Michael Luke Grande

I know this probably isn’t what our parents want to hear after 4 days in the Amazon Jungle, but here it goes: we entered the jungle as boys and have emerged as men--with a baby named in our honor.

You can exhale, it’s neither of ours. However, it turns out Luke and I are pretty likeable people and when you put us together, it’s really hard not to love us. Ok, I’m being slightly narcissistic—but let the facts speak for themselves.

Middle of nowhere, Requena, Peru--the Amazon

We entered the Amazon Jungle a hostile 400 kilometers away from the nearest town, Iquitos. Now, that sounds pretty intense in and of itself, but combine that with the fact that Iquitos is already pretty much in the middle of nowhere taking the title as the largest city that is inaccessible by car in the world—we couldn’t have been more isolated. In fact, one of the reasons we were hesitant to take this particular tour was because it was an hour away from a phone. Considering it takes a measly 1.5 hours for a Amazonian Green Viper to kill you, we weren’t reassured.

Our journey to Tapiche Ohara Reserve required a 20 minute taxi ride, 2 hour bus ride, 2 hour speed boat, and a 4 hour speed boat thereafter. In all, it tooks us about 11 hours to get to this desolate but beautiful place.

Really beautiful...

That’s really beside the point. It was worth it. We arrived to our little hut with hammocks inside. Now, as most of you know, I am usually pretty good at being in the outdoors and living like a rugged mountain man. The jungle is different. For one, it’s like living in a steam room in Death Valley with boiling water being poured over your head. Number two, there is so much life in the jungle that everywhere you look you’re staring at some animal or plant that will do you harm. Number three, mosquitos are absolutely Satan’s minions—and this place could very well be the biggest city in hell. Number four, I’ve never seen so many spiders in my life. I wish I could explain this to you or show a picture, but I can’t. In our little hut, the entire ceiling was covered in hundreds if not thousands of spiders the size of a hand. We turned off the light and I put my headlamp on and looked up. Biggest mistake of my life. I could literally see thousands of yellow reflectors looking back at me. Apparently spider eyes reflect yellow with LEDs. For someone who likes spiders, I had a really hard time with this.

It's glowing and it's right above my head.


This one is for Pablo. Massive.

It was extremely hard to sleep in this place. Absolutely the biggest negative. Luke was so terrified of the spiders he slept completely encapsulated in his sleeping bag in 80 degree heat and 80% humidity. Apparently sleeping bags can protect people from spiders. Who knew?

Luke about to encase himself in his sleeping bag for added heat and protection.

The first day was our lagoon adventure. We took another 2 hour boat ride to the second biggest lake in Peru. It was so peaceful with thousands and thousands of birds flying everywhere and even nesting on one end of the lake. What we learned is that Caiman’s like to live where birds nest so when the baby’s drop into the water, they have lunch.

I thought it was land. We just breezed through it. 

 Anyway, we somehow managed to get the boat into the swamp at the end of the lake and realized we were literally in Caiman heaven. The first Caiman we saw was bordering on 15 feet according to our guide.

The 15-footer, I dove in after her but she escaped.

After admiring the Caimans for about thirty minutes, I decided I was ready to replace Steve Irwin and take one of these damn things on. We snuck up in the boat on a Caiman that was 12 feet long (see below). I realized this was one of those times that there was no room for hesitation. Unfortunately, I hesitated. I reached my hand own on the damn Caiman’s neck and pretty much snapped it back because I was convinced I was lunchmeat for this thing.

If you look closely, you can see the monster that almost took off my hand.

No Caiman for lunch on Thursday. Instead we headed over to the fishing grounds where I racked up a solid contribution to our lunch. A whole two piranhas. More than anyone else, except our guide, but still not sufficient.

My first piranha. It looks small but it was the biggest one we caught. 

Luckily, we had put down a 200 meter net down the river to catch some bigger fish in case we sucked at fishing, which apparently we did. After finding our catch and getting rid of the one fish that had been torn apart by piranhas and the other one that was attacked by a Caiman, we had scrounged up enough food to call it a lunch.

Victor with the fish that was devoured by the piranhas...

