Wild Abandon

A reader recently wrote in that she felt my recent posts were lacking my usual ‘wild abandon.’ I thoroughly appreciated her insight and in an attempt to redeem myself, figured I’d divulge a recent experience below.

Since my emotional state of well-being often resembles the sine graph (for those who you who don’t remember what that is or failed high school math, click here for a visual), it’s not uncommon for me to spend one night in, alone, wallowing in misery and the next sporadically strapping on stiletto boots and singing annoying things to my girlfriends like the ‘Party All The Time’ song, which FYI is also a highly amusing video.

On this particular night, I was feeling pretty neutral but forced myself out since I’d promised my friend Femme that I’d help her model / promote these clothes (don’t ask) that a designer friend of hers had wanted us to wear out. We were going to Lollipop (which I just wrote a review of here), but getting together at her apartment first to drink and don our outfits.

I’ve written before about pheromones and how I’m utterly fascinated by them. Technically defined, pheromones are “a chemical secreted by an animal that influences the behavior or development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of the opposite sex.” Well, my pheromone alert button starting wailing at an emergency level the moment I entered Femme’s apartment. This isn’t something that happens often. I had to do a 360 scan to visually locate the apparent object of my desire. I looked right, left, then BOOM – dead center in front of me beyond Femme’s open kitchen, I saw my guy.

Next I was confused because this guy was not my type at all (an article discussing my type available here) but it’s essentially classy, euro casual, long hair, slightly taller than me but not too tall. The man my pheromones directed me too, while goodlooking, was outrageously tall, non-euro, and sporting a shaved head.

Huh?

Pheromones have a way of bringing people together quickly, so it didn’t take long until we were talking and I learned he was from Brasil. Suddenly, this made slightly more sense. I recently caught South America fever and in the past six months have traveled to Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. We therefore had a lot to say to each other. We chatted until I was dragged upstairs to change my outfit. My girlfriends stripped, prodded and changed me, warring over whether I should wear this stylish headband that I felt made me look like a pirate.

This headband was so tight that by the time we got to Lollipop, I felt like it was molesting my brain. I took it off so I could focus fully on chatting with the Brazilian – the only social activity either of us had been engaged in for the past hour. Now however, we’d dangerously entered bottle service land. It was also a Saturday so there was no reason not to consume drinks with bravado. I’d been switching between vodka and champagne all night and stared at the Brazilian aghast when he proceeded to pour a flute of Vueve into my mixed vodka drink. As if I wasn’t already wasted, now I was drinking vodka flavored champagne.

As I emphasized in my review, Lollipop’s shoe box level small so it’s practically impossible not to invade other people’s personal space. So put the equation of pheromones, Saturday night, drinks, and small space together and you get touchy-feely with someone pretty fast. What’s amazing about the Brazilian people is their utter directness in regard to love/sex. It’s not uncommon for someone just to look you square in the eye after knowing you ten minutes and proclaim:

“I like you.”

This often leaves Americans dumbfounded because we feel you should go on a date, hold hands, watch football and attend a barbeque before making blanket statements this bold. It’s hard to take a comment like that seriously because the person barely knows you. The flip side is: In all seriousness, don’t we form a subconscious opinion on someone in about ten seconds flat? We are animals. Our general instincts about somebody are usually right.

So in Brazilian style, after what must have been at least three hours of ‘get to know you’ time, he moved for a kiss, which I darted. I’m always out seeing people I know and truthfully pretty shy about sexual things, so never engage in the public make out move. I find PDA of all forms annoying so remain super hesitant to engage in it myself (unless of course I’m madly in love and accidently flaunting my happiness…that doesn’t happen often either.) I did my best to explain this to him and he smiled at me with warm eyes:

“Don’t worry. I totally understand,” he said. Before I could heave a sigh of relief he added, “I’ll wait for you in the bathroom.”

He then disappeared down the stairs while I double-taked.

I responsibly labeled myself incapable of handling the situation so deferred to my ever faithful roommate Tatas, who naturally let out some sort of squeal when I told what just happened.

“Go down there!” she urged.

I felt pretty uncomfortable because while some may think “it’s not a big deal, it’s just a kiss,” I am one of those people who doesn’t kiss lightly. I don’t recreationally make out. If I go as far as to kiss you, it means I’m all the way in, and would probably be pleased to do many other things together as well. So for me, a kiss is essentially my mental point of no return. Which is why I was quaking in my heels as I crept down the stairs.

