South America

It was 9pm and the night already fell down on the capital of Caracas, Venezuela. I was with my host of the day named Daniel- a Venezuelian I met thanks to the website of cultural interactions known as couchsurfing.org.

Seriously man! They did! I wasn’t smoking crack! (But I'm pretty sure the zombies were). The Honduran capital is infested with them. But first, let me tell you how I got to Tegucigalpa, because that’s another story.

It was a lonely semester abroad in Buenos Aires. After 2 years of abstinence (not by choice) and scarce physical contact with females in general, coming to a city with some of the world’s most beautiful women without being able to speak any Spanish, initially seemed like terrible idea. A typical conversation with a latina would usually start with me saying something like,

Aboard our boat offshore the Galapagos, a guide/naturalist regaled us with stories of the island's earliest settlers. An artesian spring provided fresh water to the island. The first settler was an Irishman, stranded in 1807, who raised potatoes and vegetables and bartered them with passing buccaneers and whalers in exchange for supplies consisting mostly of liquor. In the 1830s came a German dentist and his woman. The dentist pulled all of his own and his partner's teeth-to prevent tooth decay. A supply ship provided him with a set of teeth -one story says they were metal, the other wooden - which he and his partner shared.

Latin America, summer of 2007- the journey that triggered my travel addiction. Sao Paulo to Mexico City entirely by land. Two continents, 13 countries and a list of numerous insane experiences. The only possessions accompanying me: a raggedy school back pack stuffed with a few dirty clothes, three Kodak disposable cameras, a pen, a journal and barely enough money to eat 2 meager meals a day. The following is just one of the many strange encounters of my trip.

Sao Paulo is not for the timid. My guide book reserves a dozen pages to describe the varieties of thievery present in Brazil. Unfashionable is the style of snatch and scarper, rather thieves either act as samaritans distracting tourists away from busy streets into convenient mugging zones, or in an alternative theatrical vein they dress in police costume and demand the payment of imaginary fines. They mug the Brazilian way, they mug with flair and imagination.

Sao Paulo- Brazil and one of the planet’s most populated cities with nearly twenty million inhabitants. It’s a true jungle, only second to the country’s Amazon. And just like in any jungle, there’re rules to follow. If you don’t, you’re prey.

Tequila? Check. Tobacco? Check.

Forty foot waterfall crashing down in the front yard?

Check.

I pulled into the parking lot of the museum. The place felt like an old deserted western town, but here I was in Nazca, Peru.