Now we kind of arrive at the part where Michael and Luke have to make everything a little bit more dangerous/exciting/terrifying/stupid. Our guide Victor had mentioned that we shouldn’t swim in the Amazon as it was a really dangerous body of water. We kind of already knew that. Luke watched House once and wouldn’t stop talking about the fish that swims up your urethra when you jump in the Amazon. He also couldn’t stop talking about the 15 foot Caimans or the piranhas that can pick a corpse of all its meat within 5 minutes. None of that phased me. Or Luke, in fact. On our way back home, we asked our guide where we could swim in the Amazon because we couldn’t leave without at least jumping in. He said we shouldn’t do it anywhere but if we were going to do it we should do it in the middle of the lake. Well, we just happened to be in the middle of the lake. This is the same lake we caught piranha in. This is also the same lake that a 15 foot Caiman passed under our boat and ate one of our fish.

We were ready to go. After about 15 minutes of contemplating what exactly we wanted Victor to tell our parents if we didn’t make it out alive, we counted down from 3 in German (that was to please our Swiss friends in the boat with us—at least they weren’t French-Swiss). We jumped into what we thought would be our death.

 

Just before the jump. Unfortunately, we only have video of the swim so you'll have to see it later.

I’d like to tell you we swam around for 20 minutes enjoying our incredibly warm water and petting the Caimans but that would be an absolute farce. If we stayed in the water more than 5 seconds I’d buy everyone reading this blog a beer. I don’t think the guide had ever seen anyone get back into a canoe so fast in his life. He was keeled over laughing so hard he almost coughed up his fake teeth.

We finally arrived back in the spider-filled rooms for a wonderful night sleep… sarcasm. It’s kind of hard to sleep when you know spiders are falling from the ceiling into your hammock. We knew this was happening because the first morning we woke up and turned on the lights, there were about 5 spiders on the floor dead and there happened to be one abseiling from the ceiling and missing Luke’s hammock by an inch at most.

The next day was nice, though. We took off on a hike through the rainforest. Apparently the hike was supposed to be a couple hours, but our wonderful guide Victor, who loves us, decided to take us on a 7 hour hike to the point where he was literally lost and I began to think of ways to survive one night in the jungle.

 

Luckily, when we ran out of water, Victor knew exactly where to find some.

He also taught us that if we break a termite nest and let the termites crawl on our hands then rub them together, we can put it all over our body and it acts as a mosquito repellant. It was also used to mask the smell of hunters as they hunted big animals.

However, during this 7-hour journey we saw 8 species of monkeys. An average group sees about 2-3. We aren’t average. We also saw an ant-eater and we are the first group to ever see River Otters in this area of the Amazon. Victor had treated us well.

We had an incredible day and it got even more incredible when we finally found our boat.

After lunch, Victor asked us if we wanted to do another walk through the jungle… of course we did. Walking through the jungle isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart. There are millions of things you have to worry about that could kill you—or just hurt you a lot. I was bit by a fire ant and thought I was going to lose my entire arm I was in so much pain. There are dozens of species of snakes that can kill a person within hours. In fact, Victor lost his grandmother to one of these snakes. Cougars, frogs, snakes, spiders, just about anything in the jungle can kill you if you aren’t careful.

We entered the jungle one more time. As we were driving the boat to a remote part of the jungle… again… we heard some howler monkeys in the distance. Howler monkeys are famous for howling so loud you can hear them over 3 miles away. We heard them and they were close.

Victor asked us if we wanted to try and see them. Of course we did. He said we had to get off the boat and run when we hit shore. As soon as we touched the ground, we took off running through spiderwebs and just about anything that before we were terrified of. After running for about 20 minutes, we finally found the howlers. Victor was so excited. He said he was worried we missed them and he would not have been content until he found them. An incredible way to finish the day. Especially since it was getting dark and we were in prime cougar-hunting territory. And I'm not talking about the bars I frequent at home kind of cougar hunting.

We spent another night in the jungle and made it out alive. It was honestly one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever been through. I’ve lived in some very dire situations but none can quite live up to the incredible terror I felt during my time in the jungle. On the one hand it was absolutely liberating because we were completely cut off from the world. The nearest phone was an hour away. On the other hand, it made it so much more frightening knowing that even if something bad happened, we couldn’t really be saved.

