Jakey Jake

So i spent a quick night over in LA staying at hollywood hostels before getting the greyhound to San Francisco. The trip was about 7 hours, luckily most of which i slept. Arriving in a big city where you have no idea where you are and only an address can sometimes be unnerving, add to that you are carrying a shiteload of luggage and you are walking through the local black ghetto and you get an idea of where i was at. I still managed to make it to the hostel alive and well and decided to have a quiet night in watching some videos and sitting on the net. Its definately worth having a laptop when youre on the road, especially if you’re in the states, there are that many free wireless networks its crazy.

The hostel is in a perfect location, just a block from the beach, 2 blocks to the main shopping strip and 1 block from the main bars. South beach is what is known as the ärt deco area as all the they are mostly buildings of that style, its really fiunky and you feel like youve stepped back in time to the 50s, although there are loads of lambos hummers, ferraris, bentleys, aston martins, vettes, and some really crazy done up cars. Anyway the super clubs are pretty shit cause the area where you would normally dance is the VIP area and it costs around 6-900USD to hire out an area there. Yeah it sucks, everyone is trying to see or be seen and it seems like no one has fun, pretentious clubs arent my scene. Thank god theres a lot of funky lounges and dive bars around the area. I hung out with a bunch of irish guys who were in miami for a wedding and we went a little crazy. We went to mansion cause head kandi were playing and on the sunday we went to nikkis beach bar which i would definitely recommend.

the plane was meant to leave from melbourne at 10.30am however because of an engine problem we were delayed 1.5 hours so i didnt arrive into LAX until 8.45am. The trip was pretty uneventful, watched a couple of movies and was unable to sleep for the most part, although the times i did fall asleep i would wake up with a startle with my head on a strange mans shoulder. So arrived in LA and caught the public bus into santa monica, which is a whole lot cheaper than taking shuttles or cabs. I had to organise a ticket to miami and the only flight center i could remember was the one on venice so i scooted over there and 450USD lighter had my plane ticket to naples florida. Spent the rest of the day looking around santa monica’s beautiful shops and trying to decide whether i should go out to the airport or head in to the orbit hostel and get a few short hours sleep before heading off at 4am to catch a 6am flight. Orbit won. I caught up with katana, mohammed and steve, managed to have a couple of beers before hitting the hay, LA is just as i remembered it

We caught a nice overnight bus to Cordoba , we arrived at 7am and took our luggage to an HI mentioned on Hostelworld.com however once we saw the amerian, we decided to check in to the hotel and detox for a bit. Cordoba was pretty dull, there were some nice old buildings and churches, but im over that, so we spent most of our time on the internet or doing some coding or watching tv or movies, but it came time to leave there too and we caught a bus that adam said was 4 or 5 hours that turned into 12 hours on a shitty bus with a crapper that smelt so bad. Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww. We arrived in Mendoza at 10 at night and checked into a private room at hostel confluenca which is pretty nice. Mendoza is nice and clean and well maintained compared to other argentinian/south American cities, but its boring as hell. To put it this way, adam has been playing age of empires 2 at the local internet café all day and I’ve been sitting here entering my journal….this place is boredom central, but it’s a beautiful boring place. We walked around and town and took photos but that took half a day, but we are really looking forward to tomorrow when we go on a winery tour.