His strong arms instantly appeared and swept me into the bathroom. Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, his lips were on mine in a pheromonal frenzy. The best part of this story is that he was wearing / modeling this designer’s clothing as well, and therefore in dress pants and a dress shirt. Since I’m a fan of checking out what you’re dealing with ASAP, I began unbuttoning his shirt (I mean, that just seemed like the correct next move when you’re in a bathroom making out with a Brazilian.) Then I had my second head spin of the evening when underneath the designer linen I revealed tattoos, nipple piercings, the works. I think I physically took a step backward and made a ‘Time Out’ hand signal.

I had no words.

The formal attire was just such a shocking contrast to what I found underneath that I felt helplessly confused.

“Yeah,” he explained, “I used to everything pierced.” He motioned to his ears and face. “These are all that’s left cause no one can see them.”

I remained dumbfounded and uncomfortable, but finally turned to confront our paused reflections in the bathroom mirror. For some reason it hit me that my mother would utterly disapprove this man without his shirt on…and that is perhaps the steamiest, sexiest thought in the universe. So I just grinned glided back toward his mouth, then helping him rebutton before we rejoined our friends upstairs for a long night out.

Make Me a Supermodel Transatlantic

This weekend my DVR went ka-crazy recoding thirty-five episode’s of Bravo’s Make Me a Supermodel. I figured since the season finale had been on Thursday, there’d been some sort of triple marathon (the one contestant who’d have been successful in the industry regardless [assuming she drops an additional 12 pounds], took the prize.) As I went through monotonously deleting episode after episode, my thumb becoming numb, I noticed that all the descriptions were unfamiliar:

“I don’t remember the episode when they flew the models to Iceland???”

So I pressed play and whacky as it sounds, my DVR had recorded two seasons worth of Britain’s Make Me a Supermodel.

Weird!!

So I decide to watch some of it while I cooked eggs, just as a cultural enlightenment exercise (who says you have to go to school to do cross cultural studies? You can do it in your kitchen!) Naturally, the entire show, like England itself, felt muted, foggy and grey compared to our sparkly New World version. What’s odd is that they incessantly utilize a narrator, who introduces scenes saying things like:

“On the porch, Wally and Lauren discuss their anxiety about the upcoming panel while smoking a cigarette.”

Geez thanks, narrator. None of that would have been evident by just LOOKING AT MY SCREEN.

So that device got annoying super fast. Bravo inserted occasional subtitles to help us Americans understand these washed-out models’ jibber jabber (they were all Dracula-level pale with really knotty hair). My question is that if we’re using subtitles anyway, why create a Make Me a Supermodel series in England, which isn’t exactly notorious for six foot beauties strolling down your average street. Why can’t some executive pitch Brazilian, or even the small town I was in, Escarpas Make Me a Supermodel. They could certainly cut back on scouting since everyone in town could be a contestant.

Also, unlike the American version where our girl and boy models reacted like infants, wholeheartedly rejecting the opposite sex splitting into male and female teams, the Brits seemed to be hooking up and model-defiling each other. This would’ve been exciting had their malnutrition not been so strikingly apparent.

The ten minutes of the season I saw seemed to be from Make Me a Supermodel 2006, which leads me to believe the show existed across the pond before it landed over here. Fascinating. Fascinating. Changing the channel now as I eat my eggs.

White Nights in Brazil

A story of pantomime love, man holes, and stolen shoes...

On our last day in the jungles of Brazil, we were scheduled to attend a traditional ‘white party,’ hosted not at the marina, but at someone’s private home on the other side of the lakes outside the condominium. Since my friend the Argentine wanted to triple check that the party’s host (we’ll call him X) was okay with putting three foreigners he’d never met on his uber-exclusive list, we went to visit the house pre-lunch to schmooze and offer him gifts of Moet and Johnny Walker Blue Label (pre-purchased at Duty Free for this exact purpose).

Trucks of lighting equipment, toilets, and speakers surrounded the house which was already abuzz with pre-party activities.

Full article here

Only Brazilians Could Throw a Bash This Bizarre

(yes, that's a naked angel)

Remember my recent trip to Brazil?

Well, there were more parties than the one in which I unknowingly fell in love with a lesbian. Before even departing from the USA, my friends had been incessantly hyping up Friday’s ‘Marina Party’ or ‘Na Sala,’ apparently the pinnacle event in this Easter weekend of non-stop debauchery. Their excitement proved to be legit…

Full article here

Love. In Brasil. With a Girl.