I’m glad we are out alive but I also can’t wait to go back. But I need to finish the story about the one person in the world that has taken a liking to Luke and me. His name is Victor, our guide. He had so much fun listening to us scream out country music lyrics and talk about life in the jungle from an American perspective that he decided he wanted to remember us always. His wife is expecting their 5^th child in the next couple days. He told us that if he has a son, he will name him Michael Luke Grande. I can’t make this up.

I know this blog has a lot of jest and is generally one big joke about stuff that happens while I’m traveling, but this is completely different. It’s kind of mesmerizing what we can do by just being kind and making people feel like they are equal to you no matter who they are. I’m not trying to get preachy, but the fact is that we met Victor, our guide, and decided he was going to be our friend first and foremost. When we made that decision, he decided that he wanted to give us, his friends, the best adventure in the jungle possible. We talked to him like a friend, not an employee, and he treated us in kind. I don’t know if he really will name his son after us or not, but the reality is, it doesn’t matter. Victor, myself, and Luke, were able to spend 4 days in the jungle laughing and having a great time learning more about each other. Apparently that’s all it takes to make someone take a picture of you and send it to his wife and tell her that their next son will be named after you.

The power of love and friendship… it’s incredible.

God Bless.

Michael

Couple more pictures of the beautiful scenery:

Green Tree Frog

Great Egret

Black Caiman

Sunset

It really looks like this in the sky!

This is Luke climbing up to the roof of our hostel to dry our clothes in Iquitos.

Caiman is technically a threatened species and after eating it, I know why. So good. 

Just cruising the jungle.

This Blog's for the Parents

So we kind of realize that much of our blogging has been about dangerous adventures in a somewhat sketchy city between the hours of 2 am and 8 am. I'm here to change that.

Since arriving in the beautiful Patagonian village of San Carlos de Bariloche, our trip has taken a dramatic turn for the better--at least what we're sure to believe our parents will think is better. Instead of operating on a schedule of 4 pm wake up calls and 7 am bed time, we have been doing many more things during the day since our time here and consistently get up around 8 am. This is primarily because everything beautiful about this place can only be enjoyed when the sun is up. And this place is extremely beautiful.

We arrived June 12th and have since mountain biked 30 kilometers, climbed the tallest mountain in the area, had the best steak of our lives, and also sampled some incredible chocolate for which this place is famous. All in two days. It's really impossible to describe the beauty of this place, but of the places I've been it's something like a cross between Lake Tahoe and New Zealand.

We arrived in Bariloche with a hostel and virtually zero plans but when you stay at a hostel, the recommendations for things to do are virtually endless. In fact, there are people that have been staying in this town for 5 months and others who are just staying here for the entire winter season to snowboard. There are so many incredible things to do. Right now on our list of possible excursions we're considering skydiving, horseback riding in the mountains, four-wheeling, golfing, renting a car and driving, etc. Unfortunately we'll probably only be able to do two of these things since we leave Monday afternoon for our Amazon adventure in Peru.

I diverge. The first thing we did was wake up on Thursday morning and head to the most beautiful mountain biking loop in the area. I've tried mountain biking once before with my wonderful brother-in-law, Ken, and it was more than I could handle. He may be in his 40's but he rides a bike like he's 20. I don't.

Lucky for me, this mountain biking trek was primarily on a paved road. Unfortunately, it was also full of hills that destroyed my ego when Luke took off up them and waited for me at the top of every single one. I blame it on my 2 years of aging over him.

The views were absolutely incredible. I've been to some beautiful places in the world but this spot is definitely up there with the best of them.

Short hike off the road to the beach. 

Panorama of that same beach.

This is called the "Hidden Lake." It's hidden. Which is why... 

We decided it was necessary to jump in. We didn't have bathing suits. Read between the lines.

During the mountain biking trek we stopped dozens of times for pictures because around every turn was another breathtaking view. Sometimes the views were mediocre, but my need for oxygen made taking pictures a favorite pastime.

While on the loop around the lakes and mountains, we came across one of the most incredible hotels I've ever seen. Supposedly it's a 5-Star hotel that we could never afford, but maybe one day my Dad and I will come back here and I'll recommend it as the spot to be! After all, it has a golf course that puts Pebble Beach to shame. It has the beautiful lake views combined with the snow-capped Patagonian mountains that people usually only read about. Not to mention, it's a measly $40 per round.

Dad, isn't this place tempting? Notice the golf course in the foreground.

