-Taking vacations used to be so easy.  As a kid, you’d go to Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.  It was fun and relaxing.  Then came college and Spring Break madness.  You’d be on a liquid diet for seven days and not remember a thing.  But still, there were thousands of Spring Breakers there with you.  None of those experiences could prepare me for the mind-bending vacation I just took to Rio de Janeiro and South Beach.  For ten days my buddies and I took our bodies to the limits of alcohol, sun, and chicas.  I think my roommate and fellow traveler Brian said it best when he remarked, “It’s not a vacation, it’s a war.”

-Let me just set the scene for you.  It is dead winter in Rio right now, meaning it is 82 degrees and balmy every day.  The national uniform is a thong bikini.  Beers costs less than a dollar American.  They don’t speak a lick of English.  And every person we talked to before we left said it was the greatest place on earth.  I was at the bank the day before we left getting some traveler’s cheques and the teller was going on and on about how he got double-teamed in Rio.  In the middle of the bank!  Later I went to CVS to get some last minute items – suntan lotion and condoms.  You always know it’s going to be a great trip when those are the last two things you need to get before you leave.

-I found it very amusing that when you’re on vacation, everything is really cheap except for the things that the locals know only Americans will do.  For instance, in Rio, a beer is like a buck, a blow job is only 20 bucks, and hang gliding is like 700 dollars.  I’m like, um, I’ll just take a beer.

-The language barrier when traveling abroad is also a very difficult barrier to overcome.  We spoke English and a little bit of Spanish.  Brazilians speak Portuguese and a little bit of Spanish.  When you are having a conversation that goes from English to Spanish to Portuguese and back, you can bet most everything will get lost in translation.  The best is when you have a whole conversation and you think the other person is understanding you and you go on and on and finally ask them how they feel about something and they’re like, “Um, yes.”