Ep. 5 - Travel Podcast - Camping in Patagonia, Exploring the Amazon & Much More with Gabby the Canadian (Part 1)

How a solo female traveler from Canada named Gabby traveled all over South America ALONE - from the Amazon in Ecuador, to camping in Patagonia in Chile and Argentina to off-the-beaten path adventures in Peru and Huaraz to trivia nights on hostel rooftops with a hundred other amazing travelers from around the world.

Gabby is an amazing person with one of the most amazing personalities and I am so happy that I got to meet her when I was traveling through Ecuador and Quito.

This is part 1 of 2 - somehow we talked for almost 4 hours... and maaaaaybe I enjoyed my wine a bit by the second part haha.

Thank you Gabby for being such a true sport and joining me for this podcast, I really enjoying having you on and re-living your amazing travels with you. There is sooo much more to talk about and I hope we can have another great episode soon! :)

Cheers to the coolest gal in Saskatchewan!!!

Transcript

John: what, how did you get a sip of the ayahuasca? Were they just passing it around like a shot

Gabby: yeah. With the shaman of the village?

John: with the shaman? Like a volunteer from the Netherlands?

Gabby: No, he was a shaman from the village. He put on his, his green robes over top of his Adidas clothes in this super isolated village. It was actually wild. We went to this village that we had to take a boat like a couple hours away from the resort, and they're all in Adidas and Nike clothes. And then as soon as we show up, we see Hurd Lee putting on this green robe and putting his shaman gear on.

And then, yeah, he had some, uh, ayahuasca and some wood alcohol that we tried that was disgusting. It was so bad.

John: What is wood alcohol?

Gabby: They make alcohol from wood.

a taxi dropped us [00:01:00] off at the bottom of a mountain and then this guy came and met us and he was on a donkey to take some of this stuff. And you know, it was, I was like, I don't know. I was, that was a type two sort of fun, you know, it's, it's not super enjoyable in the moment, but it's fun later.

'cause I haven't never been so miserable on a hike. '

John: then you have all these green goats coming in and the mosquitoes, they're like, Ooh, fresh meat. It's like cheesecake. She just got so many individual mosquito bites that it gave her like a regular fever or something. And she got sent to the hospital for that and had to leave the Amazon.

Gabby: I always say there's like continents, like you backpack and then you graduate levels. You know, like you start with Europe and then maybe like Southeast Asia or Australia and then like maybe Africa to Morocco is like a common one.

Egypt and [00:02:00] then you end up in South America.

Sorry.

John: Gabrielle.

Gabby: Hello?

John: Uh, so I heard that you were born of a Sasquatch in Nova Scotia and every time you go outside, you are forced to wear a beaver on your head. How true is that? And you drink maple syrup comes outta your blood veins,

Gabby: Uh, I do ingest maple syrup every single day in the morning. That's how I wake up. Uh, but I was actually born in Saskatchewan.

John: Saskatchewan. That sounds even more like a Sasquatch is from there. That is so cool.

Gabby: that.

John: Is this why? Every photo I see of you is like six feet under snow, sort of swimming in it in a bikini, and you're like, only minus five today, people.

Gabby: Yeah. I wish it was minus five. Today is actually minus 30, but [00:03:00] it's fine.

John: Oh my God, you're a true Canadian. You are the real deal. Well, thank you for joining me for this. So I wanna say cheers to you. Cheers to adventure. What is that scrumptious beverage?

Gabby: It's a, wait, what is it? Oh, a chili mango margarita in a glass jar.

John: I love it. You just imagine being on the beach with every drink.

Gabby: Yeah. Hard to imagine right now. But we got snowy beaches.

John: Minus 30 is so cold, by the way. When minus 30 Fahrenheit goes to minus 40 Celsius, they meet up. So they're actually exactly the same.

Gabby: Yeah. We're, we were close last night. We were basically, we're at minus 40, so

John: So, well, I'm glad that you survived. So I still haven't figured out how to officially start these other than [00:04:00] let's just roll into it and have some fun. So cheers to minus 30 because that's not minus 40, so it's minus 10 better. Um,

Gabby: It could always be worse.

John: you are quite an international traveler, I have to say. We met in keto Ecuador, didn't we? It seems like everyone I talked to, I met in keto. I don't know how we bonded so well.

Gabby: I think I met a lot of people there because I never left the hostel because I was kind of scared of keto.

John: I'm trying in every episode, not to just talk about having someone put a knife or a gun in your face in South America, but

Gabby: Uh,

John: I'm sorry.

Gabby: yeah. I mean, I

never had that happen. I didn't have it happen, so I only had really good experiences. But yeah, I was pretty scared to leave that hostel. I don't think it was in a good area

John: I, I feel bad saying that because I love that place, that hostel and the one that next to it are [00:05:00] the two best hostels to stay in. And they are in, um, a cultural area. I don't know how you say that. 'cause

it's not diverse, you know, that's the joke in Europe. This is, this is a diverse area. Oh, okay.

Gabby: Okay. Go.

John: But down there, pretty much everyone looks very similar.

Um, but some of them stab you.

Gabby: Yeah. Not me though. I did it. I

John: are you blonde? It's hard for me to tell here

Gabby: Uh, it's like a blonde, it's like a

John: A bra.

Gabby: with a blonde.

John: I like that. A blonde. I was gonna say, when you walk in that area with a blonde person, it's so much different than when you walk with someone who has dark hair

Gabby: yeah.

John: it, it must have happened to you. When you go out, everybody just looks at you.

Gabby: Yeah, I think my hair was like slightly, slightly darker when I was down there, but it bleaches in the sun, so the more time I spend in the sun, the lighter it gets. [00:06:00] But I was, I'm quite short, so I, I blended in quite a bit there, so that was good

John: Did you make it to the Amazon?

Gabby: yes,

John: Uh, a Are they tall people or are they short people?

Gabby: They're short.

John: Don't you feel like you, your whole life has been a lie when you're talking about a tall woman, they're like, it's an Amazon of a woman and

Gabby: I never thought about it.

John: it's like, it's

Gabby: You're so right.

John: of a woman.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. She's like six feet tall. No, they're so short. And Peruvians are also really short, which I enjoy because I'm average height there.

John: So you, you felt, you're like, these are my people.

Gabby: They, yeah, I felt at home.

John: Because there's so many Dutch girls that travel down there and they're all like six feet tall.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. I did the Quila TOA loop in Ecuador with two Dutch women, and they were over six feet and I've never felt so tiny in my life.

John: You're like, guys, little legs [00:07:00] carry me.

Gabby: Yeah. They were literally just like sprinting up the mountaintop and I'm like, my legs are half the size of yours. I'm like a child compared to these two too.

John: How did you, you know what, that's a good thing to talk about. How did you like Tequila Toa loop and where did you start it from? Because it lasts a few days. It's like a little tiny self-contained adventure. That's pretty fun.

Gabby: Yeah, it is. It was amazing. I would probably one of the best things I did in Ecuador, actually, but, um, let's see. I don't remember where it started.

John: Were you in, did you go to a lot of Kga before that? That's that tiny little village that's near Cotopaxi.

Gabby: No, we ended at Laga.

John: Okay. So,

Gabby: yeah.

John: but you did the three day walk.

Gabby: Yes.

John: Did you have any interesting experiences? Because I heard day one, a lot of people meet the friendly dogs.

Gabby: There's a lot. We met some friendly dogs. I mean,

John: By friendly. I mean, they look like they wanna bite your face off.

Gabby: [00:08:00] no, actually, we actually met really friendly dogs. I never, 'cause we were warned about the scary dogs, but I had hiking pools, so I was ready. But no, we didn't meet any scary dogs. We met a friendly pig that was, uh, on a leash That was super cute.

John: talk about British people that way.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: I'm kidding. Edit that out.

Gabby: Uh, should you say that? I dunno.

John: I don't know. I don't, I love my British people. They take jokes well, they give it, well that's okay.

Gabby: They do,

John: Just feed 'em a crumpet. And they're happy.

Gabby: yeah. Um, I don't know. The kilo to loop. What did I

John: Day one, which I had to skip due to work, unfortunately. Um, my crew got attacked by dogs. Nothing really bad happened. Just a lot of trauma.

Gabby: Listen.

John: they needed the hiking poles. So I took a taxi to show up on the morning of day two. Um, and [00:09:00] everyone's like freaking out like, oh my God, you gotta worry about these dogs.

They're coming for you. We don't really know what to do. We're from Europe. They don't have scary dogs there. And I'm like, I don't know what to do.

Gabby: Uh, I don't know.

John: push you in front of me.

Gabby: Yeah. Knock out the slowest person in your group,

John: How did you handle the altitude though? Because it, the keto loop is three days hike up a giant volcano, and I think you end up over 3000 meters. And some of the time you're basically climbing up like that. And I have to tell you. I don't know how you handled it. I had to sing my, like when I have extreme pain, I have to sing myself little songs that

Gabby: Oh yeah.

John: and over and then just like go into myself and just like think one more.

Just one more. You'll be able to breathe at some point in your life. Just not this point.

Gabby: Uh, yeah, I handled it really well. Not gonna lie. It was fine.

John: You are like one [00:10:00] of those groups that passed us.

Gabby: yeah. I didn't struggle with it at all in Ecuador. I don't know why I, I think it's, 'cause where I live now, we're at like a thousand meters elevation, so I'm not coming from like sea level to go there. And then,

John: That's almost cheating. So you're telling me you didn't even have altitude sickness.

Gabby: and not in Ecuador? No.

John: Oh my gosh, that's half the fun. I remember keto is 2008 or 900 meters, so it's super, super, super high. And the first day that I arrived, it was my birthday. And so I was flying in from the states and I told the stewardess, it's my birthday.

So she ended up, instead of just giving me like four wines, I got like eight and I had three of them delivered right as we were landing. And I had no idea what it's like at altitude. So I arrive at the hostel, just drunk, had the guy pick me up for like 20 bucks from the airport and I [00:11:00] arrive, I'm so lit.