After the bike ride, my legs were pretty much shot. We headed back to the hostel and got some recommendations for some steakhouses around town. We found a spot where they have 400 gram steaks for $10. It was an easy decision. The only bad part about the restaurant, and apparently every restaurant in this town, is that they don't even open until around 8 pm. And that's considered extremely early. According to the owner, locals don't even start eating dinner until around 9:30 or 10 pm.

After the steakhouse we were invited by some locals for a beer at the brewery across the street from our hostel. We again proceeded to have a great time talking about our adventures over a couple beers. Once again, Luke proved to me the importance of improving my Spanish as he stole the show with his superb language skills. I really need to do some work. Everything was going well for him until someone took my cell phone and started looking at my pictures and stumbled upon some compromising paparazzi pictures of Luke. Those pictures will not be posted. They can be viewed by email request only.

Finally, we called it a night around 11 pm and headed to bed. This morning, we decided it would be a great day to climb the highest peak, Catedral. With poor planning as usual, Luke and I decided to get our clothes washed last night. That meant that all we had for this hike was shorts for Luke and windbreakers over t-shirts. To say we froze during our 2 hour hike would be an understatement.

We headed out looking like stupid tourists wearing shorts and t-shirts up a peak that reaches 2,000 meters. At the bottom they told us it would take 3-4 hours--they don't know Americans very well. We summited in less than two hours. I think the cold motivated us to get it done as soon as physically possible. The views from this peak are supposed to be the best in Bariloche, Unfortunately, we decided to climb on a day where the fog cover was so bad we could barely see 50 feet in front of us. The pictures below don't really give this place justice, but it was also pretty fun climbing through fog and having virtually no idea where we were going. As with most of our adventures, we had no idea where we were going. At the bottom of the mountain we asked people where the trail was and they simply told use to just start climbing--we did--without a trail. Eventually we found some roads but they kept meandering up the mountain so we took the direct route through snow and rocks. Maybe that's why we made such good time.

Excellent visibility.

It cleared up for like 5 minutes. Enlarge this picture. It's a panorama.

At the summit we ate at the restaurant and had some much-deserved coffee with hundreds of other tourists that had taken the Gondola up--suckers. Everyone was staring at us since it was 32 degrees and we pulled up in shorts and t-shirts. Nobody really believed we climbed the whole thing which explains why nobody checked our tickets for the Gondola ride back down. One Paraguayan guys kept yelling at us from the ski-lift, "You crazy Americans!" We loved it.

Right before the guy yelled at us. 

Our ride down was much easier than the walk up but it was kind of terrifying since we couldn't even see the ground from the Gondola with all the fog. After that, we took the bus back to town and walked around looking for some shops to buy souvenirs and chocolate. We stumbled upon the second Cathedral of the day. This one was the Cathedral for the Archdiocese here which actually is one of the most beautiful churches I've ever been in outside of Rome. It was right on the water and had a spire that was about 120 feet up. We'll definitely be going there for mass on Sunday. During the walk back home I ended up buying an awesome leather hat for $40 and Luke spent about $10 on some chocolate that would put Hershey's out of business.

Lakeside Cathedral.

My new hat and the guy that sold it to me. 

That's all for now. Pictures below for your enjoyment. I'm going to shower and maybe nap before dinner. Miss you all and hope to have some more great pictures in the next couple of days before heading to the Amazon.

God Bless.

Lessons from an Unprepared Traveler in South America

The mere fact that I'm currently writing a blog from the safety of our humble apartment in Buenos Aires is nothing short of a miracle that probably was granted us because of the Rosary I decided to pray while we were in the middle of nowhere in Uruguay.

I'll briefly describe our Saturday night before the real story begins. We went out to a terrible salsa dancing club where there was a stage full of Cuban guys showing us how to dance if it happens to be your goal to attract other men. It clearly wasn't for us. Especially once the lead dancer started sticking out his tongue and winking at Luke. We were all uncomfortable... Luke may or may not have simply enjoyed the attention of a non-Colombian who wasn't going to break his heart. Only his heart knows.

He's the guy with the black shirt and only one button. Fourth from the left.

