Potato Chips Around the World

I don't know about you, but potato chips are my personal crack cocaine. Once I open a bag, I just can't stop until I'm finished. Small, little personal sized bag. . . right on up to the mega-Wal-Mart sized ones. They are bad, bad things.

Back home, I had pretty much eliminated them from my diet. After doing some reading up on some food basics, I had taken out almost all processed foods (and fast food) from my life. I am of the firm belief that both of them are so packed full of chemicals and other stuff that is horrible for you that we are all just slowly killing ourselves with the food we eat.

Try as I might though, I have broken down a few times on the road and bought a bag or two of potato chips, only when getting something to munch on for a long bus or train ride, but since there have been so many of those -- have had a few chips (or apparently 'crisps' as much of the world calls them).

One of the fascinating things on the road is how products that we are used to from back home are slightly different around the world. Potato chips being a good example. Back in the U.S., we've got our regular chips, BBQ flavor, sour cream and onion flavored, and a few others. It is one of the few things in the food area where I have seen more variety outside the U.S. than inside.

Here are a few of the different flavors I've seen on the road:

Nori seaweed, spicy seafood, hot chili squid, supreme sausage pizza, barbecue max, and kimchi hot plate flavor (all in Thailand). Ham flavored (South America). Ketchep flavored (Europe). Mushrooms and sour cream (Russia).

For the fellow travelers out there -- tell me which ones you have seen. And tried. Some of these varieties just sound awful to me. I've tried a few. . . with not good results.

Texan in Vietnam

In Hoi An, Vietnam there is a restaurant written up in all of the guidebooks I have seen called Café des Amis. It’s run by a Vietnamese owner/chef named Mr. Kim, who by his own proclamation has “the best food in Hoi An.”

There is no menu. You have a choice of vegetarian, seafood or meat. Once you choose what general variety of food you want for the evening, you get a three or four course meal of whatever Mr. Kim is serving for that evening. No options. No changes. And you have no idea what you are going to get until it hits the table. As a bonus, Mr. Kim or one of the other servers also shows you how to eat each course (chopsticks with one, spoon with another, chilies on this one, etc.). My dinner wasn’t that fabulous, but the entertainment value was high. By the way, the set cost for my dinner and beer was about $7 U.S. dollars.

Mr. Kim also has about 12-14 books that are stacked out front at the table Mr. Kim sits at soliciting prospective patrons that walk by his waterfront location. His pitch is two-fold: “best food in Hoi An” and “where are you from?”

“Where are you from?” is one of those lines that you get used to hearing in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Almost everyone asks you: shop owners, hawkers at the local market, tuk-tuk drivers, or kids begging. Once you say “the United States” or “Germany” or “Japan,” invariably whoever has asked you is able to say something in your native language and give you some fact about where you are from. It annoys some people, but I think it is very a creative and ingenious way to try to get you to stop and talk.

Mr. Kim’s “where are you from” pitch comes with a very unique twist. I told him I was from the U.S. He asked where in the U.S. and I said Texas – I find it a lot easier to just say Texas, rather than Arkansas, because so few people know where Arkansas is. He nodded and walked away to his books. About three minutes later he came back with one of the books and put it down on my table. The books are full of comments from previous customers raving about the food and Mr. Kim has an almost photographic memory of the home locations of everyone that has written in them. He’d opened one of the books to a comment from someone that signed from Dallas and went on and on about how great the food was. I read it and flipped through the rest of the book slowly, reading comments from people all over the world. A few minutes later, he brought me another book with another comment from someone from Texas.

Priceless.




In case you can’t read it too well, let me retype it in its entirety:


“While on business in Da Nang, I made the short trek to Café des Amis on the recommendation of my fiancée-to-be, an ever so-slightly voluminous Swede who knows a thing or two about inconspicuous consumption. In any event, although the much vaunted ‘Goat Cheese Sandwich’ wasn’t on offer today, the four-course seafood outlay was simply spectacular. Morever – miracle upon miracles – I actually enjoyed a Tiger beer served at something appreciably less than ambient temperature.”

I am a typical guy in a quite a number of respects. One of those is my love for quoting various movie lines at a frequency that seems to discourage my ability to find a woman that will put up with me. In this case, let me go with a classic from “The Princess Bride. . .” 'I don’t think that word means what you think that word means.'

You think his girlfriend – and what the hell is “fiancée-to-be” mean?? – would like to be described as “voluminous?" As my good friend, Ken Kendrick, would likely chime in at this point – “yes, quite Rubenesque.” And conspicuous consumption, inconspicuous consumption – guess that’s about the same thing. “Seafood outlay??” “Ambient temperature??” Really?

Such an effort to impress with one’s linguistic skills. I got the feeling that this particular individual was proud of their excellent college education and wanted to make sure that everyone else that read this particular comment would be impressed also. This was all verified when you scrolled down to his signature:


Get your guns up! Go Red Raiders!

Lesson learned. . .again

Sometimes you have to relearn life lessons over and over before they stick with you. Yesterday, with my good friend David Roberts (who was nice enough to come join me for about a week on my trip), we both relearned one of the classics.

Always, always ask how much something is before ordering/buying/getting in and so on.

Dave's trip to Egypt was a whirlwind tour. Fly into Luxor. We hit the sights there for a couple days. Overnight train to Cairo. Hit the sights here for a couple days. Then he flies home to the wife and kids. . . and moves back to the States in less than a month. Lots on his plate.

Luxor was really, really good. More on that in another blog. The train was quite nice. And Cairo has been more than expected also. Egypt, so far, has been a huge hit with the both of us. I'm a big fan -- and didn't expect to be.

So, the train arrived two days ago around 6:30 a.m. We went and found our hostel. Checked in. Rested for a few hours. Then went and hit the Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum.