And then they have a party going on, on the rooftop. And so I go up there and just, you know, I got my pirate hat made. Great mood, keep going, keep going, keep going. End up going to that bar where all the local women hunt the foreign men and uh,

Gabby: Oh, you got hunted.

John: Hunt them in like a, a good way I guess. If you wanna have some fun, it's not like a Columbia lose your kidney way,

Gabby: Nope.

John: you just lose a little bit of dignity.

But anyway, then I get home the next day, or no, I get home that night, wake up the next day, I'm like, oh, this is a hangover. Didn't go away for three days. I was having like heart palpitations and I'm like, this is the weirdest hangover I have ever had.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: yeah,

Gabby: Wow.

John: it was, it was really rough. Uh, I mean, when I would wake, I was on the top bunk, so even higher than, you know, normal when you're already [00:12:00] at 2,900 meters, getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night 'cause you drank too much.

And then I'd lay down in bed and then my heart feels like it's gonna explode. I'm like, this is not normal.

Gabby: What? Yeah. No, I never had anything like that.

John: I didn't research it at all. I had no idea that keto was an Ecuador and the Ecuador is like on a mountain and I just wanted to go to the Galapagos and swim with some turtles. Um,

Gabby: Oh yeah.

John: keto.

Gabby: I never actually went to the Galapagos,

John: Did you go to Zo?

Gabby: no,

John: Where did you go? In Ecuador.

Gabby: I went to Cotopaxi and the Amazon there, but I think I only stayed like three and a half weeks.

John: That's long enough. That's long

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. But I had like lots of transit days and then I ended up staying in keto longer than I probably wanted to.

John: Yeah. That was an interesting time.[00:13:00]

Gabby: Yeah. And I stayed like five days, I think, in Cotopaxi at the Secret Garden hostel.

'cause I loved it so much. It felt like the Lord of the Rings. So I was like, I'm staying here.

John: The hot tub. Did you go to the hot tub?

Gabby: Yeah. And there was, uh, just a beautiful, like waterfalls and hammocks and I was just like, there was hobbit holes. I was like, this is my place. And then they asked me to stay and volunteer there if I wanted to. But then I was like, I already had a flight to Chile. So I was like, I can't, but I would've if I didn't.

That was, I never usually pre-book anything, but I pre-booked that flight and I was like, Ugh. Of course.

John: that. I, I feel that, and that's such a solo travel like backpacker thing because the one time you do pre-book it,

Gabby: yeah,

John: it like screws you, you're like, oh, I wish I hadn't. So you never pre-book it again. And then you're always doing it last minute and then you're always stressed out and you're like, why don't I just pre-book?

[00:14:00] And then,

Gabby: yeah. And then end up costing yourself more money. 'cause then you waited too long and then you're like, Ugh. 'cause I can't make decisions. So.

John: Yeah, exactly. But that, 'cause you know, we were talking about how violent it can be. It's also the most magical place ever. Once you get out of the big cities, once you go to Kode Pak Sea and the Hobbit thing, they're actual rooms that you can stay in. They're rather expensive, but they're made to be like ha houses.

Gabby: Yeah. I would love to go back. I loved the code of taxi area and I wanted to, the whole reason I went to Ecuador was to summit, like code of taxi, but it was erupting, so I couldn't go to the summit, but I was like, I'm a Ecuador for this one thing. Um, but I ended up, I was able to hike to base camp and we had to wear masks and it was like we were on moreor 'cause you couldn't see anything.

It was all foggy from the, like the volcano erupting kind of, it was [00:15:00] cool. Slightly dangerous

John: And it was smelled like sulfur the whole time when you guys went up, didn't it?

Gabby: Yeah. It did smell like

John: remember because my friend, uh, did that at the same time and had to wear the masks and I was just like, I don't know how, how much they pay attention to safety in Ecuador. Like, do they just lose a few gringos that fall off the side of the mountain?

Gabby: Yeah.

John: Because at that point you're 5,000 meters and

Gabby: Yeah.

John: oh,

Gabby: They're quite high. But I. Yeah, I wasn't affected by that either. I don't know. In Ecuador, I didn't feel it at all. But when I went to Peru, I really felt the altitude there.

John: where it, um, it was a rainbow mountain down there,

Gabby: Yes. But I felt, yes. I didn't actually go to Rainbow Mountain. I went to Juez and then went to do the way Wash Trek. It's like up in [00:16:00] Northern Peru.

John: Oh,

Gabby: Yeah,

John: I didn't do that. Okay,

Gabby: yeah. It was,

John: that. Tell me about it. Where does it go? What does it do?

Gabby: yeah. It takes you, uh,

John: Is it for like the mocha people?

Gabby: no, no, it is, yeah, it's called the HU Wash and it's just like this mountain range that's not a national park. And then it's just a bunch of people's land. So there's like a community that that farms within it. So then you're camping in people's farm yards

John: Cool.

Gabby: It was super cool. It wasn't touristy.

There was, I only saw one other group, but I also went during rainy season, which I would not recommend 'cause it was really cold. It was really cold, it was really wet. Um, but it was just me and I paid a guide, so it was just me and my guide and we were going through it. Yeah. So I felt the altitude a bit there.

'cause it was even higher than I think it, it was Oh, [00:17:00] about like 4,300 meters I think.

John: not feel it at AK C? And you've, I guess maybe 'cause you're exerting yourself more, you probably had like a backpack on.

Gabby: Yeah. I did have the backpack on and I just felt it more, which I don't know, but I, I did South America a little bit backwards. I started off in Ecuador and then I flew to Chile and there was in Chile and Argentina, which are more at like sea level. And then I flew up to Peru. So I was a bit backwards.

I know people usually do it, Columbia, Ecuador,

John: Wasn't that your first solo trip?

Gabby: No,

John: Oh, it wasn't. I thought it was okay

Gabby: no. My first solo trip was to England and I, I moved abroad for a year and a half when I was,

John: How was it?

Gabby: when I was 20. Um, so

John: I know everyone tells you, you look so young, you do not look your age.

Gabby: Well my birthday is next [00:18:00] month. I'll be 29.

John: Jesus. Wow. 29 going on like 17.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. So I am obsessed with England. I love everything about it.

John: Did you make it to Bath?

Gabby: Yes.

John: heard Bath is beautiful. I never made it there.

Gabby: insane. There's something about their historicals, like their just history extends so much further than Canada's It is so cool. And I've also been a Harry Potter nerd since I was probably seven, so

John: Okay. That helps.

Gabby: that is why I moved to England, was because of Harry Potter.

John: Really.

Gabby: Yeah,

John: Oh my gosh. So that gal's book really has like boosted the tourism economy of

Gabby: did. It really did.

John: You went to England to become a wizard.

I love it.

Gabby: Yeah, I ended up just being a nanny, so

John: Almost. You, um, Mary Poppins

Gabby: yeah, I was

John: kind of a wizard. [00:19:00]

Gabby: She was, yeah. I should have had an umbrella.

John: What? Um, uh, Peru, I'm very confused.

Gabby: Oh yeah.

John: you go on this little trek that nobody else has been on. You get your guide, you go alone. How or not nobody else been on, but like pretty much nobody goes on

Gabby: well, nobody goes on it. Yeah. Nobody goes on it in the rainy season, that's for sure. I think during the dry season there's a lot more crowds, but. Not during the rainy season. It was hard to find a guide that would do it 'cause a lot of them had closed. So I was like texting random numbers in Raz.

'cause I went there with no plan and I didn't realize that so many like guide places would be closed. 'cause it was a rainy season. So I was like texting these numbers on posters trying to get, and I found one and then he was like, it's usually an eight day trek. But I only had four days to do it 'cause I had to meet someone in Lima.

So I was like, he's [00:20:00] like, yeah, we have to leave at 2:00 AM tonight so you have to be ready to go. And I was like, okay, okay, I can do that. So we got, yeah, we left at 2:00 AM Drove there, I think we got there at 4:00 AM in the middle of nowhere. You're going down up these like windy mountain roads that are super sketchy.

They're so thin and skinny. And then we're going there. And then, yeah, just a taxi dropped us off at the bottom of a mountain and then this guy came and met us and he was on a donkey to take some of this stuff. And you know, it was, I was like, I don't know. I was, that was a type two sort of fun, you know, it's, it's not super enjoyable in the moment, but it's fun later.

'cause I haven't never been so miserable on a hike. 'cause it was, it was just constant rain

John: That's type two.

Gabby: type two fun. Yeah.

John: I like [00:21:00] that. And type. Fun is immediate fun.

Gabby: Yeah. Type one is immediate fun. Type two is, it's fun later on.

John: Type three is, I got robbed in Paris and I'm never going back.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. That could be it. Yeah. But

John: that Type two. Fun. Did you just make that up? I'm gonna attribute it to you.

Gabby: yeah, you

can

John: go with, yes. I like it. I never heard that before. I like rating it like that

Gabby: Yeah. Type two. Fun. We say that all the time with Mountain Adventures. They're not always fun in the moment, but they'll be fun later.

John: when the

Gabby: be miserable.

John: falls on

Gabby: Yeah.

John: you're like stuck. I type two fun.

Gabby: Touch your fun. Yeah. You're like scared for your life, scrambling on the rocks and you're like, this will be fun later. And then you tell everyone it was the best day of your life, but

John: Yeah. It's funny how all the travel stories become really positive and then you have that one drunk friend at the table who's like, are you kidding me? You couldn't stop complaining the whole time. Everybody had to wait for you, blah, blah, blah. B.[00:22:00]

Gabby: Yeah. I was miserable the whole time. It was one of the most beautiful places in the world, probably, and I was miserable.

John: Was it for a scenery or like ruins?

Gabby: no scenery. The mountains are, well, they're the closest to what you get. They're like the Himalayas of South America, basically. They're insane. And there's this one shot that you can get with two lakes or three lakes, and they're like the most blue glacial lakes with all these like insane mountain peaks.