We left. We got back home around 2 am thinking it would be cheaper to just have a few drinks at home and then head to another dance club in Palermo which is supposed to be the most fun place in the entire city. It didn't disappoint. We ended up at a place called Brook where we spent about 3 hours dancing and having a great time. When it closed around 5 am we thought the night was over--we were very naïve. Out on the street, we started talking to some girl who was alone and waiting for her friend to pick her up. She was pretty awesome. Her friend, Veronica, pulled up in a BMW that probably cost $60,000 in the US meaning it was more along the lines of $90,000 in this God-forsaken country.

Instead of just leaving the three of us to get a taxi home, Marina invited us to jump in her friends car and go to the after-hours party at Ink. We had heard about Ink but blew it off as a place that we couldn't afford since it's the hottest club in Buenos Aires and usually only open to people that have been invited. We were invited. The girls just told us not to talk and to follow them in. Veronica, our driver, apparently has more connections in Buenos Aires than Barack Obama has wiretaps. Yea, I made this political... sorry.

We got to the club and walked straight up to the VIP section which was full of people that looked like they had too much money and then there were two Americans and a Colombian. That was us. Not only did we not look the part, we were completely blown away about what had just happened. Which brings me to my first lesson that I'd like to impart on my loyal followers for this blog: Never be afraid to talk to anyone, especially if they look friendly and know way more about the city that you're traveling in.

We had the best time of our entire stay in Argentina thus far and it was all because we simply said hello to some girl that looked like she needed help outside a club.

Which leads me to another vital lesson--one that I know well, but that hasn't ever really been applied to me, it's usually just applied to friends of mine visiting me in China. When you're in a country with someone who speaks the local language better than you, you're only as good as that person wants you to look. While I was the one who initiated the conversation with Marina, Luke was the one who eventually won her heart. I blame it entirely on my inability to conjugate Spanish verbs. Luke hasn't stopped texting her since we left that club. I smell a romance brewing. I better be the best man.

Marina is in the middle. Clearly.

When Sunday rolled around, we definitely knew it would be a good idea to attend mass but we also knew that getting to Church before 5 pm wasn't really a possibility since we finally made it to bed around 8 am. Luckily for us, we had done our research and found a mass that started at 7 pm. When I woke up around 4 pm, my first words were, "Luke we don't have any more eggs for breakfast. It's also 4 pm, though."

After 7 pm mass we decided our best play was to try and get to bed relatively early and catch the train to Tigre where we could get a ferry to Uruguay and take out US dollars to bring back and exchange at a more reasonable rate than the one we had been getting at ATMs. Our lovely Colombian Aunt promised us that boats left Tigre every 15 minutes for Colonia. Well, she was wrong. We got to Tigre around 2 pm hoping to get a ferry right away and then another one back that night so we wouldn't have to spend more money for a hotel in Uruguay. As usually is the case when we don't plan very well, we were quite surprised to find out that only two boats left Tigre every day for Colonia and they had already left. Our only option was a boat that left Tigre for a city called Carmelo. Now, there's a reason only one boat leaves for this city every day. It's because nobody really wants to go there. It has a population of about 18,000 according to Wikipedia and has one hotel.

At this point, once again, Luke was ready to head home and cut our losses. I wasn't that easily convinced. Which leads me to another important lesson. There's never an adventure that should be forsaken simply because no planning has taken place. God will always provide a way out and if he doesn't, at the very least, he'll give you the strength to endure whatever suffering is required to survive. After about 2 hours of bantering, I finally convinced Luke that plans are for the weak. True adventurers first act and then put their heads together to find solutions as the challenges arrive. Luke said the only reason he acquiesced was because the same thing happened at the soccer game and we ended up having an incredible night.

Us on the boat to Carmelo.

We bought two tickets to Carmelo. The boat was supposed to leave at 5:30 pm and was supposed to be a two hour ride across the River. We were kind of banking on this because the woman that sold us our tickets told us that there should be a bus leaving Carmelo for Colonia at around 8 pm. That meant if we were 30 minutes late, we would probably have to stay in this small town with no hotel and nowhere to go. I've always wanted to try living homeless for a night to understand what it's like.

We almost got that opportunity. The boat left 45 minutes late and we arrived in Carmelo around 9 pm. With no idea what to do, we decided to run to the city center with the hopes of finding a bus that might be late or willing to take us to Colonia. Really, we were living on a prayer. This city had more rabid dogs walking around the Tijuana and there was at most 2 people in the entire city square by the time we got there.