The Pyramids are big. There is no other way to describe them. Yes, you've seen pictures. No, you have no good idea of how big they are, until you are standing there. Big. That's all that can be said. Just looking at them, everyone -- everyone -- sits there and thinks the same thing: "how fricking much time/effort/stone/people went into these monstrosities?!"

And my pictures are pretty poor. Really heavy smog the morning we went. Sorry.



You aren't allowed to take pictures in the Egyptian Museum, but it was much better than what I'd read in various guidebooks. Most comment on how little English signage there is on the exhibits, but seriously, how much do you want? There are little cards on most of the exhibits that give you 3-4 sentences on the object. It wasn't like we were there studying up for some Egyptology exam. And the exhibits were great.

At the Pyramids, you'd look up and say "big." At the museum, you look around and say "old." Really old.

Yes, I'm using all my big words today in this blog.

Now on to the life lesson. On Dave's last day, we decided to walk over to the Islamic section of town. We wanted to wander around, take pictures, eat a bit of local food and perhaps have some coffee or tea. Its a really nice part of Cairo. We got a smidge lost trying to find it and milled about aimlessly in some series of small alleys, which was a market section of town, but eventually we found what we were looking for.



After walking around a bit, we found a little street vendor for some food. Both Dave and I are always up for some street food (plus, I'd just gotten over my 72 hour bad stomach/adjustment to local food and water, so I was immune to anything possibly bad happening). We walked up to one of the guys cooking some sort of bean-type food and asked for "food." We got three or four bowls of stuff, plus a bunch of bread. It was obviously a place that only locals ate. When we walked up, the guy said "no Coke" before we said anything. He'd assumed we just wanted to buy a Coke out of his refrigerator and seemed quite surprised that we actually wanted food.

Good, filling meal. Cost = 2 Egyptian pounds total. That's less than fifty cents.

Then we got up and wandered around some more. We ended up walking by another guy cooking some falafel around the corner. We were pretty stuffed, but the guy got Dave to stop and try a free sample of the falafel. He loved it. I tried it. It was the best I've ever had. Dave said the same thing.

The guy asked if we wanted to get some. Absolutely. I tried to order a half dozen of the falafel balls. And then everything went downhill.

The guy waved us off and essentially said, don't worry. I will bring you food. He set up a table specially for us, right across from his little shop, in the alley. He then proceeded to bring out a feast of food -- considering we'd eaten, there was no way at all we were going to be able to finish it.

The major problem was that we never asked how much it was. Maybe we were still thinking about the two pound meal. Maybe the heat had gotten to the both of us. Maybe we were just on one of those traveler's highs, because people had been so friendly the last couple days. Maybe we were smitten by the falafel.

I don't know, but you never, never, ever get anything without asking the cost. We should have known better.

In the end, we ate about a third of the food, somehow. He wanted 110 Egyptian pounds for it. More than the dinner we had in a nice place the night before. And don't even let me think about how much more than the meal we just ate. We got him down to 90, which was at least triple what a moderately reasonable price would have been, paid it and walked away pissed off at ourselves.

If you see this guy in Cairo -- keep walking. Arrrggggggg.


And I've explained this before, but its a strange concept, so I'll do it again. Its not the money. 90 pounds split between Dave and I was about $8 U.S. dollars each. Its just that we got ripped off. Totally because we were stupid. It can ruin your mood for hours or even days.

Thirty minutes later, it all turned. I saw a kid on the street selling underwear. I needed some more boxer shorts (don't ask). I asked him how much they were and he said ten pounds. I asked if I could have two for fifteen. He asked Dave and I were we were from. We told him we were both from America. He lit right up and asked us some questions about the U.S. He was justifiably proud of his English, which was really good.

Then he told me that I could have the two pair for just 10 pounds -- although I was offering 15.

After I bought them -- he wanted his picture taken with Dave and I. Not on his camera. He didn't have one. On mine. Just to have his picture taken with us.

Faith in life restored.

more random notes -- Ethiopia

Scroll down and read the blog underneath this one if you haven’t already. Its from one of my new ‘blog friends’ and its quite good. I’m negotiating to be her agent for the bestselling book she’s certain to write – except she’s also a lawyer. Damn luck. I’ll never figure out my next career. And after you are done reading hers. . . back to mine.

My blog exists for a few different purposes. It is a very convenient way for me to keep family and friends informed about what I am up to, and what I am seeing, on my trip. It is also a form of note keeping for me. I have a journal that I am keeping notes in, but the blog, and the pictures I have uploaded, serve as a sort of literary insurance, in case my backpack and journal are eventually pinched from me. With that in mind, I’ve had more than a few of these ‘random thoughts’ blogs. Here comes another.

• My week or so in Addis Ababa is the first time I have ever been anywhere during a true rainy season. From the end of June to mid-September, it is the ‘long rain’ season in this part of Ethiopia. They get over half of their year’s total rainfall in these months. Every single afternoon I have been in Addis, it starts raining sometime around one or two for a few hours. It is amazing in its consistency. One quickly gets in the habit of doing any errands needing to be done in the morning, eating lunch, and then making sure that you are in a place that you don’t mind waiting the rain out in the afternoon, before reemerging for dinner after sundown.

I love the rain. I have for as long as I can remember. It has always meant life to me. Water is such a crucial ingredient for all life, at least here on our planet, which is the only one I’m personally familiar with so far. Every time it rains, for some reason, the thought that life is soon to flourish goes through my mind. Now, I understand that in some places in the world, the overabundance of rainfall brings much tragedy, but I suppose I’ve yet to experience that, so it’s easy enough for me to rationalize away.