John: man. Wait, is this where you have like Lake 69 or something?

Gabby: Laguna 69. It's in the same area. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

John: I remember a lot of backpackers loved posting

Gabby: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I acclimatized when I flew to Peru. I did Laguna 69

John: a lot.

Gabby: Yeah. Well that's how you really learn a place, right?[00:23:00]

John: That's what they tell you at Bungalow six and keto. So you learn the place, baby,

Gabby: That's how you learn it.

John: you can't breathe anyway, so you don't need to come up.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: inappropriate.

Gabby: You might black out, but it's fine.

John: It's just the altitude.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: I love how it always reverts to like hostile talk. Like I wish that we could have a camera sort of on the table for of us when all of us sort of meet at hostels and it's just nonstop fun and nonstop banter the whole time. Even if you're dead.

Gabby: you did. Do you remember the trivia night that we did?

John: Were we in the same team?

Gabby: Yes. So it was me,

you, um, one guy, the biologist from the uk and then another American, and we called ourselves the colonizers.

John: Yes. Yes. I [00:24:00] remember. I remember, uh, the other American as well. And, um, uh,

Gabby: Sarah.

John: funny, it's funny with, oh, what was that? Yeah, I thought you knew. Um, it's funny how we met at the beginning of something that did not involve the two of us at all. And now we are meeting again just after the end.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: I don't know what that means, but cheers.

I'll just have some more wine. By the way, we owned that trivia night.

Gabby: Yeah, we did.

John: we owned it. I, I just, this is what's so hard to convey to Americans sometimes when they're like, oh, I can't stay in a hostel. You can't. Why don't you just go back to your hotel room alone, watch sex in the city, and pet your imagine imaginary cat all night,

Gabby: Yeah,

John: because that's what you're gonna be doing.

What are we doing? We're on a rooftop in a [00:25:00] hostel surrounded by people from all over the world drinking tons of wine and beer and jello shots because we won trivia night.

Gabby: yeah. We did. I, I forgot we won actually.

John: We owned it. That's what we did. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that other teams were so dumb. Like they weren't, they weren't the hardest questions in the world.

Maybe it was the altitude.

Gabby: I think we had an easier time 'cause we spoke English as a first language

John: There's, there's a

Gabby: there. Is that,

John: There's a chance that that might

Gabby: the, yeah.

John: Were you cheating? No. Could anybody else understand the questions?

Gabby: Um, no, they could, yeah.

John: Yeah, that was really fun. I think we sat close to the entrance to the roof, or maybe that was a different time. But yeah, trivia night was so fun. That hostel was fun every night it has different [00:26:00] events.

Gabby: Yeah. And the food was so good. The food was so good.

John: It's like a professional chef comes and makes you the most amazing meal for six or $7.

Gabby: Yeah. That was some of the best hostile food I've ever had actually. And they make food every day. Breakfast and dinner. That's probably one of the only hostels I've stayed at that does that.

John: That was so great. And the roof was so great. And you get a beautiful view over the city, and everyone, like you said, kind of wants to stay in for obvious reasons. So you're all there a big community together, having a great time. I still have the bracelet, uh, of the community hostel.

Gabby: Uh, is that sanitary?

John: Nobody knows. Nobody knows after the Amazon. Nothing is sanitary.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: Tell, tell me about your [00:27:00] Amazon experience.

Gabby: Yeah. I stayed at Dolphin Resort I think it was

John: You were kind of in the Northeastern ish part of the Amazon in Ecuador, right?

Gabby: Yes.

John: And you take a tour that leaves from the hostel, so they pick you up and then they drive you, but then you take like this big boat deep into the heart of the Amazon, right? Like it's pretty far in.

Gabby: Yeah. You're on a boat for a couple hours I think, and then you're staying along the river channel. Um, and the river looks like mud, kind of, it's like the color of mine. It's not like the most inviting, but

John: You're not selling me on it. You're

Gabby: yeah. But, uh,

John: the river? Little piranhas.

Gabby: little piranhas, anacondas. What are those crocodiles things called

John: Um, Caymans.

Gabby: Yes.

Caymans. Yeah. So I swam with Caymans and Anacondas and pink [00:28:00] dolphins.

John: Did you get to see them?

Gabby: No,

John: Okay, good.

Gabby: we could see them like almost come up and then like they just teased us.

John: good. That's good enough. That's good enough. That's, that's how everybody sees them. So I'm so jealous when you meet that one out of a thousand person who got to like actually see them breach.

Gabby: No, I didn't see that. Yeah.

John: that weird and creepy though, that the Amazon has dolphins and they're like these sort of deranged pink, ugly ones.

Gabby: I didn't say they were ugly.

John: I mean, you know, they're Lizzo beautiful. No, I'm kidding.

Gabby: they're so pretty. I don't know. I wouldn't know actually. 'cause I've never seen one, so.

John: They're not pretty. They're so not pretty. So here's what happened. Okay? I'm gonna tell you the story. I didn't actually see them close up. I just saw other people's photos. There was one girl that did a special trip through the Amazon. It's not a tour or anything. There's so many hardcore travelers down there.

It's

Gabby: Yeah.

John: Like nothing [00:29:00] phases anyone. And this gal, um, just sort of hitched a ride a few different stops through a part of the Amazon that doesn't really give tours, but only locals go through. And then made it into Columbia. And she had one photo at a dock with the pink dolphins. The locals must have fed the dolphins or something.

It was

Gabby: Oh,

John: dock. And the dolphin had sort of come up and it was just a couple feet from her.

Gabby: What?

John: I so jealous.

Gabby: I'm jealous.

John: It's so ugly. So here's what happened. Okay? This is the truth, just so everybody knows. So the Amazon's filled with all sorts of creatures. You've got dolphins, you have stingrays that scared the shit outta me when I learned there are stingrays in there.

Oh my gosh. You've got, uh, warrior otters. By the way, otters are no longer cute once they like try to tip your boat over and scare you away.

Gabby: yeah.

John: I will make a little mitten out of you. A little bastard. So here's what happened. The ocean is filled [00:30:00] with beautiful dolphins.

Gabby: Yes.

John: kicking in. This is gonna be great. Um, but previously it used to have two types of dolphins. The pink dolphins and the silver dolphins. And the pink dolphins were always jealous of the silver dolphins because they were so beautiful and so handsome and so amazing. And so what happened is the pink dolphins tried to overthrow the silver dolphin kingdom

Gabby: Oh yeah.

John: all of their land, their sea land, but the silver dolphins won and they banished them to the Amazon.

Gabby: Hmm. You know what? I would take the Amazon over the ocean any day.

John: To be fair, that fable, uh, which is mine, by the way, you have to attribute it to me. Okay? I get all of the credit for that Osman. I'm gonna flesh it out when I have some more wine. That is way less weird than talking about, um, mama Earth and a snake sliding through you when you have ayahuasca, [00:31:00] uh, in the interior of the Amazon.

You know

Gabby: Yeah, I actually did not, uh, well, I just had like a tiny little sip, but I didn't take do the ayahuasca

John: what, how did you get a sip of the ayahuasca? Were they just passing it around like a shot

Gabby: yeah. With the shaman of the village?

John: with the shaman? Like a volunteer from the Netherlands?

Gabby: No, he was a shaman from the village. He put on his, his green robes over top of his Adidas clothes in this super isolated village. It was actually wild. We went to this village that we had to take a boat like a couple hours away from the resort, and they're all in Adidas and Nike clothes. And then as soon as we show up, we see Hurd Lee putting on this green robe and putting his shaman gear on.

And then, yeah, he had some, uh, ayahuasca and some wood alcohol [00:32:00] that we tried that was disgusting. It was so bad.

John: What is wood alcohol?

Gabby: They make alcohol from wood.

John: I love the

Gabby: literally what it's, and then we found out, I found out later that I'm just, it can really fuck you up. Like

John: Maybe that's why you never got altitude sickness. That

Gabby: Yeah, maybe

John: you for everything.

Gabby: gave me,

John: and shots of moonshine from the Amazon.

Gabby: it was just, yeah, it was just like a tiny bit of ayahuasca. So you wouldn't go on the trip or anything just to see what it tasted like, but

John: I, I love this. So the guy's like in an Adidas tracksuit doing a slob squat from Eastern Europe. He's like watching a YouTube video on his phone, like how to make ayahuasca for the Greeno. Oh, they're here. They're here. Hide the phone, hide the phone, put this

Gabby: Hi to everything. Hi to everything. Yeah. And then he whipped me with some stinging nettle.

John: Yeah. How was that? The other gal that was in our trivia [00:33:00] night, she had that done to her, like against her will, and the video

Gabby: oh, yeah.

John: a prisoner. What was it like for you?

Gabby: Uh, well, I volunteered for it because I wanted to see what it was like. Uh, it didn't feel good. It was really weird and I don't think I would do it again. Um,

yeah, it just,

John: take your shirt off you like you can have a top on, but they expose the back and then they hit you with like stinging nettles or some sort of poisonous branch from the Amazon. Right.

Gabby: Yeah. And it leaves you with welts and redness and it's supposed to take your pain away, but it just kind of adds more, I think it masks it with different pain.

John: I love this. I think a day in the Amazon. So dolphin bit my toe off. Okay. And then Stingray stabbed me in the leg. Then I'm going to an Adidas Nike shaman for some moonshine, wood alcohol and ayahuasca. And then I'm getting beaten by [00:34:00] poisonous branches in the middle of the Amazon. And by the end of it I can't feel anything and it's just mosquitoes biting me.

Gabby: Yeah. Just actually, I dunno, there was a, there was a few mosquitoes, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It was. It could be worse, I'd say.

John: Maybe you're just around good people who attract all the mosquitoes.

Gabby: Maybe. Yeah. I also grew, grew up in the mosquito capital of the world. I think. So

John: what?

Gabby: in Sask, in Saskatchewan,

John: Are you just making that up to sell? Well, I guess that doesn't really sell Saskatchewan.