We ran with our one backpack that had a bottle of water and an extra jacket. Remember, we had no intentions of spending the night in Uruguay. But there we were in a city alone with zero Uruguayan pesos and no idea of what our next move might be.

When we got to the city center we pulled out as much US dollars that we could and then about a hundred dollars worth of pesos. We ran to the bus stop and as I said, miracles happen. There was a bus that was leaving at 10:30 pm. We bought our tickets to freedom and ran to the nearest restaurant to get some sustenance.

Luke stoked we got our bus tickets.

Uruguayan food is incredible.

The bus ride was only an hour and we arrived in the very beautiful town of Colonia around 11:30 pm. Then we realized once again we had no game plan. After asking around, we found out the first boat left Colonia for Buenos Aires around 4:30 am. We definitely didn't need a place to sleep. On a Monday night in Colonia, turns out the only promising option was to spend the whole night in a casino. But first we wanted to go try a local beer. While at the bar, we struck up a conversation with the bartender. He talked to us for about an hour and we decided to ask him if he was in our position, what he would do for the next 3 hours until we had to be at the port.

The bartender is the guy on the left. He would put us in a precarious situation later.

That was our first pretty big mistake. Which leads me to another important lesson. Even if two countries claim to speak the same language, that isn't necessarily always the case. In Argentina the world for dance club is boliche. Not so much in Uruguay. The bartender called a taxi and we were on our way to what he claimed was the best boliche in Colonia around 1 am. He told us the place was right next to the airport so when we saw the airport signs we had high hopes. We also realized that we could be on our way to an organ factory where we would meet our maker and we would be dismembered and sold on the black market for a couple thousand dollars. Well, luckily that wasn't the case, but the reality of what happened wasn't exactly much better.

We turned down a really dark alley that didn't have a street sign and wasn't a paved road. I looked to Luke and simply said, "Seriously, be ready to jump out of this car and run as fast as we can into the darkness." We were both pretty terrified. Then we pulled up to what looked like a house. My hand was on the car door. Then he told us we had arrived. There was one woman in the window and the place was absolutely empty. He told us to walk in and check it out. We thought we should just leave. He insisted it was a great place and to knock on the door. We told him that he needed to wait 2 minutes because it didn't look quite like what we had hoped for.

After we opened the door, we immediately realized that boliche in Uruguayan spanish could only mean one thing: brothel. The place was absolutely disgusting and had girls playing pool and a hallway of rooms with a bar full of guys.

We got back in the taxi and got the hell out of there as fast as we could. Our only remaining option was the Casino at the Radisson hotel which was open until 3 am and would put us only an hour before boarding our boat back to Buenos Aires.

I snapped this picture of the wonderful boliche as we were driving away.

The casino was anything but exciting. We realized we had to gamble a little bit in order to justify being in the place at all. We sat down with $30 USD and literally lost it all in 3 hands. Our gambling was over. We headed to the casino bar and ordered a few drinks. The night was just getting worse with every decision. Finally, I decided to ask the pit boss if he would give us free drinks if we gambled more. His answer was a none-too-ecstatic yes. They poured us another round and we changed $50 USD into chips for the blackjack table--but it was closed. They were going to make us play roulette and Luke refused since he supposedly did an entire research paper on the probability of winning at roulette and was adamantly against it. I put all my money down on black.

After the boliche, before the casino.

I'd love to end this story with me winning $50 to put us back above even but that's not what happened. The pit boss told us we were only allowed to bet a minimum of $100 on colors. I took back my $50 chip as Luke and I tried to figure out our next move. Since they had just purchased us two drinks, we kind of felt obligated to gamble a little bit but our only option was roulette and that wasn't a very good one.

I began thinking and usually when that happens, Luke gets worried. I told Luke that our next play was for him to go outside, get my backpack at the coat check and I would change my $50 chip for cash again and we would sprint out of the place and toward the boat dock. He didn't like the idea, but it ended up working quite well. We left the place having only lost $30 and picked up two free drinks along the way.

The rest of the story is quite similar to what you would expect. We made it to the boat at 4 am. It was supposed to leave at 4:30 but ended up leaving about 2.5 hours late. We got back home around 8 am and slept until 4 pm. We had planned to change all the money we had taken out, but by the time we got to the back alley money-changing site, it was closed.