little did we know what was in store for us in this place. We had heard so many good things about this city… mostly about the women. The women were disappointing but the rest of it wasn’t!!!… anyway we caught a cab to tango city inn and checked into a dorm room. We were pretty damn hungry and the receptionist recommended labiscetta in Puerto madero about 20 mins walk away… it was a fantastic restaurant, all you can eat, but with sushi and carpacio and lots of other really nice stuff… and it was only 28 pesos… or rather about 12 AUD. Lets just say BA is a European city but with prices like it was south east asia. Anyway on the walk home adam sprained his ankle so we managed to get him back to the hostel, we had a few beers with a nice german girl and we stayed in the dorm for one night before deciding that we would check into a hotel because he couldn’t do anything so he needed a TV and a room he could smoke in. So we moved to hotel republica which is right next to the oblisque on avenir Nueve de Julio (9 th of July). We had a balcony overlooking the main street which was great for a view but terrible for noise. We ended up staying there for about 8 days, which was great, I went walking around seeing all the sights while adam stayed in the room playing Sim City 4. I really loved the architecture in BA, it was a mix of colonial French, modern and just thrown together. We looked at getting an apartment but there was nothing we could get in a short amount of time, so I hit up hostel world.com and came up with portal del sur. So when we could no longer stay in the hotel we moved to PDS… It was more like a hotel than a hostel, the double room we rented had split aircon, cable TV, broadband internet and our own private bathroom, all this for 78 pesos a night, oh and our room and sheets were cleaned daily (that was if we were awake during daylight hours for the maids toget into the room & we weren’t awake before 6 7, 8 even 10 at night.. The people there were great…. A big hola to Nico, Nacho, Charlie, Ivan, Mara, Mele, Vicki and the cleaning girls….. These guys are fantastic… so anyway 2 weeks turned into 2 months. We started taking Spanish lessons with Sheila who was a fantastic teacher and then we also joined IBL, which was money hungry but our teacher Laura was great so we stayed on. However our Spanish was taking a bit of a backburner to the BA nightlife. Once we found Opera Bay , one of the best Nightclubs ive ever been too, kinda looks like the Sydney opera house but it plays funky music and is full of very sexy girls. Well we met so many great people at the hostel, Sivlana, a sweed who was “mother of big f#$ker”, Alvin, an American guy with more energy than a nuclear power plant, James, a champion from Sydney who use to bite off sheeps testicles, Aaron an Australian that sails on expensive yachts, Jamie and Mara, a couple from Australia that were awesome, Jeff, a guy from America that was as wild as me, Tom, an irish guy that was easily influenced to drink a lot of booze, Jess and Karin, a couple of Swedish girls that we got on with really well. There were so many stories from the 2 months we were there, its started off slowly when we had our goal was to learn Spanish, but the social scene took over failry quickly and we were often partying. One night we went home early james and Alvin were being driven around in a taxi getting ripped off, and the driver stopped off to ask questions, and sick of being ripped off they decided to take the cab for a joyride seeing as it was running and the driver was off asking for directions J classic J We also went to a big festival for st pats day near the kilkenny where nearly 50,000 people turned out, but its one of those things where if your either not 18(or there abouts) or drunk out of your mind, it’s a really crap situation to be in. Although we did see a thief get the life pummeled out of him, not before swallowing a necklace and frothing at the mouth and through the nose, before plummeting into a road covered with broken glass. Where were the police??? Off having donuts and chatting probably, seems to be the norm around there. Although they seemed to turn out in force when the people were protesting, and for good reason, the governments forced the banks to take all the old peoples money to pay off the foreign debt….. wankers!!! I would be shooting people for that!!! Other than the politics BA is soooo good, I recommend it to everyone for a holiday, you cant go too far wrong there, then again I spose it depends on what you are looking for, then again im sure theres something for everyone!!! We were going to leave earlier but we decided to stay for my birthday since we had made so many friends, we (or should I say i??) partied for 10 out or 11 days, tom said I was the common denominator for a HUGE night out. OOOPS!!! Hehehehehe. Things we’ll definitely miss about Buenos aires•  pissing off the roof J

We were headed to Punta Del Este on the Uruguay coast. On the overnight bus we were pulled up at 4am because we didn’t have the stupid little pieces of paper saying we could leave Brazil …. Fools. We pulled into PDE at 7am and we looked for accommodation with AJ(another one) and Mark. We found a hotel about 6 blocks away which was to be home for 4 days. This place also had crappy beaches but it was pretty fun anyway. There wasn’t much to do except eat mcdonalds and go out at night. There was a little strip just near the marina where there were a bunch of bars next to each other. They weren’t clubs just a bunch of bars where you could chat, which was great. The first night out we ran into some Swedish guys that stayed in our hostel room in Foz. They were pretty kewl, but we had about 10 people and we wanted to go out clubbing. The club was MILES away but the cab meter was registering next to nothing. When we got there (over a funky bridge) the club was closed, so back to the bars we went. When we got back they pulled out a list and said that the charge was a LOT different to what was said on the meter. BASTARDS!!!! Still we had a good time. The next day adam and I hired scooters and cruised around the area. There were a lot of really nice places, we even saw a porsche that is really rare, the kind that james dean died in, lets just say they’re bloody expensive and rare as hens teeth. We hired mopeds and spent the day honing around punta del esta. We managed to clock the bikes a few times (100k’s was the speedos top speed), which doesn’t sound like much but if you got on one of these things and felt how bad their stopping ability or lack of brakes at all then you’d understand how much fun it was. Anyways we basically ran a muck running red lights, speeding past cops, cutting thru traffic and basically not really abiding by any road rules at all. Ahhhh being a gringo is sometimes fantastic. Since it was so expensive there we decided to head to the much famed Buenos Aires …. So we caught a bus to Montevideo and then a boat to BA The boat took 2 hours and the aircon was freezing cold. But we arrived by buquebus in the port of Buenos Aires

On the way back we ran into lochie at the bus stop, he was with his friend Christina. Luis had to leave that night so we said goodbye to him and hung out with Lochie and Christina, they were awesome fun. Christina was great company as she was one of the boys and would take all the crap we gave her. To paint a picture, chrissy is about 4′ nothing tall with a gigantic grin on her face all the time! We were constantly nailing her with short jokes and she took it in her stride (however small they were) and was just as good at giving it back. We met up with some of lochies local friends Gabi and Danni. We went out to a bar in the city and we had a ball, they played great tunes and mucked around dancing like idiots. We recovered the following day by eating all you can eat pizza which included a dessert of either brown or white chocolate coated pizza. We also went on a tour around the island in a hired car, which was manual, driven by lochie, who had only ever driven an auto. Needless to say it was a horrible experience, and adam and I couldn’t wait to get out of the car. We did some sand boarding near jaouquin beach (where they have the brazilian surf title((again an overrated beach)) and also went for a swim in the famed beach, but it was time to leave here too… just a word of advice, if anyone ever suggests you go sandboarding say no. It’s the type of sport that has .00000001% fun and the rest is just walking up really steep bloody sand dunes!