Gabby: Oh no, no it doesn't. It's probably the insect capital of the world, but just like the little annoying ones.

John: What are the big, well, I guess the Amazon has all the big annoying

Gabby: Yeah, yeah,

John: ant

Gabby: yeah. Those were scary. That was probably the, my most scariest things.

John: that's actually you, did you [00:35:00] know what it was before you went there? Like you'd heard this is the most painful bite you can get kind of thing. And it lasts for hours and hours and hours.

Gabby: Yeah. And they're actually huge.

John: It's like legit, they aren't exaggerating and you're just walking in nature and then you see it on a leaf like this far away and you're like, ha ha.

Gabby: is this Jurassic Park? What is that? Is this real life?

John: I was so scared when I saw that. And the other, uh, person in my group, when I first saw the bullet dance was just like, what is that in her French accent? What is that? What is that? And I was like, uh, yeah, you do. You go first. Just push it away from me. Just let me walk. Just let me walk by. Well, you asked the guide.

Gabby: It likes the little tickle. It likes to be pet.

John: I should have said that. I should have said that. Um, I remember exactly where it was the first time I saw the bulletin, actually. I mean, it is just, 'cause I had seen it on Discovery Channel for so many years and then there it was, and it wasn't part [00:36:00] of the nature walk. It was just bam on the leaf right there as we're walking by it.

Um, with our tiny little guide who walked under the leaf. Of course. 'cause you know, they're like this high and so when he cuts with the machete, he only cuts like this high. So you gotta let it go down.

Gabby: yeah. That's perfect for me.

John: Yeah. Um, yeah, there are so many crazy interesting, weird insects. Oh, I have two mosquito stories though for the Amazon that are kind of funny.

Gabby: yeah, yeah.

John: Uh, one I think down there is just full of adventurous people. A

Gabby: Yeah.

John: b I've always said, I, I didn't realize how different the travelers would be because there's a lot of Europeans and I'm like, what?

I'm in Europe. I'm like, oh, well I know these people. I lived in Europe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You go down there, the Europeans, no, they're like the crazy ones. Like nothing phases 'em. So anyway, and girls, I don't know what [00:37:00] it is. You know, girls have a reputation for being very timid and blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that they are also on the other side of the spectrum. Like you going down to Peru, texting random numbers that you found on a piece of paper in a foreign country. Like, hello man, can you take me to a secluded journey where nobody will find me for four to eight days? Yes, I will leave with you at 2:00 AM Why not?

Gabby: Yeah. I guess that is what I did.

John: So the, this gal, she was an 18-year-old German girl, met her at the same hostel, but later, I only met her once, but her thing was, she was in Germany for one reason or another. She got fed up, she just needed like a reset. You know, you've been in school forever. She just

Gabby: Yeah.

John: So she doesn't even have a backpack.

She just has a suitcase. Like she went up to her dad and said, I need a suitcase. And he's like, here's my suitcase from the eighties or whatever. Um, and she goes to volunteer on the Amazon for two [00:38:00] weeks.

Gabby: Oh, wow.

John: She didn't research it at all. She brought no bug spray and there was no bug spray available for her where they got, because the locals don't use bug

Gabby: No. Oh,

John: All the, all the locals who can't survive down there died like a thousand years ago. Like, like, and then you have all these green goats coming in and the mosquitoes, they're like, Ooh, fresh meat. It's like cheesecake. And she got so many mosquito bites in the Amazon that she had to go to the hospital. She did not have a particular disease.

She did not get dengue fever or anything

Gabby: yeah, yeah.

John: She just got so many individual mosquito bites that it gave her like a regular fever or something. And she got sent to the hospital for that and had to leave the Amazon.

Gabby: I didn't know that. That's crazy. And the way that you say that South America is full of like different types of travelers. I [00:39:00] always say there's like continents, like you backpack and then you graduate levels. You know, like you start with Europe and then maybe like Southeast Asia or Australia and then like maybe Africa to Morocco is like a common one.

Egypt and then you end up in South America.

John: You are describing me. I don't like

Gabby: Yeah, there's like everyone follows like this, like the hardcore backpackers always follow like the same thing I think. And then I think when I was in South America, I think I was 26 and I felt young there. I feel like all the people in the hostels was quite a, were older than me. I think there was a few young ones, there was a few hardcore young ones, but

John: Yeah. I also thought everyone is older. The other one in the group was actually younger than you that we're not gonna talk about. And when I found that out, I was just like, fuck. anyway, I shouldn't say that. Only nice things.

Gabby: Yeah,

John: Yeah, they are. 'cause Europe's full of all these 18 year [00:40:00] olds and 19 year olds and you know, the gap year stuff.

Gap year babies and, and that's perfect. That's fine. Nothing against it. You just assume that it's like that everywhere. And then you're like,

Gabby: yeah,

John: you are 30 years old. What are you doing here?

Gabby: yeah. What are you doing in this

John: you're older than me. What are you doing here? Share a beer.

Gabby: Yeah. Southeast Asia also felt like that a lot too. I felt when I went, when I was 22 and I was like, oh, am I too old to be here?

John: The Australians and the British, oh my gosh, the British, did you do a full moon party?

Gabby: No, I actually didn't.

John: I was so disappointed by the full moon party. I've never been more disappointed in my life. I mean, I wasn't as disappointed as the people that died on the beach that night. But um, yeah, that's the joke. Every time a hostel was like, listen, no, we're a party hostel and dim.

You're over 25 now. I don't know if you can handle, I'm like, did anybody die? That, that, that scene from Hangover where you have that, uh, Chinese [00:41:00] guy, he's like, but did anybody die? Um, yeah, so they died because fireworks exploded. And um, like they didn't set off. They just exploded on one side of the beach and, uh, then drinking too much and drowning.

Um, I say that in such a cavalier way, I don't mean it in a cavalier way, but like,

Gabby: insane.

John: I don't know, nobody really, there's no one to keep you safe there. But anyway, when I went to the food moon party, I had heard all these amazing stories about people who had been there years before and they were like, and I'm not a hippie even though I've got a beard now.

Pirate, not a hippie pirate, not a hippie. Um, I thought, oh, it's gonna be such a chill place, relaxed, all these great hostile vibes. I was like, but with a lot more people, like that's what I thought it would be like. And I get there and it's just thousands and thousands and thousands of British and Australian bros and hoes like nobody else, just bros and hoes.[00:42:00]

Gabby: yeah,

John: And it was the most disappointing thing ever. I was like, this is so boring. Why am I here? Hair?

Gabby: yeah. I didn't love Thailand, but I thought that was because I didn't do it right. But I also was, I partied a bit, but I'm not constantly like, I don't wanna be in party hostel after party hostel, and I also wanna explore the actual place I'm in. But yeah, it was a lot of hardcore partiers there.

John: Yeah. It's got. It's got that reputation. The thing that I, it's funny, I'm trying to get a couple of my friends to talk about Thailand now 'cause they just went there and both of them just said, John, this place sucks. Like all the photos, they're learning the, all the photos and all the beautiful beaches like where Mr.

Leonardo DiCaprio went. The way that they get those photos,

Gabby: Yeah,

John: the way they get the photos, right, I don't know if it was like this when you were there, is they cordon off a tiny bit of the [00:43:00] beach where the boats can't park.

Gabby: yeah,

John: all the boats were the world's loudest outdoor outboard, whatever engines, like V eight car engines, but with no muffler are right there.

Tens of thousands of gringo and then this one little clear patch so you can take photos.

Gabby: yeah. No, it was there. Yeah, there was a lot of, lot of people there. Way more than I was expecting. I had flown to Thailand from South Africa and I had been around Africa, been backpacking around Africa for a few months, and then I flew to Southeast Asia and I was like, I got like reverse culture shock. I was like, there's so many white people here.

I don't know,

John: You're like, yes, yes, tequila's cool, but I, I don't have to drink it every night.

Gabby: like I don't need to drink a bucket. Like

John: Okay. I drank tons of buckets. I, I

was

Gabby: one. No, actually maybe I had two and that was a [00:44:00] mistake I got. The drunkest I've ever been is in Thailand. It was in Chiang Mai. I met this Austrian girl on a bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and okay, I was like 22 and she's like, come stay my party hostel. And I was like, okay, okay, I will. I'm like, yeah, I can do this.

I don't know anyone here. I'm traveling by myself. So I was like, oh, I like this girl. And then we like went on a pub crawl, stereotypical pub crawl. Someone was doing shots out of my belly button and. I had a bucket and that I was done for, I literally blacked out and came back to while drunk. And then the guy leading the bar crawl had to put me to bed.

Thank God he was a good dude. 'cause I was 22 alone and wasted. He put me, he literally walked me to my, like I was on the top bunk of course. So he made sure I got in bed,

John: [00:45:00] It like lifts you up.

Gabby: Yeah. Literally.

John: you're not in Amazon

Gabby: Yeah. And then he, and then I had to get up on the bus the next morning, super early to go to pi. And I'm like trying to get outta bed and I fall out of the bed, I just fall right off from the top bunk to the floor.

And then I lay there kinda like a turtle on its back being like, holy shit, what have I done? And then I'm like racing to get to this bus on time, flag a taxi, get on the bus, thank God. But then the road between Chiang Mai and Pi is the windiest road I have ever been on. So you're just gonna go and like switch back after, switch back.

And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna puke, I'm gonna puke. And then finally we pull over halfway through, I'm dying and I'm like, I need to go to the bathroom. So then of course you have to pay to use their toilet at the stop. And I spent all my money the night before. [00:46:00] I didn't have any money to pay, like any cash to pay.

So I had to find some and throw up in a corner

John: with the dogs next to the stray dogs.

Gabby: and then suffer through another hour and a half for the rest of the way to pie. Yeah.

John: I love it. I love it. That's so perfect. Chiang Mai is such a fun city.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: it's one of the few stereotypical cities where it's talked up a lot that I actually really enjoyed because a lot of these places I say, oh, a lot of backpackers go there. A lot of digital nomads go there, which usually means it's gonna be boring.