So here we are, sitting in our hotel room with 0 pesos and $300 USD in our pockets. We leave tomorrow for Bariloche and we don't want to exchange our money at a bank because we will get skewered.

Let's hope God has another miracle in store for us tomorrow morning before we catch our flight.

God Bless Argentina and all of you for reading this really long blog post.

Michael

Pictures for your enjoyment:

Sunset on the boat ride from Tigre to Carmelo.

We met another awesome dog that we named Milo again in Colonia.

On the boat back home to Buenos Aires. Pretty much summed up the past 24 hours. 

This City is Getting Ravaged

Well, it's been a few days since the last time I blogged and that's mostly because I wanted to wait to rack up a few great stories before I set out to entertain. Now, I'll warn you that his blog is a legitimate play-by-play of everything we have done since getting here, including the number of showers we've taken and how much each taxi ride has cost us. But, Luke created it because he feels he's being misrepresented at best and slandered at worst by my blog. In order to get rid of the confusion, I'll be telling stories and whenever there is one about Luke that might be considered incriminating, I'll post pictures to ensure its veracity.

I'm sure the only reason you're reading this blog at this point is because I mentioned I'd write about the one time I got mugged in Buenos Aires. It's true. Michael got mugged on a jam-packed street in the middle of the day in Buenos Aires. I was minding my own damn business waiting for Luke to figure out where the hell the Teatro Colon was located. We came upon a bus stop--I forked left and he forked right. I made the wrong call. Three guys about 18 years old jumped in front of me and asked me for money. To which I responded in English, "No." Well apparently Jorge (I felt it necessary to name him) had been hopped on the Speed before this encounter and decided he wasn't taking no for an answer. With the biggest stones on the planet, he decides he's going in for the kill and grabs the cross on my neck and just yanks. I don't know what this thing is made of, but I'm pretty sure my head was closer to coming off than the chain. Now I'm holding this cross with my right hand and he's pulling while his friends are just yelling--I have no idea what they're saying but it was probably something like this: "Jorge, get this gringo's necklace, we can but more speed later on!" Or maybe something like this: "Jorge, are you sure it's wise to be stealing a foreigner's necklace at 2 pm on the busiest street in Buenos Aires?" Either way, Luke looks back and pretty much got the deer in the headlights look. In all fairness he had about 2 seconds to react before the whole thing was over. I somehow managed to walk away with everything in my pocket and a broken chain--I'd call it a successful counter-mugging on my part and if I wasn't awake before, I felt like I had just injected myself with 2 grams of adrenaline. Well, Luke finally got to see this incredible theatre. Here's the picture.

What a beautiful mug.

The rest of the day was pretty standard if you want a picture of everything that happened, go check out Luke's blog. We pretty much went out to a Tango club that was absolute hole in the wall and didn't dance a single song because we don't know how. I even begged the DJ to play a country song so we could teach everyone how to two-step. I miss my cowboy hat and boots. After a long night of absolutely nothing since it was Wednesday we met our best friend of the trip up to that point, Milo. He was one of the few individuals that actually liked us and made our lives more exciting for the short time he was with us. He's pictured with Luke here:

I think Luke was trying to get a kiss. Would have been his one and only in Argentina.

The next day we went over to a friend's house for dinner. But not before having this incredible authentic Argentinian lunch that could have served a small African village. 

                                   

 It was quite the diverse crowd. There were Brits, Argentinians, Germans, Americans and even a couple French... The food was great, the company was interesting and we definitely through on a few country songs before heading out for another wild night on the town. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet but the first few nights we went out we made crucial mistakes. Primarily the fact that if you enter a bar or dance club before 3 am you're pretty much going to be the only people there. For this reason we've learned that it's best to start the night around 11 pm with dinner and a few drinks then take a taxi to our final destination around 2:30 am. I don't like it, but when in Rome! We headed to some sketch dive bar near our place and realized it wasn't the play. We found some tango club that was supposed to be hopping and of course it was closed. Luke pulled through (one point for America) and we found an incredible spot called Liquid Bar. It played some weird music but we sucked it up and had a blast dancing all night. Luke even met a really nice girl--needless to say she wasn't the one.

