthusiastic. I´ve done enough of these meetings now that I can put myself on cruise control. This time I almost feel like I´m one of the passengers watching myself give this meeting. Despite this, the meeting goes well and I get a good impression of the crew. After about an hour and a half´s worth of explanation, people´s eyes start to cross and I realize that they´re not going to remember anything else I say, so I end the meeting.

As I´m walking out I spot Catherine. I smiled, and said, “Hey, sorry about this morning. I wasn´t really ready for you.”

She laughed and said, “That´s all right. I was going to tell you earlier that I didn´t recognize you with you clothes on.”

Later that night I take them out to dinner. Spectacular all you can eat buffet with a grill of almost any kind of tasty meat available and a surprisingly good selection of sushi. Afterwards, we go out to Lapa a neighborhood with good street parties and samba. We pretty much just hang out outside a samba club with blasting music, sip our drinks and get to know one another. Kate, one of the newbies, keeps pestering us to order tequila shots from one of the street vendors.

At about 2 or so we head back to the hotel. We have to leave the next morning at 8 am for Paraty, a beach town about 5 hours south. That´s it for today.

Tour Explanation

Rio de Janiero

The tours that I run are done on a giant yellow truck that kind of looks like a big yellow toaster. On the truck there are 34 seats and lockers that hold all of their bags, big crates for food, tents, ovens and everything else needed for camping with that many people. My company is called Budget Expeditions, its part of a larger South American tour company called Tucan travel. Budget focuses on people 18 to 35 years old and are looking for a very budget conscious trip.

This trip starts in Rio de Janeiro with 14 people goes across Brazil down through Argentina all the way to Tierra del Fuego, back up through Patagonia to Santiago. In Santiago 6 people will get off and 23 will join making a group of 31. Then will continue up into Northern Chile cross back over into Northern Argentina and then up through Western Bolivia into Peru. From there we’ll go all the way up through Peru into Ecuador and the tour ends in Quito.

The tour is 4 months long and the highlights of the trip are the Brazilian wetlands of the Pantanal, Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, Torres del Paine National Park, the Bolivian Salt Flats, Cuzco and Machu Pichu, the sand dunes on the west coast of Peru and El Oriente the Ecuadorian Amazon.

We camp 70% of the time and the rest of the time stay in hotels, hostels and home stays. When we are camping the passengers are responsible for shopping and cooking their food, keeping the truck clean and organized and maintaining their tents.

My job is tour organize all the excursions and hotels, make sure the shopping and duties get done, keep all the accounts, give out all info about cities, countries and tours and make sure all the pax are happy healthy and terrific. I spend a lot of time in hospitals and photocopy places.

I work with one other person, my driver Steve. He’s from Australia and his responsibilities are driving, keeping the truck in working order and occasionally cook a kick ass barbeque.

This is our second 4 month trip in a row. Total time off between tours – about 2 and a half hours.

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