And, uh, just like morning yoga, that's what it means. Morning yoga. Okay.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: I, I do morning yoga, but you know, um, I had so much fun there. I was there for the water festival and then Pi, when we were there, someone, uh, caught one of their huts on fire at the hostel we were at and burned it down one night.[00:47:00]

Gabby: Oh my God.

John: Oh my gosh.

Gabby: Yeah. And then I, I think I was so hung over the next day. I was like trying to enjoy pie. And then I went to like the nighttime market, and then I booked this hostel that was really far outta town, but I was too scared to like drive a scooter. So then I was just walking back to my hostel. It was nighttime.

And then this drunk backpacker pulls over and he is like, do you wanna ride on my scooter? And I was like, yeah. And now looking back, I'm like, why did I do that? That just kid goes so wrong. First of all, he is drunk. He's a man. I'm a 22-year-old girl by myself, and I look 18, like, what was I doing? But I was like, this will make a good story later.

John: That's the travel life. Everyone is doing that. And the city for reference, that city is like a village, tiny little village filled with gringo [00:48:00] and you're just like, oh, another gringo. I'm a gringo. Gringo come together. Oh yeah, he's drunk, but I'm drunk too. So two drunks make us sober.

Gabby: sober. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

John: That I, I love that. Um, I, I had a good experience in those two cities. I had, uh, pie was a little bit weird for me though, because they had just had some drug raids or something and so the, the vibe was a little bit off because they couldn't do some of the mushroom things that they had been doing before.

And I don't, I'm already kind of scared to do any of that stuff, so I need to feel super comfortable in order to have done it. And I was like, absolutely. I don't feel comfortable now.

Gabby: No, no.

John: So like, you guys are crazy. I'm, I'm not doing it just 'cause I'm here. Um,

Gabby: Yeah, they're really intense in Thailand. Like, don't do [00:49:00] drugs there 'cause they're, they're police are super intense about the drugs. But then there was like, you could get a mushroom milkshake. You could get a mushroom pizza. There was just like a shack called, I don't know, mushroom dreams or something super obscure.

But

John: yeah, no one will have, it's so obvious they'll never find out

Gabby: yeah, you'll never know.

John: that, um, I re I don't know if I should say this. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. I, um, accidentally was about to overstay my 30 day visa when I was in Chang No, when I was in pipe.

Gabby: Oh yeah,

John: I had a friend who I had made there, well, they like an acquaintance, not really a good friend. And she was a bit heavy set, a little bit more than a bit, uh, but like we were hanging out just, you know, like everyone hangs out as friends.

And I'm like, oh, hey, I gotta go and [00:50:00] renew my visa thing. Do you want to go and rent a scooter with me?

Gabby: Oh

John: Um, and that's when I learned that cc. Is about how strong the scooter is. So you wanna hire CC and it's, it's like very hilly, just like up and down like you're saying.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: And some of the hills, we couldn't get up 'cause we just got the cheapest scooter, so we had to get off and pushed it up.

Gabby: Oh no.

John: It was just like, like fat shaming scooter version. Like I can't take you. I just thought all the scooters were the same. Like of course they would be able to get me up the,

Gabby: yeah, yeah. Oh.

John: that. It was just so embarrassing. 'cause you're going, you're going like a normal speed than slower. Than slower than slower than slower. I'm like, I don't think we're gonna make it. You [00:51:00] gotta jump off. She's like, no, I don't have to jump off. We can make it. And it just gets to where it stops and he falls to the side.

Like, no, we, we didn't make it.

Gabby: Oh know. No. I actually have a love hate relationship with scooters. I drove in for the first time in Thailand, immediately fell over, like

John: I'm sorry.

Gabby: Just fell over.

John: You took a corner and you fell over. Have you ever ridden a bicycle?

Gabby: Yeah. I don't know. I was wrong. I was so scared. And

then I was

John: forget to like, lean in? Like were you just straight and you turned to the wheel and you were like, oh.

Gabby: you think so? I was like straight and just like turned it and I was like, and then I was like, okay. And then I went to Vietnam and rented a scooter, went, I don't know, from Ang to somewhere and we were going down and it's beautiful. I'm like, okay, I got this. I'm doing so good. We get like hours into it. We [00:52:00] get into the city that we're gonna end up at.

I'm like, yeah, I did so good. I'm like trying to cross, take a left turn across the road. I'm like, oh, I can beat all these people. Take this corner super fast, wipe out. Just the bike skids out from underneath from me.

I'm like, splayed on the floor, on the, like on the road. And I'm like, holy shit. I, I took that corner too fast.

John: You're like, green go down, turtle on its back.

Gabby: And then all these Vietnamese people pulled over, thank God. And they were like helping me. They called the rental company and I wrecked the bike. It was unusable after.

John: that bad.

Gabby: yeah, it was bad. And then I was like, oh my God, how was this gonna cost? Am I gonna have to go home? I was so supposed to stay traveling for a couple months.

And I was like, oh, I was so scared. And then I got the phone call about how much it was gonna cost and it was $30. And I was like, oh, okay. [00:53:00] I was

John: You're like, okay, pretend. Just act mad so that they don't raise it.

Gabby: Yeah,

John: 30.

Gabby: it. 30. What? I was like $30. Okay, that's great.

John: I love, I love that.

Gabby: And then,

John: Did you hurt yourself?

Gabby: yeah, I was all like, bang, bruised, and a bit bloody, but it was nothing, it wasn't like I was wearing a,

John: No. Wait, what? You know, just get to gloss over that. I lost a tooth. I was blind for a week. My nose was over here.

Gabby: no, I was wearing a helmet, thank God. But, um, I think my, like, I scraped up my, my hand and I had these two massive bruises on the back of my calves. 'cause the bike had like, landed, like I like shot me off, but like, I landed on my like, lower legs weirdly. Um, but it was fine. It was fine. And then, um, I

John: in, you were in Hu. That's the city you were in. [00:54:00] You were taking a scooter from Dandenong, uh, to Hui. Right?

Gabby: yeah, I can't quite remember. I think so.

John: If you went up mountains, you were going to hoan. If you No, no, no. Sorry. If you, when you went south across the beach, you were going to hoan. If you went over the mountains, you were going to Hawaii. I think you were in Hoan. I forget which one. They all begin with an H.

Gabby: Okay. Wait. I think we ended up in Hoyt.

John: That's the beautiful, uh, touristy

Gabby: I loved it. Yeah. Actually love Vietnam. My favorite place in Southeast Asia

John: I love it too. And I

Gabby: Mm-hmm.

John: Not far from where you crashed. My horrible crash. Cheers to us for crashing from being on this side of the world. And we crashed almost together on way over this side of the world like that. Far apart, like a kilometer away.

Gabby: were you?

John: What year?

Gabby: Yeah, what year did you go in?

John: it would've been eight years [00:55:00] ago,

Gabby: Oh, okay. Mine was six years ago.

John: Six years. Okay. So I laid the groundwork. You're

Gabby: Oh, you did? Yeah.

John: I paved the, I paved the road with

Gabby: juju in that area and then like

all the people crossed here.

John: And right after I crashed, a local dude crashed right behind me, and all the construction workers came out. It was nighttime. And they're like, why is everybody crashing? And I'm like, motherfucker, you put a three foot high mat, non-reflective silver sign in the middle of the big ass fucking street and didn't tell anyone.

That's why we're crashing into it.

Gabby: Yeah. Like, uh, this is on you?

John: Oh, that was, I still have, I still have injuries from Nick. Everybody crashes a scooter. Like you are not a gringo who went through Asia if you didn't crash a scooter,

Gabby: Yeah. Oh, what did they call it?

John: Saigon kiss,

Gabby: Saigon kiss.

John: like the, the burn on the leg, you

Gabby: the burn. Yeah,

John: Because so many people, [00:56:00] uh, put their foot and hit the muffler in the back.

Gabby: Yeah, yeah. And then I didn't learn my lesson and I. From Vietnam. I went to Indonesia and I was like, I can drive a scooter. You know, I'm on OSA pan, I can drive this. The roads there are shit. And, um, I couldn't drive it. And I took a corner. I'm really bad corners.

John: You just gotta go straight. And when you get to a

Gabby: Three to three.

John: the scooter off and just do the walk thing.

Gabby: Yeah. That's what I should have done.

And I was like going downhill and I just like completely wiped down. This one was bad 'cause I like, it fell on my knee and I was like, I, I sprayed my knee after that one. And then I was like, I scratched up the bike and I was like, oh, that's not that bad. I guess I'll drive it back. Yeah. It was way worse in Vietnam though.

I could still drive it, but they were like, that's gonna cost you $500. [00:57:00] So I had to pay $500

John: you were like, just do a shot out of my belly button. I learned this in Thailand.

Gabby: Yeah. I was like, no, I can do some dishes. Like, I don't know, I can fix this. But yeah, it was like, that's way more expensive than Vietnam. I like, wasn't even worried, like phased about it. I was like, oh, it's gonna be fine this time.

And I was like, $500. I,

John: And then you learn that's so much money that's for over there, especially, that's so much money. You think maybe over here, but over there. And then also some of these scooters, when you get them, you'll turn the handlebars. I feel like there should be a more professional name for handlebars. The scooter bars, can turn 'em like 20 degrees without the wheel moving and then like another 20 degrees without the wheel

Gabby: Yeah.

John: Because so many people crash and then you also crash. So then the 20 degrees becomes 25 degrees without the wheel turning. And they never repair [00:58:00] that. They just take money from us. And you're on these horrible scooters. The only thing I learned is, uh, test the brakes when you, when you're at the place, like drive it and test the brakes because sometimes they just don't stop you.

They just don't stop you.

Gabby: Yeah. I honestly, I haven't been on a scooter since

John: Ill cheers you to the pluck scooters.

