Big Jesus, Big Falls, Big Steaks
KEYS to South America, circa 2006
I decided this morning that I need to give something extra to my paid subscribers to reward them for giving me money. But I don’t want to put up a paywall or in any way alienate the unpaid subscribers who comprise the vast majority of my readership and include, my relatives. So it has to be something that nobody actually wants.
So here’s what I’m doing. For the next some amount of time, I am going to occasionally post chapters from my never-published, never even put on the internet account of my 2006 voyage South America Big Jesus, Big Falls big steaks, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post. If you like my writing about travel badly enough to read 18 year-old travel writing, become a paid subscriber. If not, don’t. If you are related to me and resent that I am asking for money, check your inbox, I sent this to all of you in 2006.
Introduction
I was lonely and bored, and my life had gone off in an unexpected and unattractive direction. In the spring of 2006, as I approach the completion of my third decade on this Earth, I broke up with my girlfriend of five years. With my twenties nearly over, my personal life unstable and my dating prospects hampered by the fact that I was living with my mother, I needed to do something rash. Continuing to date the mental health professionals who seemed to be the only women, who would respond to my internet personal, was not an adequate source of entertainment. Forlorn, weary and if not desperate, at least agitated and isolated, I decided to apply a lesson, the only lesson, I have ever learned from Nazi war criminals; when times are tough, flee to South America.
But South America is a big place full of big countries and choosing where to go in the 18 days I could absent myself from work was a treacherous decision. Traveling through Bolivia and Peru, hiking the Inca trail seemed appealing, but my girlfriend and I had been talking about taking that trip for years. Choosing to pursue it alone would put a period on our relationship that I was not quite ready to etch. Thus, after careful review of options that would take me throughout the southern continent, I made my decision on a simple criterion, which route would take me to the most countries.
I am a country whore, the sort of traveler who counts borders crossed the way politicians count votes. This was not always the case. As a child, the travel goals I had set for my life were setting foot in six continents and all 50 U.S. states. Today, I have reached five continents yet my 34 countries visited far exceeds the 29 states. And, I suspect I may never reach all 50 states, particularly if I renounce the cowardly practice of counting airport layovers, which has given me Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Missouri. After all, why would I squander precious vacation time on North Dakota while Chad and Guyana and Turkmenistan remain unvisited?
I settled on a tour that I though was run by Intrepid Tours, an agency a friend had used for a vacation to Thailand that marketed itself as adventure tourism, a low cost option for backpackers. It turned out that Intrepid had almost nothing to do with the trip, save doing my booking. Once they had my money, they shunted me off to their strategic partner GAP Adventures, which has a much stronger South American presence.