Disco naps are fickle indulgence. Sometimes you wake up replenished, reenergized, smiling, ready to strap on your heels and sing Bob Sinclair. Other times you wake up in an angry daze: “who am I?” “where am I” “why the Hell am I awake?” This second wake up process is torturous a great catalyst for depression. Such was the case for me on our first night in Escarpas. I woke up from my nap with a cloud of gloom encasing my entire body. Note that I’m naturally a happy person, and when things are going well, I’m REALLY enjoyable to be around. The flip side of the equation is that my lows are Grand Canyon level deep. I’d don a flowing white dress and walk on cliffs under the moonlight to a tragic violin solo if someone would let me (thankfully nobody does). Instead, I demonstrate my epic sadness by staring at walls, contemplating my failed past relationships, and crying. Lots of crying. I don’t think your average person cries as much as me.

Much of this drama remains in direct correlation with my blood sugar, which is why anyone who dates me makes it his life mission to ensure I’m fed hourly. On the car ride to our party destination that night for a strange Brazilian vodka brand that starts ‘O’ that I’d never heard of, I was crabby, hungry and pessimistic. Similar to Puglia, our vehicle sat in a car queue, which seemed to take hours, since they were checking the party passes pre-parking. Brazilians take security even more seriously than the folks in Punta. At the entrance, a SWAT team checked our tickets, bracelets and frisked us before letting us inside.

Naturally, my jaw dropped in wonderment when I saw the immense white tent was actually jam packed in what appeared to be some sort hybrid of house party / rave. A huge hot air balloon featuring the vodka brand (they really had a good marketing campaign, I’m just too retarded to remember blurry things like ‘letters’) hovered above the nearby lake, igniting into flames and rising up into the sky at five-minute intervals before swirling back down again.

Wow.





At the entrance we’d greeted a lot of friends from Punta and I saw my vacation organizer / host the Argentine kiss a stunning, six foot two, blonde nymph passionately on the mouth. She was wearing one of those purely South American tank tops that managed to reveal her entire midriff and be backless at the same time (a physical impossibility unless you glue your slut top to your body.) Since the Argentine’s an infamous womanizer, I didn’t think anything of this exchange. I assumed they had some sort of romantic history (I mean, what two stunningly attractive people in Brazil don’t have some sort of steamy history.) Later, when the Argentine was lip locked with someone else, I found myself next to this blond glamazon, who gave me the first kind and encouraging smile of the night. We began to dance together, a dance which increased in intimacy. I thought nothing of it.

What drunk girl isn’t a little touchy-feely?

So my new gorgeous girlfriend (we’ll call her D), took me by the hand so we could wander the party together. In Brasil, partygoers carry around these clear spay bottles (apparently filled with chloroform) which they continually suck on, inhale, and pass around. D continually shoved them down my throat and I tried not to think about just how big a hygienic no-no this whole ritual truly was. Occasionally, Brazilian men would attempt to talk to me or vie for my attention. D would always step in and interfere on my behalf, beating away the sleazes and keeping my hand tightly incased in hers.

What an awesome friend!

Back at our table where the dancing continued, D offered Tatas and I a sip of her drink, which no joke, tasted like liquid crack. I think she must have poured whisky on vodka on whisky on vodka with a splash of lemon to make a concoction this heinously disgusting. My whole body violently shivered as if I were doing ‘the shimmy’ after sucking one strawful. Tatas and I locked eyes, “this girl must be drunk of the CHARTS.”

As the festivities ensued, D began touching me on the dance floor…well….the way a man who wants you waking up in his bed the next morning touches you.

“Super,” I thought. “We’re rock stars. Men are worthless. Let’s make them all jealous.”

I played along and it was only later when her hand went up my skirt that a miniature light bulb went off over my head and I thought, “Wait. Maybe she’s in to girls.”

Yes. I’m a little slow on the uptake, I realize. But it had been a long drive and a lotta drinks. Keep in mind; D didn’t speak a word of English so our only interaction the whole evening had been through physical movement. Once she pronounced, “I like you,” which I had taken as a friendly compliment. Now I was pretty sure I’d been intensely flirting and dancing with a lesbian. The best part was that I didn’t care.

This girl was HOT!

