Feb/100
Ogilvy: Amex Helps Travelers Get Lei’d
Hey, If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Jason
The best my card ever got me was an upgrade at the Wynn…
Feb/100
4-Hour Workweek Successes
Just got finished reading some successes from Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek (the book I attribute to changing my life a couple years ago).
Here’s one of my favorites (this guy put it together over a year of travel):
Nov/092
How to Survive Brainwashing
Just in case anybody is ever trying to brainwash you…
You might be getting brainwashed if… (click here)
Now you know.
Nov/097
The Last Three Months
Well, it’s been almost three months since I posted to my blog and I feel like an update is in order. Since writing my last post after crossing from Argentina to Chile a lot has happened. Here are the highlights:
- I spent a week with a friend in Santiago, Chile.
- I did some wine tours in Mendoza, Argentina.
- I went to Cordoba, Argentina to visit a girl from last year’s Oktoberfest in Villa General Belgrano only to discover she was “muy de novia” (very much in a relationship).
- I spent 10 days in a hostel in Buenos Aires where I discovered how 8 strangers’ lives could come together at the right time and we could somehow get along as well as old high school friends. I don’t usually make great friends with backpackers so this particular group was a rare find (well, only a couple were technically “backpackers”).
- A friend from Sao Paulo, Brazil invited me to her home town Lima, Peru for a week where I got to experience great food (ceviche and more) and great parties (pisco sours and more).
- I went to Cusco, Peru, the city that used to be covered in gold–complete with gold-plated buildings and plazas with mock corn crops and gardens made of gold. All of that was melted down and sent to Spain hundreds of years ago of course.
- I climbed up to Machu Picchu alone… at 3am… without a flash light.
- I witnessed the most incredible view of my life: the view sitting at the top of Wayna Picchu.
- I suffered through “Bolivia Belly” which I got from a llama steak in La Paz and the accompanying melancholy of being lonely and sick at the same time.
- At the lowest point of my trip, I had lunch with a friend from a boat party in Miami two years ago. He tipped me off that there was something more to Bolivia than sickness, coldness, dirtiness, poverty and ugly people. The Promised Land: Santa Cruz.
- After turning down a 1-hour flight for $900, I suffered through an 18-hour bus ride from La Paz to Santa Cruz on a “local’s bus”, the highlights of which were: no heat in the cold mountains as we drove out of La Paz, sitting next to smelly locals on a smelly bus, being awoken at 2am by the sound of a large pipe flying through the windshield and hitting the glass behind the bus driver (3 inches above his head) nearly decapitating him and sending us off a steep cliff, no A/C in the sweltering jungle heat when the sun came up, vomiting and defecating in the lavatory every hour or so.
- I arrived in Santa Cruz emaciated and miserable. I booked a plane ticket home within an hour of arriving at my hotel.
- Just getting my health back from being the sickest I’ve been in my life, I went to a fair and met a nice girl who went to lunch with me the next day, 4 hours before my flight home.
- At lunch, I really liked the girl so I took a chance on love and changed my flight for a week later.
- After getting home to Tampa, I’ve been busy working very hard. I went to the Bahamas for 4 days and went on a business trip to New York for Ad:Tech.
- I just booked a plane ticket to go back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia to continue my adventures.
That’s been my life for the last three months. Now that this blog is updated I won’t hesitate to post more often.
Aug/092
Argentina to Chile
I had high expectations for you, Bariloche: Skiing the most beautiful off-piste the Andes has to offer by day. Partying with hoards of Brazilian tourists by night. (Although in Argentina, Bariloche’s lifeblood is Brazilian tourism… so much so that it is called “Braziloche”.)
If only it had snowed instead of drizzled ice bits and freezing rain for twenty days (worst South American snow season in 15 years). If only the Swine Flu hadn’t scared 90% of Brazilians into canceling their vacations.
Oh, and Thoreau, mi amigo, you forgot to mention one thing: Cabins are boring and lonely places.