Alright I've finally arrived to what is definitely the most exciting story of the trip thus far. Our international friends informed us that Argentina was playing Colombia at the national arena last night. We made the team decision that this would be an experience we couldn't pass up. We walked about 5 miles looking for interesting things to kill time before 7 pm game time. Probably the only thing in South America that starts that early. We arrived at the Arena with about 800 pesos combined. Our goal was to find some cheap tickets from scalpers. We still aren't really sure how legal that is but we had no choice--we were in it to win it. We made the mistake of talking to the first scalper we saw and just dishing out 500 pesos for two tickets. We thought we got a great deal. We used those tickets to enter the area right outside the arena. However, when we tried to get into the game, the security guard asked us where we bought the tickets and I just said a friend. He took the tickets and ripped them up and said they were no good. We were absolutely destroyed. I usually pride myself on my ability to travel and outwit con-artists and therefore nothing pisses me off more than getting schemed in a foreign country. My first instinct was to exit the arena area and go mug this guy and get our money back. But I wasn't ready to quit. We literally walked around in this area for 45 minutes. Luke was ready to throw in the towel and I was hatching plans to jump 20 foot fences or bum-rush guards to get into this game. My pride had been bruised and I was willing to do just about anything to get into this game that we had paid 500 pesos to attend. 

After a while we walked up to the head of security and I told him what happened and explained we were from Toronto, Canada and didn't know anything about fake tickets because people don't do that in civilized countries. He proceeded to look like he was going to help us and then he told us he could get us in if we paid 400 pesos. Obviously that was not the play for two reasons: 1) We had already spent 500 and, 2) we only had about 180 pesos left to our name. 

As we were walking around we met some nice girls that were working for some Orange Card company and we explained the whole situation to them after snapping this great picture:

 The last time in the night we were fans for Argentina.

As is the case in any country, it's never what you know but who you know. These girls, specifically the one of the left, saved our night from total disaster. We saw her after the game had began and she was off work and she walked us over to her friend who happened to be scalping tickets. We were able to get two legitimate tickets for 180 pesos--everything we had. 

This time, I took a ticket and walked in and once I got in, Luke gave the guy the money and followed me in. We never had a chance to thank her but maybe when this blog becomes world famous she'll appreciate the shout out. 

We made it. And never expected to have as much fun watching a sport where men get paid to pretend to cry. Yea, I said it. The highlight of the game was obviously not the 0-0 tie that we witnessed, but the fact that we happened to be seated in the section that was cordoned off entirely for Colombian fans. Now, we don't know much about Colombia but we were not about to start cheering for the opposite team when we were surrounded by thousands of Colombians. From that point on we just told everyone that we weren't from Colombia but that we were friends of Colombia and we learned every cheer necessary to fit in. Which basically consisted of yelling "hijo de puta" every time the ref made a call against Colombia. 

The game changed our night entirely. We met these really awesome Colombians as well. One was Luz. She was about 55 and she had lived in Argentina for quite a while. The other was Mauricio who was 22 and is here studying at the University. 

Turns out Colombians know how to have a great time. We followed them out of the arena after the game and they brought us to the official after-party of Colombia. It was some salsa/latin dancing club that was packed with around 2,000 Colombians all wearing Yellow, Blue and Red. As luck would have it there was a huge statue of Lady Liberty in the back that we couldn't stop taking pictures with. We were forced to drink some Colombian drink that wasn't necessarily top of the line, but it was much better than some of the other things we've tried in this country. 

All in all, the night turned out much better than we had originally thought it would after we got swindled and I was ready to risk incarceration to get into this game. I can only hope that when we go to the Colombians' house tonight for dinner, the menu won't included harvesting our organs for sale on the black market. 

Here's a bunch of pictures that sum up the night much better than I could do in words. Ciao!

Apparently this guy gets flown all over the world for every Colombian soccer game by the team. I yelled at him from the stands that "Friends of Colombia want to take a picture with you." He clearly loved it. 

This is our pose in many pictures in Argentina. We feel it's a subtle way of telling everyone that America runs the show--so deal with it. 

Colombian after party. Can't tell you how many times we danced with some girls and within 3 minutes they were so annoyed at how bad we were that they left us for some old ugly rich guys that can move their hips. 

Luke and our Colombian friends. 

I'm not sure they understood what they were doing. 

A true Colombian futbol fan.

Tie. 0-0.