Thunderstorms are an added bonus. There is something about the power and the fury of it all that fascinates me. Plus, I think its one of the most romantic states of nature. The sound of the rain, furiously beating down on roofs, pavement, and trees. The flash of lighting on a dark night – lighting up the sky for a brief moment – the streaks of the electricity connecting sky with earth. The variety of sound that thunder brings – the low rumble that lasts for seconds – the sharp, whip-snap sound of a lighting burst close by – being able to judge its distance by its volume. One of the single most romantic nights I’ve yet spent in my life was on a covered back porch, overlooking the Arkansas River, at about 9 p.m., as a powerful thunderstorm blew in from the west and quickly overtook Little Rock. What a wonderful night.

• Ethiopian food is pretty good. Much better than the fare that I had during my stay in Kenya. They actually use spices here, which is welcomed. It has been quite a few miles since I’ve been anywhere where food has that good, spicy flavor that opens your senses. Perhaps since Zanzibar.

Most Ethiopian meals are some sort of spiced meat (beef or lamb/mutton being the most common) that is then served in a pile in the middle of a very large pancake-like substance called injera. Its not bread exactly. Nor is it a pancake, as we in the States would recognize it. It’s always served cold and has a slightly sour and vinegary taste and a bit of a rubbery texture. You tear off pieces of the injera and use it to eat whatever the main dish is, with your right hand only of course (we all know what we use our left hands for). The injera isn’t one of my all-time favorites, but once you get used to it, it’s fine. The main dishes that you are mopping up with it though have usually been quite good and more than make up for any shortcomings of the injera.



• This comment is clearly going to come back and haunt me in the bad karma department, since I am hoping my third career is going to be writing (and getting paid for it): I have become semi-addicted to pirated DVDs.

Every time I buy one, I think to myself “none of this money is going to the people that invested time and money into creating this product,” but I can’t stop. There are plenty of times on the road that I don’t feel like reading – though my tally of books read lies somewhere around 25 so far – or I don’t feel like meeting new people to talk with - or don’t really feel like doing anything that remotely involves my brain being switched on.

In those times, its really nice to have seasons 1-3 of Boston Legal and seasons 1-4 of Two and Half Men to vegetate over. Through trial and error I have learned that it is best to buy television shows and skip over the DVDs with a dozen movies on them.

Though, I have bought a couple of the movie DVDs. The “Mafia Movie Collection” is staring at me right now. Godfather parts I, II and III. OK, that makes perfect sense for this collection. Scarface. Ditto. Dog Day Afternoon? Hmmmmm. OK, close enough. The Insider? My friends in various Attorney General’s offices that sued the tobacco industry would be amused to see them included in the Mafia collection. But also on this DVD. . . Scent of a Woman and Any Given Sunday.

I suppose that anything Al Pacino stars in is eligible for a Mafia collection.

These DVDs all seem to originate from China (and I’m now a hypocritical, but full supporter of cracking down on China for intellectual property violations now). My favorite pirate company is one called “AK-47 Productions.” Not only do I like the name – their quality seems the best of the ones I’ve seen so far.

<----- I’ve watched a lot of Boston Legal – anyone ever seen this guy even appear in a single episode, let alone as one of the stars?

Some of the descriptions of the shows on the backs of these packages are written in understandable English. And then there is this description of season three of Boston Legal:

“Boston Legal ABC is the highlight of The practice fringe series, it gives us Alan Shore for a law firm in the course of the story, and how the case. Story on a Boston senior counsel, based mainly in civil cases. These intelligent agent must deal with the law allows them to do and how to combat them not to do so. When basically try, they will be faced with social and moral issues. This is a series of intricate sense of humour to the story of how we have to?”

Seriously, who wouldn’t immediately pick them up off the shelf and buy it. . . for about $2.

If I had to choose between that season and season one – how could I?

“Alan Shore and Denny Crane (Emmy winner by James Spader and William Shatner playing) are good incomes, lawyers Crane Poole & Schmidt team a rare friend. Partner Shirley Schmidt (five Emmy winners as Canice Bergen) in the fourth quarter will continue to reorganize the chaotic office administration problem. Alertness of her eyes, take care of all firms, especial by Denny Crane. It is said that the two had had a love-hate concubine.”

And no, I didn’t mistype any of that. Perhaps my next career is writing legible ad copy for Chinese DVD pirates.

It’s a bit sad that I’m now giving advice on the best pirated DVDs to buy, but I might as well close the circle and finish the thought. The problem with the movie collection DVDs is that they are usually made by taking a camcorder into a movie theater and recording. The lighting is horrible. The sound is pathetic. And occasionally, someone will stand up in front of you and go get popcorn (or start coughing loudly next to you). Or the camcorder operator will accidentally turn off the camcorder for a while and the movie will just skip forward a random half-hour. With the television shows, the quality of the recording is usually good, although a reasonable percentage of the DVDs you buy will be partly corrupted, so that you can’t watch all the episodes on your computer.

Now that being said, if I actually get a book published . . . go pay full retail and buy it in the store. And buy one for a friend.

Dinner tab in Livingstone, Zambia

So the dinner tab last night for the remaining 10 people on the eight day safari I just finished was $862,000. Almost thought it was going to be the first million dinner tab that I was ever involved in.

The $862,000 here is in the Zambian currency, which is the kwacha. Right now, you get about 5,000 kwacha for every U.S. dollar. My cab ride back from town today was $30,000. Yesterday's internet cafe bill was $27,000. It makes me chuckle every time I get a bill.

What is also interesting here is that just about every place takes a variety of different currencies in payment. You can pay your bill in South African rands (600 to 1), Botswana pula (700 to 1), US dollars, or Euros (6,500 to 1), or of course, kwachas. Or any combination thereof, which lead to an interesting bill payment last night.

