The motion picture, “Yeast Me”

December 27th, 2010: I came to the conclusion that I must seek help…psychological help. It didn’t take a doctorate to figure this out either. It was all drawn up in the simplicity of what I have been selecting to eat. Today I had to make a decision that should have been an easy decision. I had a choice…McDonalds for dinner or Christmas bread (similar to its distant cousin, fruit cake). I must note to my readers that I should not be seeing another McDonalds for at least 2 months and this decision was much too easy for me, for I chose the Christmas bread. I must be sick…really sick. It is not like the bits in it are even fruit.

There was a movie made in the US named “Supersize Me” about a guy who attempted to eat McDonalds for 30 days straight and wimped out toward the end due to his health collapsing. I wonder how successful a movie would be if it was called, “Yeast me” - hmm…I will need a little work on the title but it will be the same concept. I will eat Christmas bread for 30 days straight and someone can record it on video. Anyone want to invest some money for this possibly blockbuster?

The more the bloodier…

December 27th, 2010: I been in a dorm room for the past few days that has 8 beds which is now filled beyond capacity, forcing me to share my bed with others. How many others? I don’t quite know. I am currently in the process of executing all of these freeloaders before they suck me dry.

The freeloaders are small and must have been fighting a battle for quite some time as I see all the old blood stains on my sheets making the white sheets look as if they were polka dots. I am now sustaining only a few injuries but it looks like it will be a long battle with these…bed bugs.

Not thinking it was a big deal…the first day I found out about my guests, I just pressed them up against the sheets forcefully expelling the blood they withdrew the night before, instantly killing them. I must keep misssing a few since they seem to keep showing up again, night after night.

Other people checked into the hostel today and it is now 2am and they are all runing around the room literly freaking out, pulling back the sheets on all the beds, catching the bed bugs as they quietly wait to do a surprise attack. Thinking about it now…I just might get what I want – to travel with others, wether I like it, or not.

(Self-modified Nursery Rhyme)
Good night, sleep tight
Don’t let the bed bugs bite
If they bite, bite them back
Then they won’t bite tomorrow night

One of the great joys of the Christmas holidays...

December 24th, 2010: I have eaten some unusual stuff during this trip and some might even think what I put in my mouth is outright wrong, such as the time I had the fetus soup in Colombia. But, the past few weeks I have acquired a taste for something much worse…Christmas bread. Yes, the bread that can last for up to 4 months which contains a healthy amount of fruit and nuts to keep your body strong.

I have managed to go through a whole loaf in the past 2 days and I am now diligently working on my second loaf with no end in sight. If I can only manage to make more space in my backpack I could live off the stuff till at least…Spring (US).

My Santiago layover

December 22nd, 2010: Staying at my friend Daniella’s for almost the past two weeks it has been a wonderful reminder on how nice it is to spend time with a friend for more than a few days and to be around a real live family. In the process I lost my Yatzee Chilean Championship Title to her Dad who consistently rolled dice as magician. I will have to set this behind me and move forward, either perfecting an undetectable way to cheat, or…just accept that dice games are all about chance.

From seeing a huge concert with musicians dressed like overgrown sperm to backcountry camping, throwing a football around – deep breath – seeing a ballet and wine tasting at my favorite Chilean winery, it was all great. One of (only one) of the best parts of this was the simplicity of lounging around a functional house. I could not have asked for anything more - almost anything more.

Santiago was a great layover to do some well needed internal repairs, refreshing my mind as I now head out to the Pacific Ocean to find myself a good spot for my most favorite holiday, Christmas.

Spit Guzzling Park

December 20th, 2010: I went to a park today in Santiago that was suggested by my friend to visit. As soon as I began making it up the stairs I noticed that it looked more like an outdoor hotel room than a park as about every grassy spot and patch was taken up by couples and their hands. I felt like it was wrong for me to stop to look around or take photos for that matter since I didn’t want to come across as a voyeur.

Step after step, passing body after body tangled on the ground, this was definitely not the place to go if you are single making it more and more of a depressing park each step up leading to the top. Reaching the peak there was a nice view point of the city, with even an option to jump off of if you didn’t pass the mental test of Spit Guzzling Park.

Occupying the only empty bench of 10 benches at one lookout, I sat there enjoying the views of the city as couples deeply tongue each other, guzzling each other’s spit making me…thirsty. Deprived of the tasty 100% natural beverage, thinking that if they could only bottle the stuff I would be completely self sufficient and not need to get anyone else involved. If Coca-Cola would consider hiring me, I could make them billions and at the same time get a lot of homeless people of the street and employed as they could have a job filling up bottles.