What’s interesting is that when a woman compliments you, it’s always more meaningful than if it the words came from a tail-chasing man. Granted, she also probably wanted to chase my tail, but that wasn’t the point. This glamorous lesbian Goddess had chosen me, ME! as her lover for the night. I don’t think the actions of any man could have made me more flattered. In a sea of drunken happiness, the entire scenario made sense: I had a 100% failure rate with men, wasn’t it time to try a woman?

I’d love to say this story ends with D and I making passionate love under some sort of tropical canopy. Sadly, I ended up being driven home around 6:30 AM by a friend of mine from New York. I kept waiting for D to ‘go in for the kiss’ but she kept her distance. And had she made a move, I’d pre-decided that I was going to go with it. Because you’re only in an age bracket where you can experiment with your sexuality and next to a Brazilian bombshell once, right? I don’t know if D got too drunk, could sense my straightness or lost interest, but we parted with cheek kisses and a hug.

Below’s a video to capture the ambiance. Yes, it’s dark at the beginning, but it lights up at the end for a great view of the crowd.

Sao Paulo, Jungles, Lakes, Oh My!

On Day Two in Sao Paulo while out for drinks, my friends began arguing over the proper venues to take me to in order to ensure I experienced “the essential Sao Paulo.” As they bickered about whether it was appropriate or not to take me to an after hours frequented by trannies called Love Story where you HAD to dance traditional jigs with whoever might ask you, my friend Rio (previously mentioned in Shut Up & Be Feminine) silenced the crowd bellowing:

“She's from New York. New York! What’s the point of taking her to Crobar or Mynt or Museum – the best clubbing nightlife in the world is in New York! She’s not going to see anything new inside of one of these venues.”

Slowly, everyone murmured in agreement. So later on, my two girlfriends and I polished off two and a half bottles on champagne at home while waiting for my friend the Argentine to pick us up and take us to a Sao Paulo house party. He was almost two hours late since our bullet proof car’s battery had apparently died, but he’d call and check in at random point throughout the evening in which I’d ask him:

“How far away are you: a full bottle of champagne or a half bottle?”

Eventually, he arrived. Drunk, we stumbled into our first bullet proof vehicle, which come to find out has more anal rules than a middle school dance party.

1. Don’t slam the doors -- it will hurt the Plexiglas bullet proof windows
2. The backseat windows don’t roll down
3. Don’t touch anything
4. Never close a door when the windows are rolled down as they’ll shatter

The list went on and on in a high maintenance frenzy. Luckily, we didn’t allow it to be a buzz kill and made it to our house party in exceptionally good spirits. After passing through security, we surveyed the festivities which took place outdoors around a swimming pool filled with rose petals (for serious). The house itself was naturally swanky, white and chic and there were bars set up both in and outdoors – as well as a dance floor in the pool house with a professional DJ.

Brazilians have their own weird version of Redbull which I can’t remember the name of, but if you don’t specify otherwise, that’s what your drink gets mixed with. Since I didn’t even know how to properly say ‘hello’ in Portuguese let alone specify drink alterations above absurdly loud music, I ended up consuming mass amounts of this strange liquid throughout the trip.



After completing surprisingly few conversations (practically no one spoke English) we departed at 3:30 AM, only to be picked up at 7:30 AM for our five and a half hour drive to the lakes of Escarpas. The original plan was to fly into a near-ish city called Bello Horizonte and drive the two hours to Escarpas from there. That was before our friend the Argentine convinced our other friend to lend us his bullet proof vehicle with GPS (he clearly didn't need his car since he was helicoptering in).

Tatas and I harbored major hesitations about this change in itinerary as we were imagining the back roads to be unpaved, through jungles, with monkeys hanging in the trees and men with machine guns at every stop light. Our friend the Argentine's an extremely convincing man, so we let him persuade us that this whacked out version of a road trip would be a good, even a ‘fun,’ idea. We swung by the Sao Paulo airport to get another New Yorker friend of ours fresh off his flight, and embarked on the open road in our immensely heavy bullet proof happy van, boys in the front, girls in the back.

While I was seriously not excited about spending hours trapped in a car, this ride was perhaps the most interesting part of our trip. It started out on major highways and ended on tiny, curvy, pothole infested back roads similar to what I described above minus the monkeys and guns. But there were cattle, and horses (in the road!) and sugarcane that spread as far as the eye could see.