Everyone took a look at the bill and got an idea of what they owed. I usually hate dealing with bills this way -- I'd much prefer everyone just paying 1/10th of the bill in this case -- but whatever. And then everyone starting throwing money into the pile, which I was assigned to sort out. Not sure why I was the choice -- I went to law school partly because I can't do math.

Thank goodness the bills here also usually come with a calculator.

Into the pile went 200 South African rand, 27,000 kwachas, and $55 U.S. dollars. The last three people needed to pay their portions on a credit card. I did the math a few times and came up with about 442,000 kwatcha that we had in cash and the credit card payments made up the balance nicely. Of course this all took about a half hour to sort out.

It was compounded by Wulf, a 71 year old German on the trip (much more on him in a longer safari blog soon) insisting that his bill was 135 South African rand. He only had two 100-rand notes. The restuarant couldn't make change for him in rand and he militantly refused to take back kwatcha in change. None of the other people in our group could change one of his notes in rand either. I eventually talked him into putting one of his 100 rand notes in the till and pretending that someone else lent him the balance -- because he wouldn't just let us cover the 35 rand difference. "That is RIDICULOUS!! I owe 135 rand and will pay my bill!!"

35 rand is about $4 U.S. dollars.

Gotta go -- this stop at the internet cafe is going to cost me tens of thousands. . .

Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

After hanging out for a few days in Montevideo, Uruguay’s somewhat sleep capital, I got talked into going to the tiny beach town of Cabo Polonio by a couple Aussies and a Kiwi. I had been hanging out with Liz, an Aussie, for a few days and she had heard about it from a couple other people when she was coming south from Brasil. The night before we left, we ran into Dave and Ben, each a chef from New Zealand and Australia respectively. We all had some beers at our hostel in Montevideo and they also said they had heard great things about Cabo Polonio and wanted to head there tomorrow.

That is basically how destination plans are made on the road, when you don’t make advance reservations. Intricate. Complicated. Well researched.

The three of them decided to leave on the 9 a.m. bus up the coast. I still had to pick up my Brasilian passport at the consulate sometime that morning, so I told them I would try to meet them there later than night or the next day.

I ended up managing to get a bus leaving at 1:30 that afternoon. It was supposed to take about four and a half hours, but because we made a number of additional stops, it ended up taking more like six hours. By the time we got to the bus stop, it was dark.

This normally wouldn’t be a problem at all, but Cabo Polonia is a bit of a unique destination. First, the bus doesn’t drop you off in town; it drops you off by the side of the highway at a gas station. From there, you are supposed to get a ride on a souped-up pickup truck with large tires capable of taking you over the sand dunes to the town, about 4-5 kilometers away. Second, there is almost no electricity at all in town – more on that in a second.

I knew both of these situations before I took off, but I was getting increasingly nervous after five hours or so that I might have missed my bus stop. At one of the stops, I got off and showed my destination on ticket to the bus driver unloading other passengers’ luggage. He didn’t speak English, but through hand signals, he assured me that my stop was still further down the road. My only other concern was whether the trucks ran people to the town from the gas station after dark. I assumed so, since there was scheduled bus service to there, but I wasn’t in the mood to sleep on a bench that night (or any night, really).

We got there, the bus driver called out “Cabo Polonio” loudly, smiling in my direction, and I hopped off the bus with another couple, which made me feel better about my chances of getting to town. It turns out that the truck service runs until 10 or 11 at night or so and there was a truck parked out front already half-loaded with others going to town. We bought our ticket, through our stuff into the truck bed, pulled ourselves up and got a seat.

The truck took off down a dirt/sand road towards the ocean. Through a guard station (its illegal for anyone to take any private vehicles out to the area, even residents) and then down series of roads through and past groves of trees and sand dunes. It was pitch-black, so the only things you could see were illuminated by the headlights of the truck. After ten minutes, the headlights provided a sight of the beach, accompanied sound of waves crashing.

Still not a light or building in sight. We drove down the beach for a bit and off in the distance you could see a lighthouse light sweeping around. Eventually, you also could see some small lights coming from what must have been buildings, about a dozen or so. As we got closer, some more lights became visible, but it was quite obvious this was going to be a different experience.

The truck eventually stopped in must have been the center of town, though you really couldn’t see a thing, because everyone got off. I had the name of the hostel that my friends were supposed to meet me at, but no idea of where it was in town. I asked the couple that had gotten on the truck at the same time as me whether they knew where they were staying tonight and they said they didn’t know. Some local approached the truck and told the couple that he had a place to stay (there are 3-4 small hostels here, but for the most part, you just rent one of the small houses from locals) and they turned to follow him. I was still asking people if they knew the way to the hostel I was looking for, Cabo Polonio Hostel. I asked the truck driver and he pointed off in the direction that the couple had walked off to.

Problem was that they had about a 50-yard head start and I couldn’t see them at all. I through my backpack on and took off at a fast walk trying to find them. . . and immediately tripped over a small little sand bump in front of me, face first into the ground, backpack somehow going up over my shoulders and head and almost pulling me over with it. An almost-full 180˚, with a half twist. The Russian judge only gave me a 6.2.

I got organized and took off after them again. My feet telling me I was walking down some sort of sand road. Hopefully able to remain upright. I caught sight of the local guy’s flashlight and caught up to them a few minutes later. The couple was looking at the local’s place (it turned out to be a small hostel) and I frantically went through my backpack with their flashlight looking for mine.

Knowing I was going to a town with no electricity, this item would have been a good one to put at the top of my pack. Once again, my planning skills shine.