Gabby: that was, that was it. And then my boyfriend banned me from going on scooters after that. He was like, you can't drive those anymore. I'm not meant to be a scooter driver.

John: It's when I, uh, got my injuries, um, and I was talking to a local fellow in Indonesia at the time I was in Kuala Lumpur, 'cause my visa in Vietnam ran out. They were basically just like, and also a, a local gal as well. The people who worked at the hostel, they were like, welcome, like, welcome to the club. Like you've been initiated.

And they're

Gabby: One of us. One of us. [00:59:00] Yeah. I know. I, I don't need to do that again. I'll

just be a passenger for this.

John: So I wanna tell you about the first time that I rode. I did not drive. The first time that I rode, I was in the Philippines and I was going through Southeast Asia, north to south, coming from Japan. So my first impressions of East Asia were like, everything is perfect. And it just was like every place I went, it was like worse.

I can't get worse. Can it Can't get worse, can can't get worse. Can it? It can totally get worse. So anyway, I'm in the Philippines and they're like, okay, we could do this at the hostel. They're like, okay, we could do this, um, tour and it takes us in a van, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or we can rent scooters. And it's a, a normal path that everybody goes.

There's no problem. But there are all these stories like. They give you scooters with bad tires so that you have to go to the, oh, I forget what they call them. They use like this old English word for it, like the rubber burner or something. I forget. [01:00:00] I, I forget the word for it. Uh, it's on the tip of my tongue.

Um, but anyway, so there were all these horror stories about what could happen and when you go over a turn with gravel on the road, don't do the back brake or don't do the front brake. I never remembered which one, which caused a lot of stress.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: So I didn't drive.

Gabby: Oh yeah.

John: I, and I told the girl who I was gonna be partnered with.

There were like six of us. We all, you know, hostile life. You all meet there, you group up. And it was this, you know, small little gal. And I was like, I'm not driving. I'm not driving. I don't know how to drive a scooter. Never driven a scooter. Don't know what I'm doing. So the image of us going down the street was the funniest thing ever.

The small little girl on this big guy who I, I wouldn't grab back here. I was grabbing her like this. I was like, I'm not letting go. Not

letting go. Yeah.

Gabby: No.

John: And she was like, you are such a bitch. I was like, I know. It's okay.

Gabby: know. Okay. We, [01:01:00] we don't drive these where I'm from.

John: And then the first time I actually drove one was in, oh, what is the name? I think it was in OT, Cambodia.

Gabby: Oh, wait, yeah.

John: It's a crab area. Did you make it to Cambodia?

Gabby: No, I didn't.

John: Oh, amazing. I don't know what it's like now, but it was amazing there because it was like the best of Vietnam without everything built up. So it, it wasn't as beautiful.

Vietnam is still, I, I still agree with you. Vietnam is

Gabby: Yeah.

Stunning. Like Northern Vietnam, the ha yang loop. I don't know if I'm saying that right. But

John: don't know what, but I know what you mean. Yeah. It's

Gabby: it, yeah. It was stunning. It was, I had no idea Vietnam looked like that until I did this.

John: did you go to Sappa?

Gabby: Yeah. It was insane.

John: that was like a postcard of rice fields on the sides of mountains. [01:02:00] And I got there and with some gringo who I met at the hostel in Hanoi

and they came up to me as I'm eating breakfast and I don't know what the hell is going on. Like I don't know about you, but the best part of travel sometimes is when you meet someone who has planned everything and you have no idea what's

Gabby: yeah,

John: So

Gabby: yeah. Or they've already done it and then they're just telling you where to go. That's what I love. I love gonna hostels and then being like, you have to do this. You have to do this. Don't do this. And I'm like, okay, cool. Tell me what to do. Because I didn't plan, I just, I just book a plane one way somewhere and my first two nights in a hostel and then that's it.

And I'm like, I'll just figure it out when I go there.

John: I love that. That is, cheers to that.

Gabby: Cheers.

John: And once again, hostile life baby people don't realize how awesome that is. How you literally, just [01:03:00] like you were saying, you when you first came to keto, you're all tired, you're on the bus and you make it to the rooftop and everybody's like, nah, come join us. And you immediately get the low down on everything.

Gabby: Everything.

John: Where to go, where not to go, and up to date. Not some information from five years ago online, from from 65-year-old guy who has the time to make a post.

But literally like, no, we can't go there now. Mudslide, which happens oddly a lot in Ecuador.

Gabby: yeah. It happened a lot in Peru. There was a lot of like landslides.

John: They really are not,

Gabby: There really are.

John: that part of engineering apparently hasn't had enough focus.

Gabby: I think it's all, it's 'cause the, I went there during the rainy season, so I was just like constant, like the poor roads and the poor mountains just so wet and everything's just sliding down.

John: I don't think people realize this though. 'cause I didn't, until I went there. I was in Wanka, Ecuador and we were gonna go to the national park, but a landslide happened, [01:04:00] uh, the morning of, so we couldn't make it.

We were gonna, uh, there's a bunch of mountains and then it goes down to the Amazon where it gets a little bit lower, maybe at sea level, I don't know.

And then it goes up, right? And you have all these big mountain ranges. So the roads, it's like one road here, one road here, one road, like over there. And when there's a landslide here, you have to go here

Gabby: Oh, yeah,

John: Like it's really, it's impressive how much it affects you.

Gabby: yeah,

John: a true adventure.

Gabby: yeah. 'cause after I was done the Hui Wash hike in Peru, I was supposed to, we ended up in this tiny, tiny mountain village, just me and the guide. And then we had to take a bus out.

John: stole your kidneys. Sorry.

Gabby: No, I still have at least one. I don't know. And, um, the bus got delayed 'cause there was a landslide. And then I was like, okay, it's [01:05:00] fine.

And I kept on getting delayed and delayed and more delayed. And I was like, this is really late. And I'm like, I'm gonna have to now get on this bus and then get to a city that I don't know, late at night, transfer to a different bus and then arrive into Lima even later at night. And I was like, that's scary.

Okay. I try not to arrive anywhere at nighttime, especially on a bus. I'm like, I'm gonna be in on a bus late at night. And I'm like, oh, I, I had a little mental breakdown and the bus while I was waiting had a little cry and I was like, oh, it's gonna be fine. And they were actually so nice. They, I was the only like traveler foreigner on this bus.

And they like made sure to get me to from one bus to the next bus. And they're like, where do you need to be dropped off? And then they got me there and they're actually so nice. But yeah, I think they could tell I was freaking out. I was like.

John: that's so awesome. I love that [01:06:00] when you're at a place that doesn't, isn't flooded with tourists, the people are so much nicer.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. They are. They, I'm actually like, I'm really lucky. I've only had really good, really good experiences and I have almost no sketchy experiences is

John: Did you? Well, yeah. You followed the rules like we were talking about for keto. I don't know if it was before we recorded or not, but you follow the rules. Not all people follow the rules. And also sometimes it's even hard to know the rules though,

because they change from city to city and from country to country.

And it's like, oh, here going up the hills, they're gonna get you. Oh, here, it's at the bottom of the hills. They're gonna get you. And I'm like, oh my God.

Gabby: yeah. I'm like, don't go up the street. Don't go down the street. But yeah, I follow some like basic rules that I made up for myself, like try not to travel at night. Like enter somewhere at nighttime. Like you don't wanna be getting out of a bus station at night. I

John: That is, by the way, that [01:07:00] number one thing that I look for when I'm looking at bus schedules and things to go places. And if I have to arrive, like at an airport at 1:00 AM like at keto or something like that, I always pay for them to pick me up. Do the like bougie thing. Like, nah, I'll pay the

$25 for you to pick

Gabby: I'll pay that. Yeah. Also, don't be cheap on safety. Like, just don't do that. Like if you have to go somewhere just, and it's like late at night or sketchy, like, just pay for a taxi, don't walk.

John: Unless you're in the city where the taxis are dangerous. And then take the Uber

Gabby: yeah, yeah. Uber.

John: the Uber is banned and then just cry in the corner.

Gabby: Try your best, I guess. I

John: Well, I think, I feel like I cut you off. Um, what were you talking about a second ago?

Gabby: Oh.

John: We were doing

Gabby: Um.

John: Oh, oh, oh. You took the bus, you arrived late. Somehow [01:08:00] we made it back to Juarez, or we made it back to Peru.

Gabby: I was actually going from this like little mountain village to Lima, so I had to like transfer buses twice and then I

John: Where did you transfer? Were you in Trujillo?

Gabby: No,

John: No, I think I'm too far north.

Gabby: Yeah, it was some random, yeah, Aurora must

John: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Juarez is south. 'cause Juarez is the hub for all the mountain tracks to go there, including the giant condors. Okay. Juarez is the middle part, and then Lima is that. So if you were up there, you probably went back and then down

Gabby: Yeah. So I like hiked for four days and then was leaving from this mountain village, took the taxi to this other town and then took a bus from there into this city that was all in the ocean, but that, I have no idea what it is called. And then bus from there to Lima and then, yeah, made it to Lima.

I hopped into a cab and then the cab was dropping me off at a hotel by the airport and he was like looking [01:09:00] around and he was like, mm. He literally was doing that. And I was like, uh, is this area safe? And he was like, uh, Camina, no. He's like, for sleeping? Yes. I was like, oh shit,

John: Don't leave the building.

Gabby: Don't leave the building.

Yeah. So like got to my hotel room and like barricaded it and I was like, this is fine, this is fine. But it ended up being fine and then I had to get on the, to the airport the next day. 'cause I was flying, flying from Lima to um, what's the other big city where you go to Machu? Picchi. Cusco,

John: Yeah,

Gabby: yeah. So I flew to Cusco,

John: Wait. So do you speak Spanish?

Gabby: very basic Spanish.

John: love that. By the way, nobody where you were speaks fucking English.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: is such an adventure.

Gabby: Yeah, download Google Translate.

John: and the moment that you [01:10:00] learn Spanish with one accent like Ecuador, which I think has one of the easiest accents

Gabby: It does.