Today, I managed to I successfully towered Spit Guzzling Park right before Christmas…making it without contemplating suicide or hiring a prostitute – remembering from the moving Pretty Women…that prostitutes don’t kiss on the lips anyhow.

2 cups of fruit a day…does that mean 2 Double Gulp sized cups?

December 9th, 2010: I have been happily stuck in Mendoza for about 1.5 weeks waiting for my new Visa card to arrive. Needing to pass by time I happened to visit about 10 wineries during 3 of those days to help me exceed the United States Department of Agriculture’s suggestion of consuming 2 cups of fruit daily - with them carelessly not clearly noting on how big or small the cup suppose to be – thinking that maybe they meant 2 Double Gulps (64 ounces each) sized cups from the convenience store 7-11 in the US. Trying to be healthy this also assisted me in getting through the incompetence of my bank, Wells Fargo who might have been more effective if they moved their call centers internationally to the Helen Keller Institute for the deaf.

From the two blurry self guided bicycle tours to the decrepit horse that took me to a few of the grape manufactures, I at one time effectively lost enough brain cells so that my body forget how to process my prior items of consumption in the proper order - which is typically the mouth, stomach and bowels to the miniature porcelain pool. Instead, I somehow miraculously reversed this order going from my mouth, to stomach and back to my mouth skipping the porcelain bowl and going directly to…to…it is not that important.

Needless to say, I think I was trying to be too healthy and will continue to try to be healthier consuming my 2 cups of fruit a day, but maybe…just maybe I will need to look further into what the United States Department of Agriculture means when they say two cups of fruit.

Life as a Grey Hair for the day

December 5th, 2010: Yesterday I took a trip into the rugged mountains running along the Chilean border. This ended up not just being a trip to see a beautiful mountain pass that was used for the movie set Seven Years in Tibet but it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for me to experience life as a senior citizen for the day - which was not my original intention. It just seemed to happen as I stepped onto the bus that picked me up from my hostel, looking around and noticing that the bus was filled with grey hairs (at least they have hair). At that moment I realized that I might have paid too much for the tour since the mathematical formula for grey hair tourist is the following: Grey Hair tourist price = Fair tour price + 50% markup.

Worldwide, seniors seem to be targeted by tour companies due to the larger profit margin than the cheap, mangy backpackers. The backpacking community typically lives off the penny’s they have accumulated over the years and doesn’t seem to have a pension/allowance such as some of the older tourists. Unfortunately for them, the tour companies clearly know this and are sadly taking advantage of them.

On my tour today there was a few other stray backpackers asking the guide if we were going to do any hiking, gimping, walking, hopping, crawling, rolling or anything else besides stopping the bus and getting out for photos. Our guide made it clear that they are not able to do anything else because she was not sure if everyone was physically fit enough to do that…needing a waiver if they did. To support her case she informed them that on this tour she had 2 people died on her tours from exerting themselves too much.

A lot of people in tourism seem to think that all seniors are extra fragile, reminding me about the trip I took out to the mountains outside Cordoba, Argentina a week or two ago. This is when my friend and I went to this hiking area and wanted to make it to the top but arrived too late for the 4 hours accent – which I was internally grateful for. Standing at the information counter I noticed that the sign said if you were 60+ years old, you needed to hire a personal guide to go on the hike with you - that was quite expensive. I had to laugh but it was at the same time disturbing because I come across a quite a few 60 year olds that were in better shape than me. So how can you just come up with an age making it a requirement and not know the persons physical abilities, I don’t know? Where is AARP when you need them?

My day acting as a senior was extremely pleasant and relaxing, taking plenty of photos from the window of the bus to several photos only a few steps outside the bus doors. Perhaps it would have been nice to be able to walk a little bit more, by say…parking farther from the restroom doors. If I wasn’t a cheap mangy backpacker and decided to enter the restaurant for lunch when the rest of the bus did, I could have added to today’s excitement and used the typical senior citizen terminology to those individuals in the service industry such as “honey,” “sweetie,” and “darling” and get away with it. Never the less, I was still happy to see what I came to see and to have experienced a trip living life as a grey hair.

Shoulder bag accidently stolen…or not

December 4th, 2010: New traveling security rule created. Rule #1234: Don’t approach subject who has possession of your belongings until 90% certain of the intentions for the subject in question.

I say this because when soaking in the water I noticed a group of seemingly law abiding individuals in their early 20’s or late teens place all of their stuff around my shoulder bag that I had sitting next to a rock wall. One oddly even placed their shorts on top of my bag. As time passed they ended up moving to different hot springs and one guy seemed quite awkward by how he was looking around and then casually grabbed my shoulder bag with about $800 USD in belongings and walked away.