The couple came back, said they were going to look at some other places, starting with the hostel next door. We walked over to the place and met the owner, a nice French-Canadian guy named Henri. There were 7-8 people, but none of my friends, eating dinner by candlelight on the front porch out front. As I continued to try to find my flashlight, the couple decided to move on. I asked Henri where the Cabo Polonio Hostel was and he said this was the place. As my friends weren’t there and the place looked much smaller than the pictures on the internet, I doubted it, but I needed to crash somewhere that night. I took a bed there for the night.

Henri showed me to my room and I dropped off my pack. I had finally found my flashlight by this point. He apologized and said that they had already cooked all the food for the night, so I couldn’t eat there, but there were some places to eat in town. He pointed off in the direction I came from and I walked back into the main part of town and found a spot to eat.

Though I had a flashlight, navigating even a small little town like in complete darkness was in interesting challenge on the way back, especially because I hadn’t had the chance to see the basic layout of everything during the day. I found my way back to the general location of the hostel and was guided the final bit of the way by the light of a television from the porch area.

Everyone was watching a movie playing on a 42 inch flat screen TV that was suspended over the end of the table by a jury-rigged system of ropes, tied into the ceiling. The TV was running on generator power and they were watching the DVD of “Wall-E.”

The next day, I woke up and stumbled out for breakfast. In the light of day, I verified that indeed this was the Cabo Polonio Hostel, as there was a large sign on the back side of the building proclaiming as such.

From Cabo Polonio

From Cabo Polonio

I think this means something like, "Freedom or Death."

I was the only one up and as I had coffee and toast with Henri, I complimented him on his place and told him I was surprised that he had a television here, since he didn’t have a regular source of power.

“O’. That’s not my TV.”
“Huh? Who’s is it?”
“Its Denis’ TV. One of the guests here. He brought it with him.”

Over the next couple days, I pieced the following together. Denis was from Montreal. The first time I asked him about the TV, he simply said he leaving in a few days and taking it back to Montreal for his kids. That confused me a little bit, because I didn’t figure that you would be able to get some great deal on televisions in South America – at least a deal worth carrying a large TV around with you on vacation.

I then figured that he was a regular visitor here, since he and the owner were French Canadian, and that knowing he was going to stay at this hostel for a few weeks, he just bought the TV at his last major town, so that they’d have some additional entertainment while here and then he’d just take it home, since he wanted a new TV back there anyway. So the next breakfast, I asked Henri if Denis was a friend of his from back home or a regular visitor.

“No. I have never met him before.” I asked what the story was about the TV. He said he wasn’t sure, but that Denis had showed up a couple weeks ago and after a day or two, asked if he could go back to his rental car and get his TV. He had been driving down to Uruguay from Brasil in a rental car and had the TV in the backseat. Henri told him that was fine and they then rigged up the rope harness for it. Henri didn’t know anything more than that. For what it is worth, he said he’d also never seen anything like it – though he didn’t seem nearly as intrigued as I was about this odd situation.

That might have something to do with Henri’s general outlook on life, probably best expressed each morning as we each began the day. We both started the day with coffee, toast and jam. He added to that hand rolling a good-sized morning joint, always nicely offering it to me after he took a few hits off it.

He was a very relaxed guy.

I had to ask Denis just a few more follow-up questions on the question of the TV. Later, I asked him when and where he had bought it. He looked at me strangely, as if the answer was obvious, and said “Montreal, about two years ago.” I thought it best to stop there, because I wanted to savor the incongruity of it all, without knowing for certain any more definite answers – though my imagination couldn’t have been any better than the reality.

He had brought a television down from Montreal for a couple month holiday in South America. He rented a car and didn’t have any definite plans on where he was going to go, but apparently he thought he might need a television somewhere along the way.

Luckily, he had stumbled upon Cabo Polonio. The road is rarely predictable and never boring.

From Cabo Polonio

The famous Canadian television.

From Cabo Polonio

The non-TV entertainment area.

So, if you want no distraction relaxation, Cabo Polonio is your spot, especially in the off-season, as when I was there. Here is a full list of your entertainment options during your stay here: work on a tan, walk on the beach, nap in a hammock, read, talk and drink. You can mix a few of those up and do them at the same time also.

At night, you can add to that list seeing more stars that you have ever seen in your lifetime – and maybe watching a movie on DVD, if there is a guy from Montreal visiting town.

During the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, December through February, it fills up a bit more with tourists. There are even some bars and restaurants that are only open for those few months. As we walked around town, we saw the shells of locations that get filled out with those places in the high season.

By the middle of March, the place had reverted to its sleepy form. I doubt there were 30 other tourists there.

Five of them were the people I hung out with for three days and two nights. I ran into Liz walking past my hostel the next morning on the way to the beach. She and Dave and Ben had rented a small house about 50 yards away from my hostel. She said they were partying so hard the night before, she was surprised I couldn’t hear them from my place.

Liz is from Western Australia, Perth to be particular about it. She was a travel agent back home and saved up some money to travel, quit her job, and flew to South America. She’d done Carnival and six weeks in Brasil, a bit of Buenos Aires, and was now back up in Uruguay. She was heading back down to BA for a bit and had a flight in a few weeks from there to Miami, where she was meeting a mate flying over from Australia for a Caribbean cruise. Then the two of them had a flight to Panama City and she had about six weeks to get from there to Las Vegas overland to meet another mate coming over. The problem was that she only had about $3,000 U.S for those two months. The flights were part of a round-the-world ticket, so they were paid for and the cruise was all-inclusive and paid for, but the six weeks from Panama City to Las Vegas were going to be interesting. She has promised to keep in touch and I am going to make her write up an occasional blog to post here with updates on how she is managing. From Vegas -- her round-the-world ticket was a bit strange -- she had to get back to Miami, fly to New York City, then she was meeting her sister somewhere in Quebec. Her sister is working in Canada and Liz is going to try to work there for a while, save up some more money and continue her trip in Europe.