John: And then you go to Peru and I'm like, what the fuck are you saying?

Gabby: Okay. What was that? Yeah. Well,

John: Spanish bro. Are you speaking Mayan? Is this some Machu Picchu Bologna? What's going on here?

Gabby: yeah, when I was with my guy and it was just me and him, he just taught me Spanish in the evenings and he was like, you can't travel my country and not speak Spanish. And I was like, okay, fair enough. Please teach me. And then, yeah, I kind of just learned, 'cause I spent six months there, so I, but trying to speak Spanish in Chile.

What are they saying? I don't know. They're speaking in cursive.

John: I love that, that that's your line. They're speaking in cursive.

Gabby: They're speaking in cursive. But yeah,

John: man. Yeah.

Gabby: was probably my favorite place I went to

John: Tell me [01:11:00] about it. I've never been, I'm so jealous.

Gabby: Oh, really?

John: isn't it?

Gabby: It's insane. Like stunning. The Patagonia is the

John: Oh,

Gabby: place I've ever been. I think. Like

John: Well do tell,

Gabby: yeah. I'm also mountain obsessed, so,

John: I've heard the mountains are quite close to the ocean, so you can get a mountain experience and very soon after a beach experience and you can get like all the climate sort of together and then beautiful wine and it should be a lot safer, I think, than some of the other countries.

Gabby: Yeah. Chili for the most part, felt really safe, like Patagonia, insanely safe, like leaving your bags out and it would be fine. I spent I think two and a half months there, not long enough. And I stayed, I. In a tent for probably 98% of it. I just slept. I brought my own tent. First of all. I brought all my tenting and [01:12:00] camping stuff with me and then I just tended, every town there has a hostel with a campsite, so I stayed and campsites with hostels.

John: smelly hustler with the tents in the like common area.

Gabby: yeah, yeah. I was probably a bit smelly. I'm

John: like, guys, where's the shower? They're like, who the fuck are you? Where'd you come from? Oh, that tent in the corner. What?

Gabby: The bush, I just came from the bush. Yeah. It was like that. I did go a lot of days without showering

John: Hostile life. Hostile life.

Gabby: life, but it was because we did a lot of I, so I flew to Chile to do the O Tre, which is the classic. Classic or the W trek in Tore Del Pine, which is super popular. And so you have to, it's really far from Santiago, so either like bus [01:13:00] or fly. I bused and it was like, I tried to like split it up 'cause there was a lot of bus rides, but it was like, I went to Pcan, which is, do you know Banff in Canada?

John: Yeah, I've heard of it. Expensive and snowy.

Gabby: Expensive, snowy mountain town. Well, PCAN is the Banff of Chile.

John: Oh wow,

Gabby: Yeah. So it is so cute. Like kind of European ish with like the buildings and building style and stuff. And then, yeah, ended up in Torres Del Pine and I wanted to be hiking on Christmas Day. So we start off and then there's like maybe 60 people doing it at the same time as you.

So you get really close, like these are the only people you're seeing for like four days. And then you're all, you're tenting, but then you have communal cooking areas, so you get really close. It's kind of like hostiles, but then you're all sleeping in your own tent, which actually is more enjoyable, honestly. [01:14:00] Yeah. And

John: Because you can't fall from the top bunk

Gabby: yeah,

John: the floor.

Gabby: no falling for the top bunk. Your tent might be blown away by the insane wind, but, uh, and you can still hear snoring through other tents, but can't get away from the snoring. But, um, I met like the most amazing people and then I ended up just hiking with them for six weeks after that.

John: Wow.

Gabby: Yeah, they

John: many people?

Gabby: I stayed with a couple the whole time, but then from our like core group, there was like, si, no, there was eight of us.

John: Oh,

Gabby: So it was two, no, three other couples and then one Australian guy. So we were just like, we just, yeah, we did a bunch of hikes and then we hiked across the border from,[01:15:00]

we hiked from Argentina into Chile. And then,

yeah, we literally, no, it was legal. It was legal. People do this, so you have to carry all your stuff in there. So I had to purge stuff 'cause I was carrying two backpacks, so I had like the front day pack, my huge backpack with all my camping stuff. And I had to have food for five days.

So I was, I'm like five foot and I had these two huge backpacks on me.

John: You must have looked so funny some sort of drug mule,

Gabby: Yeah, literally like a mule. And I had to hike 20 kilometers split into two days. So we're hiking and we camped. I'm like, oh, this isn't so bad the first day. And then the second day comes around and then the backpack and the front's pulling my shoulders forward, the backpack's in the back, it's pulling them back.

So my shoulders, I'm like, I'm in so much pain, like trying not to cry. I'm like, it's only 10 kilometers. It's only 10 kilometers. Yeah. [01:16:00] And then we end up at someone's farm yard who has a campsite for this, and then the ferry comes across this lake. And then you have to get on the ferry and then go across, and then you're on the, you're back onto the Chilean side.

But probably the coolest border crossing I've ever done. I literally hiked between those two countries.

John: that's so cool.

Gabby: Yeah. But you have to be prepared to stay extra days. 'cause if the wind is too bad, the ferry can't come. And then it only comes every second day. So then if it can't come to one day, it's not coming for three more days.

John: This is why all of these campers are so thin

Gabby: Yeah, yeah. And then you're just eating like dehydrated potatoes. Yeah.

John: Well, we were nine when we started, but at the end we are eight.

Gabby: Yeah. We had to eat them.

John: Yeah. You know, we, the, the vegan was never really alive was he Didn't count.

Gabby: Doesn't count.[01:17:00]

John: That is so cool. Wow. So I. That puts you pretty far down into Chile, right. And then crossing over into Argentina and then

Gabby: Yeah, it was very convoluted. So I started down in Chile and then bused across Argentina border and then started hiking and then ended up back in Chile.

John: That is so cool. Wow. You are a true, I have to say, I didn't realize how much of an outdoors person you were until I start seeing your posts and I see all these posts where you're just like casually chilling and you're taking like all of these really nice looking and exotic photos, but you are, uh, clearly comfortable in the mountains, thousands of meters with snow everywhere and like a polar bear drinking a soda in the background, just looking at you like, this woman's crazy.

She shouldn't even have fur. Um, and that's when I started to realize that you might be related to [01:18:00] Sasquatch.

Gabby: Yeah. That's my great uncle.

John: I love it. I love it.

Gabby: Yeah. Actually, the main reason I went, I went to South America was just to hike as much as possible. Oh. So I like my trip. Before that I was like, was Africa and Southeast Asia. I like clumped them together as a backpacking trip and then leaving Asia. I was like, my next trip is gonna be all hiking. All hiking.

And that's what I did. I just hiked for six months straight.

John: You are what I call a mountain goat.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: learned at community hostel to always, when I ask somebody how difficult it is to a look at their calves, if their calves are bigger than my chest, do not listen to anything that they say. If it is easy, I will die.[01:19:00]

Gabby: Yeah.

John: And then basically I just, actually this is true.

Um, well, I did actually look at the cals. That's, that's also true. It's all true. But I started to ask people, I said, are you a mountain goat or not? Like, just full on. 'cause I just, a few days I had just been beaten into submission because when you take the tram or funicular, whatever it is, up to the park, the park of the capital city, you go up 1000 additional meters.

So you're just over 4,000 meters high when you're at the park up there. And when you take one step, like my heart's just like, whoa, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. This isn't the park. A park is supposed to be relaxing. What's happening here? Oh, it's a beautiful view of the city. Blackout. Why am on the ground? Okay. So, so that's when I learned, always, always look at the calves and always say, so are you a mountain goat or not? Like, are you [01:20:00] buying in your sleep? Um, you are a mountain goat

Gabby: Yeah, I, yeah, I've called myself that once or twice. Trying to be,

John: and you're like hopping on the rocks only 10 more kilometers. Um, that was weird. Anyway, I, I've been, I've been enjoying the wine to reduce the stress from today. But now I must ask you, well two things. A I didn't know you had been to South Africa. I wanna ask you about that, but I also don't, let me forget about the arctic

Gabby: Antarctic.

John: ants.

Arctic. Okay. So there's a lot of ants there.

Gabby: Mm-hmm.

John: Which one do you wanna talk about first? I'm so excited to hear about both. 'cause I've never been to either one of 'em.

Gabby: um, South Africa?

John: All right. Let's do South Africa. Where did you go? How long did you stay and did you go to Zoho? Did you do

Gabby: No,

John: pub crawl?

Gabby: no. I did not go to Soto. [01:21:00] Okay. So I was young. I probably didn't do it right. I didn't stay there for very long. I only stayed there for one week. I was, I stayed, I flew to South Africa from Madagascar. I was in Madagascar for a month and a half. Um,

John: you where you had been, that might be interesting to talk about. I like how you left Madagascar off there.

Gabby: yeah.

John: Okay.

Gabby: Uh, yeah. Yeah. So had met this, a South African girl in Scotland on like a backpacker trip. I was like, that's when I was living in England and I was kind of lonely and I was like, how do I meet people? Like go on a, on a trip to, and we did like the New Year's and then you bond really close with those

John: you do the Hog Monet in Edinburgh?

Gabby: I did.

John: Cheers to you. [01:22:00] It's a a, just a real quick. Yeah. You did the candlelight procession and everything.

Gabby: Yeah, I did torch light. Yeah,

John: I, it's, it's a three day festival. It is the, I don't usually go to places for events, but this is the coolest thing I've ever done for New Year's and the torchlight procession is literally thousands of people with gigantic candle torches walking down the street slowly.

And that's like only day one.

Gabby: yeah, yeah. And then I met her on this Hagman trip, so then I was like, I'm gonna come visit you. And she lived in Johannesburg, so I flew from Madagascar to Ethiopia and then Ethiopia to Johannesburg. It was a bit like this and then this, and then, yeah, she just, I just spent time with her family and then she took me to a game reserve, like a small one.