Florianopolis is a city on the ilha de santa catarina (island). We were heading for a small town on the island called barra de lagoa. Theres a small hostel there that we decided not to stay in because it looked pretty mankey, so we found a cheap hotel instead. The beach wasn’t anything to write home about, in fact none of the beaches in Brazil were even remotely as good as anything in Australia much to our disappointment. Anyway we were walking around that night and we ran into Luis from Salvador . That man was a woman eating machine!!!! He was always doing ground work, it was pretty funny to watch. Anyway we went out to a beach party on the Friday night and ended up at some club that we couldn’t get into because we had thongs on and no amount of “gringo, mucho dinero” would persuade them to let us in. The next night we went out to a fuhore dance club, it was 70% girls 30% old men, good odds, but unfortunately seeing as we were gringos and obviously couldn’t dace to save ourselves none of them were interested in dancing with us let alone talk to us, except a couple of girls who wanted to speak English, the next thing we new we were catching a cab with them to the top of the island for a beach party…. We eneded up crashing at their house nearby and went swimming all the next day.

So we hung around rio for a few days before heading on to Sao Paulo . We had heard Sao Paulo was really dangerous, so we didn’t venture out much and we only stayed for one day, had a quick look around, before heading on to Foz. Adam hadn’t seen Iquacu falls yet so I went back there with him. This time we stayed at a hostel near the falls called Paudimar. It was more like a resort with basic accommodation. Luckily it had a pool as it was around 40 every day, which made it really uncomfortable to sleep. We went to the brazilian side of iguacu which was brilliant again. Adam was amazed and happy that we had actually seen something decent. Back at the hostel we met a really great guy called lochie from west walls end in Newcastle . He had been in brazil for 3 months and could speak portugeuse and he was good at capoera(brasilian martial art) as well. So we mucked around with him for a while and hung out at the bar. The next day we decided to go to the argentinian side of the falls, and I have to say that this is the best side to experience the falls as there you get right in amongst them. Theres a walkway right up to the most massive section of the falls, which is mind blowing. So we spent the day walking around and checking out the falls, we also went on a boat ride under the falls, which was one of the best experiences. The boat went right in and it was suddenly 2 feet deep with water and we were drenched…. Incredible. But adams phone got wet and its now stuffed. The next day we decided to venture over to Paraguay , its all about stamps on the passport J we made it over there and it was a total shit hole, needless to say we didn’t stay long. So we went back and vegetated at the hostel. The next day we managed to get utterly lost and spent 5 hours on 2 busses trying to get to the rhodiviera to get a ticket to Florianopolis . We went from one side of town to the other and back again. So we decided to jump a cab after that…. And we finally ended up with ticket J so we were off to Florianopolis .

OMG whatever you do do not catch a bus for 33hours in brazil with a broken air conditioner when the outside temperatures are around 35 degrees. We wanted to die. Not only were we bored out of our brains but we were boiling hot as well. The only fresh air we had was from the two square holes in the roof of the bus. So we arrived at the bus station and we needed to find some accommodation. The others that we met on the bus decided to find a hostel in the city, but we decided to head on out to the beach, which was about 10 minutes out of the city center. We were expecting a BIG party (although we didn’t really need it) but when we went for a walk along the beach all the tents and stalls and stages were being pulled down. Needless to say all the stories of the most rocking party in south America was a let down. We made friends with John and Craig from Sydney who were also in our room and we all decided to head out together. We took a cab into Pelourinho which is the bar area and where we were told there would be a great party as part of carnival. Unfortunately ive had better parties on my own….. so we decided to head back to the hostel. That’s when all the trouble started. We met AJ, a sweed, Fabio, a local, Ivan from Geelong , and Luis, a Peruvian that spoke about 5 languages and lived in Sweden . From there on in it was party time in the hostel. 4 days with virtually no sleep. That day we went to the beach and we met a bunch of locals and some cute girls that the guys were hitting on. So John and I started playing coconut throw in the sea which was awesome fun. Fabio whipped up a storm in the kitchen, but on the 3 rd day we decided that we would leave because the partying was killing us. So we checked out and headed to the rhodiviera (bus station) , unfortunately the bus that was leaving that day was full so we bought a ticket for the following day, and looked for accommodation close to the rhodiviera so we didn’t go back to the hostel for another party. Well the tourist info place recommended a hotel close by so we got the cab there, for some reason the receptionists were laughing at us checking in. We quickly learned why. This was a LOVE hotel. There are many of these in brazil as its often the only place people can get privacy for a good time, and they usually go by the hour. The phone was wrapped in a plastic bag, there was a plastic rose and some condoms and the only thing on TV was 4 channels of porn. The mattresses were covered in vinyl for easy cleaning. It took us about 20 minutes before we decided to get out of there and return to the hostel, and we were back on for a party. We managed to leave the next day and we arrived at Rio for round 2, this time with Ivan. He was a very patriotic Croatian, and everything seemed to go back to cars or croatia , but he was a really good guy, who had his passport stolen on the bus ride to rio