Dave and Ben were the Kiwi and Aussie from the hostel in Montevideo. They were both trained and experienced chefs. Dave had spent parts of the last three years cooking on exclusive private yachts that went all over the place. Ben was going to make his first effort to latch onto a ship with Dave’s help and connections. They were headed to Spain after a few more months in South America, to catch the summer boating season in the Mediterranean. Both had been to culinary school and had about ten years experience cooking in various restaurants – and is almost always the case for Aussies and Kiwis I have met on the road, incredibly cool.

The chances of me not staying in New Zealand at the end of this trip lessen with each Kiwi I meet.

The afternoon that I coming in on the bus, they got there early and meet up with Mel and Marissa, another Aussie and Kiwi, and as is par for the course on the road, all seemingly become fast friends in one night. They both deserve a longer summary, but here is the short version for each: Mel was an Aussie with a perfectly lilting Aussie accent; Marissa was a stunning, auburn-haired Kiwi architect who had been working recently in London. Fun, interesting, beautiful – and there is just something about those accents. I wish that accent attraction worked in reverse, but I’ve yet to met anyone that says an American accent is sexy.

I was lucky enough to crash on in on their house parties the next couple of nights, though I always felt slightly like an outsider or intruder, because they had bonded so well.

Or I might have felt awkward because of how mind-numbingly drunk I got on the first night at their place. Ben had caught some 24-hour bug (Dave got it the next day and thankfully, none of the rest of us got it at all), so he slept through the entire day and night. Dave had decided he wanted to cook on an open fire for all of us. He tried to find some local fresh fish and surprisingly couldn’t find any. He settled for some great looking lamb and beef.

I wandered over to their place around four that afternoon and helped him (mostly watched, but put in a small enough effort to perhaps entitle me to that word – at least because I am the one writing the summary) make a roaring fire in a fire pit next to their house. Of course, we started drinking then, as manly men doing our parts as modern-day Prometheuses. By the time, Dave was feed the fire a few times and then let it simmer down into a healthy bed of coals, I already had quite a buzz on. I actually haven’t been drinking too much on this trip – much less than at home – so I am going to blame being out of practice. The girls arrived around sundown, when Dave was about ready to put the meat on the fire.

From Cabo Polonio

From Cabo Polonio

He grilled up the beef and lamb, did some sweet potatoes and regular potatoes up inside on the stove. Wine. Beer. It was a feast. Probably the best meal I had eaten in weeks.

After dinner the true drinking began, along with a game garnered to elicit some interesting drunken opinions: Shag, Marry, Kill. Someone came up with three people and you had to declare which one you would have sex with, which one you would marry, and which one was to die. I must say that Oprah, Rosanne and Queen Elizabeth stumped me for a bit. Obviously Rosanne must die, but the other two choices?! On the other side of the scale, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Charlize Theron and was difficult in the opposite respect. For the ladies, Heath Ledger (we were well into fantasy world at this point), Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe was quite the stumper.

I don’t remember the last few hours of the evening at all, except for a burst of extreme flatulence at one point – yes, I was on my game that evening. That may have been the point we decided to exit the small house and wander about town. I was quite happy to wake up the next day still with my camera in my possession. At least I didn’t leave it somewhere. And with a hangover commensurate with my evening’s level of debauchery (I love the definition of that from the thesaurus on this computer, “unrestrained self-indulgent behavior, or an instance of this.” Ahhhhh, that’s the word).

When I told my new friends I was going to blog a summary of the three days at Cabo Polonio, they made me promise to not give the following summary and use the term “typical Aussies and Kiwis.” And I won’t.

At the end of the three nights, there was a pile of empty bottles at the house. 24 bottles of wine. Two bottles of Bacardi (though one was not completely empty). One bottle of Cachaça, used to make Caipirinhas. And 15 or so bottles of liter-sized beer, though I think we had either returned some of the beer bottles to the store or thrown them out somewhere.

They all said that the first night, before I met up with them, was the biggest party of the three nights. I was happy I hadn’t found them that night – I don’t know if I would have survived another.

I will say “typical Aussies and Kiwis” in this regard – the five of them were some of the nicest, most interesting, and fun people I’d met in four months on the road. I hope it is not the last time I see any of them. In fact, while Dave was cooking and I was quizzing him about his experiences cooking on yachts, I made him promise to hire me on as a sous chef at some point in the future. He said he might be OK with that, but I’d have to give him half of my wages as a finder’s fee for the job.

I think I might be good with that.

From Cabo Polonio

The usual television at the hostel

From Cabo Polonio

View of town

From Cabo Polonio

Cow chilling on the beach

From Cabo Polonio

The way into town.

From Cabo Polonio

Main Street

Rio

The MOL Wish docked in Rio de Janeiro before breakfast and after everything cleared immigration and customs, we had more than a half-day to explore the city. It is vast and huge megacity, with well over 7 million people in metropolitan area. The shipping agent set Alan and Cricket Jones and me up with a car and driver for the day, for $40 each. Pretty good price to get driven around all-day and taken where you want. He first drove us to the large football stadium in the middle of town, the Maracana, where the four – yes, four different, major football teams for one city – four teams play their games. I suppose it was the first stop on the tour because he was Brasilian. . . and their priority is, no doubt about it at all, football. We then went off to the top of the mountain with the famous statute of Christ overlooking Rio, Christ the Redeemer. It took ten years to make and quite surprisingly, there were no major accidents or injuries during construction. It is made out of poured concrete and covered with soapstone. It was completed in 1931, after nine years of construction. From the road below, you take a 20-minute trolley car ride up to the peak or take a taxi all the way to the top, which is 710 meters high. It is huge. And quite impressive. Not only up close, but also from the various places in the city that you can see it.