For me, Bariloche was Boriloche. By day, I found myself in a Walden-esque cabin waiting for snow that never came, passing the time working on my computer. By night, I found myself in an Irish bar called Wilkenny drinking beers with an Irish backpacker/ski bum, pondering what our lives would be like if the Brazilians had shown up.
Then I got an email from a friend in Santiago, Chile, inviting me to visit her. I had already paid for my cabin for two more weeks, but I jumped on the opportunity to leave. A little rent money lost and a 16-hour bus ride was a cheap price to pay for my happiness and sanity. So here I am in Santiago.
Aug/090
My Argentine Diet
Argentina has the best food on the planet. Thanks to superior breeding, there’s no doubt they have the best beef on the planet. Thanks to irrigation from the Andes, their wine is consistently excellent. Their Spanish, Italian, German and Swiss food is arguably better than what you’ll eat in Spain, Italy, Germany or Switzerland (with few exceptions). If you love food, you’ll love Argentina.
Dinner:
The staples of my Argentine diet: Medallon de lomo (filet mignon) and Malbec.
Lunch:
Choripan... "Chorizo" + "Pan"
I think I need to take some cooking classes here.
Aug/095
Top 10 Interesting Things I Saw In Colombia
Here are some interesting things I saw in Colombia:
In Colombia, beautiful girls like this one are not uncommon.
In Colombia, they provide gloves for eating all finger food (ribs, wings, etc.)... "It's the way of the future"
In Colombia, human phone booths are replacing the machines. This guy is selling minutes on his cell phone.
In Colombia, they put two male police officers on every motorcycle. Vibrations + penis-to-anus proximity = a little gay.
In Colombia, you can drink an ice-cold bag of water. Just bite the corner and suck. "The way of the future?"
In Colombia, men are out-numbered 2:1 by beautiful women (see above picture). That's why they can have mullets (or hair like this) and still get girls.
In Colombia, the people are a little racist towards black people. Yet they have jeans called "niggaz". There is no double g in Spanish btw.
In Colombia, even my taxi driver wore "Prada".
In Colombia, Victoria reveals her true secret.
In Colombia, Immigration won't let you enter if you're wearing shorts. But across the street I rented these extremely fashionable pants for $1.
Jul/093
Leaving Medellin and Arriving in Bariloche
“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land” - Che Guevara, Diarios de Motocicleta
Leaving Medellin was difficult emotionally. I had lived there for three months and had begun creating a life there. When I left, I was leaving a place I had begun to consider home and people who I had come to love. I could have happily continued living there for a year or two.
I felt the “melancholy for what was left behind” on the entire flight to Argentina, wondering “Why did I leave?” It wasn’t until after I arrived and started walking around the town of Bariloche that I felt “the excitement of entering a new land”. I realized how much I had missed the culture and people of Argentina. I headed down to the square of this Swiss-German-Italian-Spanish ski town, bought a “choripan” from the “choripan man” and then sat on the shores of the lake eating and admiring the beauty of the lake and mountains.
When was the last time you were in awe of Nature? It had been a long time since Nature struck me with its beauty the way Bariloche is doing. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll fill you in with more details of the town later, but here’s the view from my cabin:
View from my cabin in Bariloche, Argentina
I’m happy to be back in Argentina. I had missed this country and its people. Since I’m in a town that is new to me, I’ve just pushed the reset button on my life again. Time to go find new friends, new love, etc.
Jul/090
How to Escape: Tool #1
Some of us are happy where we are.
Some of us are trying to get somewhere we think we will be happy.
Others are just trying to get as far away as possible from somewhere they think is making them unhappy.
Sometimes life gets tough: psycho exes, brainwashing cults, debt collectors, the mafia, former gangs, criminal charges, etc.
Your escape may be limited by gravity, but you can at least do your best with this nifty tool:
the antipodal calculator (for calculating the opposite side of the Earth)
How to use the tool: Let’s say you were trying to run away from (27.96358921288153, -82.799631357193). Your first option would be a life raft in the Indian Ocean. Although this might seem preferable to you at this moment, you’ll probably get uncomfortable. But Thailand’s pretty close and seems like a good call.