Perhaps it was a mistake I thought, confusing my stuff for one of his friends? Not giving him enough time to make it clear if it was a mistake or not, I came up behind him, putting my hand on his shoulder telling him that was my bag. He apologized saying something else that I didn’t understand.

Was it done on purpose or…not? It would have been nice to know his intensions but I would like to think that it was an accident thinking my filthy shoulder bag was one of the many girls he was with. This reminds me that I need to not relax my personal security policies, if anything, add a few more rules. So this was how Rule #1234 was created: Don’t approach subject who has possession of your belongings until 90% certain of the intentions for the subject in question. This will in turn then give you greater options as for what the next step will be…whether it is legal, verbal or physical.

My roommate worships satin

December 1st, 2010: My roommate worships satin. Okay…I cannot confirm that he worships the beast…but, when you have a male tramp stamp that covers half of your lower back and it is the face of satin (I am not joking or exaggerating) he must at least like him a little bit. It is a safe assumption; because why would you say…get a tattoo of silly parrot on your arm or a tattoo that says mom, if you didn’t like them?

Since he does sleep all day and leaves late at night, not coming back until 4 to 5 in the morning…I might have to restructure my sleeping habits. As for tonight I will practice sleeping like a fish…with my eyes open.

Do you want it…Monkey Style?

November 30th, 2010: Going to another animal prison, this time in Mendoza, I observed that this monkey compound was much different than in Cordoba. This one had a lot more activity, reminding me of a horrific porno I once accidently clicked on when searching for…camping gear.

With an overcrowded cage of about 100 nasty looking red bottomed monkeys, the males ran around chasing the females doing indecent activities in public right before my very own eyes…pulling off the 4 to 5 second “doggy style” position with such finesse. This made me think…why is this position called “doggy style” and why are men called “dogs” for that matter when we look much more like “monkeys” performing this act. Then why are we not called “monkeys”? There is a closer link between men and monkeys than dogs anyhow.

So…from now on, you should properly label men as “monkeys” not “dogs.” Perhaps the positional name changes will be expedited with help from the porn industry by expanding the vocabulary of the stars to 16 words instead of the standardized 14. Another effective way to quickly implement these needed changes could be by the Pope authorizing one more acceptable position besides the missionary.

Before you know it the term “doggy style” position will only used between the grey carpeteers, with the majority of the population soon to be identifying the act as “monkey style.” These new aged labels are much more accurate and should be changed immediately.

ATM card stolen…

November 30th, 2010: The past 20+ months I have held my ATM card really close to me. To be more precise…on my leg in this skin colored holder that has accumulated 20+ months of dirt and calf sweat mixed with about 500ml or so of anal sweat that made it down to my calf on those extremely humid days. The odor itself helped keep all unauthorized…people, away from it.

But…a few nights ago at about 10pm, I was walking around alone in the dark streets of San Agustin del Valle Fertil that contains about 3,903 people. Stopping, I ever so briefly lowered my guard and it happened…my ATM card was stolen. It wasn’t just stolen, but the thief had the audacity to give me a slip of paper, admitting to taking it. The thief didn’t even need to touch this protective holder of mine resting on my calf because I handed it over, thinking that the...ATM machine was going to return it to me with the cash I kindly request. Instead, it consumed my card. After several failed attempts calling the bank and the ATM company - they seem to not believe in 24 hour customer service…resulting in a cancelled ATM card – my lifeline to Argentinean Pesos.

Now, I sit patiently waiting in the city of Mendoza for my new ATM card after two women rescued me by extracting me out of San Agustin del Valle Fertil with the assistance of Hertz rental car. Will I ever get this card of gold, I am not sure. After spending hours and hours on the phone dealing with the incompetence of the banking industries customer service associates and supervisors for their supposal premier customers, I think…I think that I should be getting my new card within the next week or two.

I am happy that I have all the time in the world and there is a lot to do here – such as to continue being a wino since this is Argentina’s top wine producing region. From now on…I will have to carry an extra backpack filled with cash or better yet, just travel with two ATM cards. Lesson learned…the hard way.

I am thankful for not having a sense of smell

November 27th, 2010: My bus ride to the town of San Agustin del Valle Fertil to visit a couple of National Parks to see more truly colorful rocks and canyons turned out to not be, just a boring bus ride. There was plenty of unexpected entertainment seeing a 9 year or old boy about 7 rows in front of me leaning over his chair and expel about a few liters of vomit on the floor.

The people across the aisle handed the mom some toilet paper for the boys face but as for the vomit…it just sat there on the floor, untouched for the remaining 3 hours of our bus journey. It was extremely fluid as it would go up and down the aisle…as I was sitting there with a big smile. Today I was happy that I was at the back of the bus, next to the typical bad located seats besides the toilets and even happier that my nose is not very functional…except to breath.