What surprised me when we got up there was how mountainous the immediate surroundings of Rio are. There are a variety of mountains that rise up from sea level to 200-300 meters strewn all over the place. From the top of Corcovado, the hill that the statute sits atop, you can see and entire city and its various beaches spread out before you. It is a truly beautiful sight. Off to your right is Ipanema beach, famous for the song ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’ To its immediate left is Copacabana beach, one of the most famous in the world. Unfortunately, as I have the uncontrollable jute box in my head, it almost goes without saying that I had that damn Barry Manilow song in my head all day. Then left of that is a 300-meter tall mountain that frames the entrance of the harbor and then Flamengo beach off to its left. The beaches seem to stretch as far as your eye can see. They basically take up almost every inch of shoreline of Rio. And they are deep – I’d say that all of the beaches are at least 100 meters deep, perhaps more. There aren’t any buildings that obstruct your view of the beaches and the ocean from the main road that follows the shoreline. The buildings are on the inland side of the road, then the road, then a walking and biking path, then the beaches. It is quite spectacular. From Corcovado, our driver then took us down past the major beaches. We got out and took some pictures. I verified that Brasilian women wear the tiniest bikinis known to mankind (unfortunately, as is always the case at the beach, many of them should have been wearing more clothing). And we then ate lunch at an all-you-can-eat seafood place that was a total tourist joint. Great food. Massively overpriced. But so cheesy it was almost worth it. Flamboyantly gay waiter who called himself MacGyver, dressed in a pirate uniform, as all the wait staff was. He didn’t really walk around, it was more a combination saunter/shimmy/dance effort. Though the Jones’ live in San Francisco, even they were impressed. Knickknacks were tied up to the ceiling – chairs, old lamps, various ropes and such. Basically it was Pirates in the Caribbean. Alas, without Keira Knightley (or Johnny Depp, for you ladies out there).

On the way back, we had the driver stop by a supermarket, so we could buy some munchies and stuff to keep in our rooms for the 8-day ocean crossing we were embarking on that evening. In addition to some chips and crackers, I bought a 12 pack of beer for my refrigerator. I was unaware that bringing alcohol on board was a customs violation.


Our driver didn’t speak any English, but when we were putting our bags back into the car to head back to the ship, he grabbed the bag with the beer and put it under his seat. Then, in that sign language/part-real language thing that I’ve gotten moderately good at, he told me that we would have to sneak the beer past the security check points, so I didn’t get busted. I was hoping that the punishment for getting caught, after my pleading total ignorance of any knowledge of customs procedures, was merely going to be confiscation of the beer. I really didn’t want to think about any other alternative.

Of course, of the three ports I had been to on the MOL Wish, Rio was the only one so far that even minimally cared about security – those articles you have read about a fear of someone smuggling in a nuclear weapon through one of our ports?? Don’t know about the security when the ships get to the U.S. and off-load, but it didn’t seem to difficult to get anything on board out here. We pulled up to the first checkpoint and our driver immediately hopped out of the car with our passports. The security person asked him to open the trunk, took a quick look inside, took the passports in to the office and we were on our way in a couple minutes. The driver got back in, pointed to the truck and the beer under his seat, smiled and basically said, “see, I know what I am doing.” I agreed.

Next checkpoint was even faster and then we got to the last one, quite close to the ship. There were two security guys in a car parked there. We pulled up and our driver was obviously asking to take us the last couple hundred yards to the stairwell (which was located behind a couple 18 wheelers and out of sight of the security people for my unloading of the contraband). It was obvious that these two guys wanted nothing to do with that. His car was not authorized to go any further.

Our guy kept on in a conversation with the two security guys that I imagined went something like this: “Hey guy. You gotta drop them off here.”
“Come on guys, look at this lazy Americans. They don’t want to walk those 200 meters to their ship. Let me go.”
“Sorry. Rules are rules. This is as far as this car can go. Tell them to get off their pampered asses and walk. They are no better than anyone else having to follow the rules.”
“Guys, guys. I have been dragging them all through town for hours, pretending not to understand English while they prattled on about Rio, and their ship and traveling. I’ve played this perfect all day – my tip probably depends on this. If I have to drop them off now, it is going to cost me. Come on. 3 minutes. Do it for my wife and kids.”
“Christ, can you believe this guy Lennie?”
“Let him go George. What’s the difference to us? Hell, they might call their embassy and create an incident if we make them walk.”
“OK buddy -- 3 minutes. That’s it. And no way we are letting you carry their stuff up to the ship for them. They have to at least do that.”
“Ahhhhh. Thanks.”

And as I sit here and drink my Antarctica Cerveja Pilsen in my cabin typing this – I think this whole smuggling thing is quite worth it.



Cricket and Alan and on Copacabana (anyone recognize the last scene from ‘Fletch’?)

More Miscellaneous Travel Notes

• Generally, I’ve been pretty depressed by the state of coffee in South America. It is strange to me that there are excellent coffee growing regions all around – Brazil and Columbia in particular – but they still serve crap, instant coffee in so many places. When I took a coffee plantation tour in Panama, the tour guide referred to the low quality coffee beans drying on the ground (with stems, leaves and so on mixed in with them) as “Nescafe beans.”

I’m sick of Nescafe. Instant coffee sucks.

• While we are on the topic of coffee, I like just a small bit of cream or milk in mine. Just a small, little bit. The first few times I ordered coffee in Latin America, I saw “café con leche” on the menu. Leche is milk. I figured, “perfect, coffee with a little bit of milk or cream in it.” Ahhhh – not so much.