The Escarpas lakes are outside an area of Brazil called Ribeirao Preto, which my friends described as some of the most expensive agriculture land in the world – valued at a higher price than the most fertile tobacco fields in the US. The main agriculture product is of course sugarcane i.e. ethanol, and of course you have some of the wealthiest families with ranches the size of Rhode Island near impoverished towns filled with underpaid workers who can’t even afford shoes. According to our friend Wiki:

Ribeirão Preto (Portuguese for "Black Brook") is a municipality and city in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is nicknamed Brazilian California, because of a combination of an economy based on agrobusiness plus high technology, wealth and sunny weather all year long.

After journeying through roads windier than soft spaghetti, most not even large enough to appear on our GPS system, we arrived in Escarpas. The Argentine fulfilled one of my most passionate girlhood fantasies by arranging for us to stay in a pink house.






We enjoyed these stunning vistas only briefly, and after a quick bite at Ecsarpas’ only restaurant (that’s right, only restaurant) the sun had set and it was time for a powernap before attending what would be the Easter weekend kick off party…a party so immense, so mind boggling, and so packed with interesting cultural phenomena and indescribable weirdness that it deserves it’s very own post…tomorrow.

Back From Brazil

I consider myself someone who’s traveled a lot, but no trip has been so jaw droppingly interesting as my recent voyage to Brazil. The entire experience from the bullet proof cars (which have absurdly heavy doors FYI) to the ostentatious luxury to the extreme poverty to the lushly green landscape of Minas Gerais to the sugarcane to the unparelled time and energy devoted to partying still has my head in a Brazilian spin (lack of sleep and excessive drinking aren’t helping either).

I landed in Sao Paulo expecting to feel

1. Like a victim
2. Like a foreigner
3. Like someone with a ‘Rob Me’ sign stapled to their back.

This was not the case. In fact, throughout my entire tip, I never once felt uncomfortable or unsafe (except from my own self-induced vodka comas.) The Sao Paulo airport was void of sketchy predators and helpful men in suits working at the airport guided us into a safe, registered taxi. We were on our way.

Tatas and I stayed with a girlfriend of mine from Punta who had an apartment with a spare room in Higienopolis, a wealthy residential area of the city near a prestigious university. ‘Higienopolis’ the word actually means ‘sanitary.’ This part of the city was named correctly. Not only were the streets remarkably clean for one of the five biggest metropolises in the world, security guards stood outside of almost every building. College students meandered around the shops, residents walked their dogs in beautiful tropical parks with thick plants and palm trees.

Before I left, many had described Sao Paulo as a ‘cement block,’ and yes, if you view the city airily in a helicopter this is the case (which many do…helicopters are the preferred method of transportation among the elite, and according to the folks I talked to in the vacation-destination Escarpas where we went later, ‘among the elite you’re a nobody without your own helipad.’) So from the air, the city not only looks massive but massively huge and unappealing. But down on the ground, certain sections like Jardims and Higienopolis are more beautiful than Beverly Hills.

I was also expecting:

1. Times Square level crowded streets everywhere and
2. to feel utterly unsafe without my arm around a native friend.

WRONG! My Brazilian girlfriend’s sister drew us a little map and sent us out shopping moments after our arrival. Higienopolis felt more like a wealthy, under-populated suburb than a section of one of the largest cities in the world. We soaked up the amazingly warm weather, radiant palm trees and imposing embassies until we arrived at our destination – the Higienopolis Mall which looked as nice as the Beverly Center complete with golden staircases, glass ceilings and a grass park indoors. We even stopped to ask directions from tan security guards using only hand signals and were greeted with helpful smiles.

Our mission was to indulge in bikinis and all things summery. Since Brasil is entering the fall season, everything we wanted for the start of summer in the USA was on liquidancion or ‘sale,’ the one word I know in absolutely every language. We ended up bikini shopping and found ourselves in pieces of Lycra spandex that barely covered our ass let alone any significant portion of our chest. Upon requesting larger sizes via vulgar hand movements, our sales woman would deny our request responding:

“No. Big iz ugly.”

After further communication that we didn’t feel comfortable with 95% of our butt cheeks showing, she allowed us to try a medium, which fascinatingly enough was just as tiny as the previous suit. So apparently going up a size only adds half a centimeter of fabric. Apparently these people just like their swimsuits small.