Coffee con leche is about a half and half mixture. About half milk and half coffee. And that’s a pretty horrible combination in my book. It reminded me somewhat of one of my roommates during freshman year of college, Dave Rubin.

We drank a lot of coffee that year. I suppose we thought that a few cups of coffee in the morning was some sort of sign of us finally becoming adults. One day I was doing the dishes and washed out a couple coffee mugs that Dave had used – and there was about a half inch of sugar at the bottom. I’d never noticed before, but he poured a ton of sugar in with every cup. “Would you like a little coffee with your sugar” became the roommates’ refrain to him every time he poured a cup.

He’d fit in well down here. They seem to like everything served sweet here. I’ve thrown away more than a half a dozen cups of coffee because they came to my table with sugar already in them.

By the way, if you want to order just plain, black coffee, its “café negro.”

• Sidenote story from freshman year in college. Before I went away to school, I only wanted three things from living away from home: (1) a liquor cabinet, (2) a kitchen, so I could cook for a dinner date -- and assumably impress the hell out of some woman -- and (3) the ability to stay up all night without answering to anyone.

Number 3 was a success. Too frequently. Number 1 existed, but was stocked with such horrible liquor that my father refused an offer of a drink the first time he visited. I don’t think I had a single date my freshman year of college, so number 2 was a bit of a failure. I did get to witness Dave screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich though – that was amusing.

• I love smoking cigars. Back at home, my cigar habit was getting to be somewhere in the five to ten cigar a week range. I really got to like a Nicaraguan cigar called Padron. They were smooth smokes and very reasonably priced – I could get a box of 25 of them for under $100.

As we all know, you can’t buy Cuban cigars legally in the U.S, because of the really stupid embargo on all things Cuban that has far outlived it usefulness, except in courting Cuban-American voters in Florida.

So I’ve been cigar shopping in a few places in Central and South America and the reverse problem appears to me here – you can ONLY buy Cuban cigars down here. And though I do love a nice Montecristo #2 occasionally, Cuban cigars are just way, way, way overpriced. I’m used to paying $3-4 for a cigar, not $12-18 per cigar.

So as a strange result of being in places where you can buy Cuban cigars . . . I am smoking very infrequently. I wouldn’t have figured on that.

• I’d say far less than half the time at the places I’m eating dinner there is salt and pepper on the table. That’s probably a good thing for me – I’m one of those people that habitually salts and peppers my food before even tasting it. As a cook, I know that is stupid, but I can’t seem to stop. In addition, especially in Central America, when they bring out salt and pepper – its salt . . . and then hot sauce not dry pepper, as we are used to.

• I mentioned in a previous blog about all the countries that the U.S. has either invaded or attempted to overthrow their government. There is a strange dichotomy, in my mind, of countries we screwed with and their choices of currency. Two countries stand out. We messed with Nicaragua famously for years, with the Contra War. Strangely enough, they have pegged their currency to the U.S. Dollar. Although they have a local currency, the Cordoba, its value is set against the U.S. Dollar – as our currency goes up or down in value, so exactly does the Cordoba. And although we invaded Panama a few decades ago and took out Noriega, their currency is the U.S. Dollar. The greenback is alive and well in the land of the canal.

If I was running these countries (and Daniel Ortega just go elected President of Nicaragua a couple years back – he of the Sandinista revolution and the target of the Contra War for all those years), I don’t know if I’d be happy having my country’s financial status tied so directly to the country that has screwed with us.

• Keeping with the theme of money, it is really, really nice to go to the ATM machine in some of these countries. In Chile, for example, one U.S. Dollar is worth about 600 Chilean pesos. This doesn’t mean much in terms of how much things actually cost (Chile is actually pretty expensive, compared to a lot of other places down here), but what is great is getting the receipt from the ATM machine showing your balance in pesos.

I’m a multi-millionaire in Chile, baby. Feels sooooo good.

• And on the topic of currency, did you ever wonder where all the Sacagawea dollars went to??

Ecuador. Ecuador is another country that uses the U.S. Dollar as its currency. But when you get change there, you often get the one dollar Sacagawea coins back. The first time I got one back, I did a double-take when I looked at it. They were issued in the U.S. in 2000 and 2001. I feel confident in saying that I’ve never seen a single one in circulation back home. I saw dozens of them in Ecuador.


I wonder if they just loaded up big cargo planes with all of those coins and sent them down to Quito. “Here you go boys. We aren’t using these things. Go crazy.”

• And lastly on the subject of change – NO ONE has change in South America. It is truly amazing how many times, when I hand over a 20 or 50 or 100 peso note, the person in the store asks if I have exact change for what I’m buying.

One night in Quito, Ecuador, I went out to a bar with three of the girls I was traveling with for a week or so. The bar was fairly crowded – I’d say there were 50 or so people in there, drinking and dancing. I went up to the bar to buy a beer. The beer was $3. I handed him a $10 bill and he shook his head and said “I can’t change that.”

It was a TEN dollar bill. In a bar, for God’s sake. A fairly crowded bar at about 10 p.m. How the hell can you run a business and not have two one dollar bills and one five dollar bill in the cash register?

Yesterday, in Bariloche, Argentina (a very popular tourist town with no shortage of money around) I went to a store to buy a windbreaker. The store was a big one on the main commercial street in town. In fact, the store was a North Face store. The jacket I bought was $72 pesos. I gave her a hundred peso note. She asked me if I had two more pesos, so she could just give me $30 pesos in change. I checked my pockets and told her I didn’t have any small change.

She asked me to wait. Went to the back room for about 5 minutes, obviously in search of change and ended up coming back out and just handing me the $30 pesos in change. It wasn’t really a big deal in the scheme of things, but this store gave up $2 pesos. . . just because they didn’t have change in the cash register.