That night as a preview, our girlfriend took us on a driving tour around the city. It all felt exactly like L.A., spread out but with moving traffic. We checked out the city skyline at a bar called Skye on top of the Hotel Unique. Then we joined with other friends whose driver took us to the most stunningly beautiful sushi (sushi’s big in Sao Paulo) restaurant I’d ever seen. The décor made Nobu downtown look like an Apple Bees. Oh, and like L.A. if you’re not with your driver (which 70% of the upper class employs) restaurants have valet. It was around this time that Tatas and I looked at each other in a mutual gaze that said, “we were expecting car jackings at traffic lights and people stalking the streets with machine guns and instead we got tuna Tar Tar and valet?”

Granted, later on our second trip to the airport where my friend insisted on taking a short cut through a shanty town and days later on our five hour road trip through the jungles of Minas Gerais, I witnessed unimaginable poverty. But the truth is that if you stick to the right areas in Sao Paulo and refrain from wearing a flashy watch, chances are you’re going to be just fine as a tourist.

Day one was a warm up. The city, the lakes, and the parties (complete with video footage) to come…

Some Things Never Change

After staying in for days and enjoying activities like staring at walls, ‘reading,’ watching old movies and forcing myself to eat fruit, I shoved myself into a social situation last night (crazy idea, I know) and immediately started adding wine and grappa to the mix. Needless to say, by the time I got to Suzie Wong (don’t worry, it’s still a shithole) I’d morphed into a dancing machine. Later, we stumbled next door to Pink, my neglected favorite club child that I hadn’t frequented since the opening of Kiss & Fly. Brace yourselves because this is going to sound wrong: but frequenting Pink after such a lengthy time away felt fantastic. Like putting on those comfy worn and torn pair of old sneakers that everyone says you should throw away because they have holes in them and smell up the wahzoo, but you’re just too attached to them and your nicer new sneakers just aren’t the same dammit! That was Pink for me last night. Smelly and grimly and unparalleled in it’s unique douchey-ness.

The place was filled with the usual suspects (do we even have to name them? Cough, Rocco, cough) and they charitably let me in even though I’d forgotten my ID at home. Then I started to desperately wish that I was truly underage because that would’ve given the whole ‘talking my way in’ an added thrill. Cursed adulthood.

Just like the obsession with a favorite restaurant, club or bar, some emotional patterns never change. Like my way of dealing with problems = running away to a foreign country or stalking trip packages on Expedia. This time it’s Brazil. Clearly, there’s a lot of prep work involved in a trip like this: visas, hair removal (a key to femininity as we learned yesterday), manicure, pedicure, starvation in order to shed a few pounds and most importantly, making sure AT&T and iPhone don’t take turns financially screwing me over with whacky international roaming charges. That’s where this super helpful article came in handy, which I wanted to share with all iPhone and potential iPhone owners. In a nutshell:

So what's the best way of taking an iPhone abroad? If you're really scared about running up data bills – and you should be – then one way of ensuring that can't happen is to phone up AT&T just before you leave, on 800-335-4685, and ask them to disable your data plan. Then phone them again on your return, and get them to turn it back on. You can still use the phone to surf the web and check your emails when you're in a wifi zone, but you won't get a massive bill for doing the same thing over the cellular network.

The other thing you can do is switch your phone to airplane mode most of the time. That turns off everything: both voice and wifi. When you're in a wifi zone, or when you want to make a phone call, come out of airplane mode and do whatever you need to do, then turn airplane mode back on again.

On my trip to Uruguay and Argentina, I didn’t even bring my iPhone, just left it locked in my desk drawer in New York as part of an ‘I’m tired of using technology’ (thanks for singing it, Justin Timberlake) experiment. On this trip, while I don’t plan on bringing the iPhone out and about with me, I do want it in the airport for coordination and safety purposes (how it will aid me in a car jacking after it’s already been stolen is confusing to me, but hey…it’s an illusion of security.)

Making life additionally crazy, I’ve heard a lot of contradicting information about Sao Paulo – from those who’ve recommended I try to get a driver with a bullet proof car to others who’ve said taxis are perfectly safe. The overwhelming advice seems to be to dress down, never wear jewelry and never carry a purse with valuables. So I’m thinking hoodie, baseball hat and carrying money in one of those gross and geeky pouches that you strap to your body (yuck!). Fortunately, we’ll only be in the city two days (and how many bad things can happen in two days? We’ll find out!) and with locals who ‘know the ropes.’ Then we’re off to these lakes that I know very little about, but are supposedly part of some rainforest. Like Punta, I plan to remain as oblivious and happy as a child in a car seat along for the ride.