[01:23:00] And we did like a self-driving safari there.

John: is so cool. Did you flip it on the turns?

Gabby: No, I was not driving.

John: You're like, babe, I'm not good at the turns, but I can drive the straight route.

Gabby: Yeah. I was like, don't let me drive. That's my husband. And um, we were camping just outside of the reserve, but there were still animals around, so we were staying in a cabin and as we were unloading the car into the cabin, and we like both had our backs away from the door, we're like unloading stuff. And then we turn around and she's like, holy shit.

And I turn around and there's a baboon in the doorway. And

John: And he is not there to greet you.

Gabby: do you know how tall a baboon is? Even like just on, it's like, it's fucking tall. It is the same height as me. It is five feet tall. It has like teeth like this. I was like this, this does not look like a vegetarian [01:24:00] and

John: does not look like a vegetarian.

Gabby: what?

And she was like, do something. I'm like, bro, me, you live here. I like got a jog and like threw it at it. And then it ran away. And I was like, and then I like ran and like slammed the door and I was like, what the fuck? That was literally a baboon. I came face to face, eye eye with a fucking baboon. A baboon.

John: I just,

Gabby: I was like, that's not how I thought I was gonna die.

John: I just love that she's like, do something. What do you mean do something in? What am I supposed to do?

Gabby: okay, that's fine.

John: So was it, I just imagine it's just sitting there, like holding the door open. It was a handout, like, where's my tip?

Gabby: Bay up. Bay up. Yeah. Under valet. Yeah. [01:25:00] No, it was,

John: you, did you sleep well?

Gabby: yeah, I mean, with the locked door, I think I slept pretty good. It

John: You were like, let me put my backpack in front of it and the spare wheel and like,

Gabby: Yeah. I've actually gotten pretty good at barricading doors. I've done it once or twice. I'm like, I'm just gonna barricade this door. Uh, yeah. Probably one of the scariest moments of my life coming face to face with baboon and their teeth are, are actually insane.

John: was he like showing his teeth? He was brushing his teeth? Um,

Gabby: Yeah,

John: I've seen the videos of them and it, it actually does look like one of those things where you realize immediately you're at the mercy of that creature

Gabby: yeah, yeah. And people are like, oh, you have scary animals in Canada. But I'm like, we don't have baboons. We just have, you know, bears and moose. But that's it.[01:26:00]

John: just flying meese through the snow. And a few

Gabby: Yeah, yeah,

John: monkeys are, that's one of the things where I thought they were cute and amazing before I went to Southeast Asia and then after Southeast Asia, um, only, I've only seen the little ones and even only this or like this, this big. terrifying

and their teeth are. huge.

So to, I don't think people can exactly understand how powerful and how fucking cranky they are until they meet them. So to see a five foot one, I can imagine immediately you're just like, there's nothing physically I could do to protect myself if it came at me. So

Gabby: Yeah. Fetal position, I guess. Yeah.

John: just scream

Gabby: To scream. Yeah. I hope someone comes. Yeah, it was, it was pretty scary, but it was fine. And then we still went on our safari the next day and then we did a [01:27:00] nighttime safari and we like turned this corner. There was just this huge bull elephant. It was insane.

John: in the wild, basically.

Gabby: the what?

Well, it's on a game reserve, so it's kind of in the wild, kind of not 'cause it's all like fenced in, but it's just like a huge, huge area full of like where they like sequestered the wild animals. So Yeah.

John: Yeah. But it's not in a cage. You still

Gabby: No, no, it's not a cage. No. So it was like, yeah, we got so close to it and it was just me and my friend on this like nighttime tour and we're just like, and then we were with a guy that time and he had this huge flashlight and he was just shining on this, like, we just came, like, it was just like right around the corner and then right on the road was this huge bull elephant was insane.

John: So it's like way bigger than the car, right? Like a

Gabby: But the, we were in a really big like safari truck, like open deck like [01:28:00] truck thing. So it was pretty like higher than your normal vehicle. But yeah, it's, they're huge.

John: That's so cool. Did you get to see, um, a giraffe.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. Tons of giraffe, tons of zebras, south lions,

John: What is a giraffe like when you see it in the wild? I've seen it as a kid in a zoo, but I'm a little bit anti zoo, so I haven't seen

Gabby: Oh yeah, yeah. No.

John: in the wild, when you see a giraffe, is it just, you're just like, what the shit is nature doing? Like how did it create?

Gabby: did evolution work this way? Um, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I wasn't like, I feel like giraffes weren't my favorite. I think they're really cool, but I was more

John: was your favorite?

Gabby: probably the elephant and the rhinos. I love rhinos.

John: Did they sell their horns?

Gabby: Yes.

John: know why I'm miming to you. I'm just so used to, when I talk [01:29:00] to foreigners, I have to like mime everything.

Gabby: Oh yeah. No, they did have their horns.

John: that? What were they doing? What was that experience like? And how did it feel? You're just like, this is like a monster that's still alive today. Like a dinosaur in front of me.

Gabby: they look like. They're still wearing, like they're wearing armor. They have like, they're like, I don't know. It's so weird. There was one just crossing the road right in front of us. That was, it was so cool. They were so cool.

John: And today just what?

Gabby: that. I would recommend going on a safari once in your life if you haven't been on one.

John: so bad.

Gabby: Yeah, it was pretty cool. I got really lucky. I was like, I just met this girl in Scotland for one week and then I was like, I'm coming to visit you.

John: So have you had an experience like that in real life before? I feel, I just feel like that doesn't happen.

Gabby: No, [01:30:00] no.

John: I don't wanna end up on this track with every person I talk about, but it's so central to community and how we feel about things. But it's like I. If either one of us said, Hey, if you're in my city, come stay here. We would probably feel very comfortable doing that of how we met. And we basically know the type of people that we are, and we know who each one of us have met and we know the community.

And then you just go back to your city and it's like, yeah, it's, I don't know, everyone's just like, just pack up a little bit. I know Covid is over, but just don't get too close please.

Gabby: Yeah, it's tough. It's like you almost get reverse culture shock when you go back home after a trip 'cause you've like had all these amazing experiences and you bonded with people. I think you bond quicker because you're not on your phone as much or like. You are just sharing experiences and then you go back home and [01:31:00] you're like, someone's like, how was your trip?

And you're like, good. I don't know how to describe it. I just lived through for the last six months. Like, how was your trip? Didn't die.

John: I should be sure. Didn't I

Gabby: Didn't know I lived. But it's like, do they actually wanna hear about what you did? Did they not? Is it just like, I love hearing about people's travels, but like if people haven't traveled like that, like do they wanna hear about what I've done? Or are they just like, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Like,

John: the Kardashians are on

Gabby: yeah. Ah, sometimes it's tough.

John: I'm like, that thing is so alive.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. Like always go through mass depression. When I get back home, I'm like, no.

John: We've, we need a community. I gotta like add that, I gotta add something to Trip Ranger so we can talk [01:32:00] like communally more or something, because that's what the last few people have said as well. I mean, when, when you are a backpacker, you are in a community

and you will see backpackers again and you'll, like you said, you'll invite someone to your home after meeting them for one evening and you know that everything's gonna be okay and you know what kind of person that person is and for the most part, and then you just go home and it's just like a cold 180.

And I think everyone I've talked to has that culture shock. I have that culture shock and I'm trying to figure out, me, how to live my life going forward. Like how, for me it's, it's mostly just been like, well no, actually, the way that you said it was perfect. They say, how was it? And you're like, well do you really wanna know

Gabby: Yeah. It's like how, how in depth do you want to know? Like, do you really wanna know? Or do you just like, yeah, I don't know. I [01:33:00] don't, yeah,

John: as we go on these amazing life-changing adventures, what's kind of hard for me is sometimes I end up being a bit disa disassociated When I come home, I'm on this big thing about dryers. Do you have a dryer? You have to have a dryer

Gabby: yeah,

John: It's like minus 30, your dryer is just like an open air iron furnace. Um, just so nobody dies.

Gabby: yeah, yeah. We have to,

John: Um, but even I remember the first time, uh, I was practically living in Paris. Not exactly living, but practically living, going there all the time, living in Europe and you know, had a reason to be in Paris and my parents came to visit. So I got a nicer apartment for them and like a nicer Airbnb set up. And I. We are in an apartment that, you know, costs at least the same or more as my parents' house, probably a lot more. And my mom's in the kitchen and she [01:34:00] wants to make, you know, a snack. And she's like, what the shit is this? Like, what, what, what? This is the smallest lease equipped kitchen I have ever experienced.

And it's, you know, a nice place.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: wanted them to be in a nice place. And I was just like, sorry mom. The building is like 500 years old. Like they, they can't make it like the, the open layouts stuff. And then so you get used to just having less. Um, and then you come back to the states and it's probably similar in Canada and 'cause people have so much, people have so much space, so many things, so much stuff.

And then I find it hard to, two things. It's like, I find it hard to sort of, it just feels like too much for me. It almost feels like overwhelming. It almost feels like a, like a, a sensory experience that I can't process that [01:35:00] well. And then I'm like, wow, everybody has so much. Why are you guys so grumpy, yada, yada, yada.

And then about a month in I'm like, oh my God, Costco has a popcorn maker.

Gabby: I am like, God, I know.

John: I gotta buy that.

Gabby: this. I need this. I've, I've just been living on the same three shirts and like five pairs of underwear. I'm like, oh, I need this, this, I need like sweaters for the nine days of the week. Like, yeah, I need a jacket for,

John: I need, I need something that looks different than what I wore the day before. I, I have to tell you this, this was my, this will be a short story. I know I talk too much. Short story. Uh, I come home and my niece, who at the time is like eight years old. She's just starting to get cheeky and we've got a great relationship.

And I, um, had some bright orange shorts that I got in Croatia and somehow they like worked really well. So I kept them and then I get home, but they stand out. [01:36:00] That's the point that, wow, my story's already too long. I didn't need to say any of that.

Gabby: No.

John: I'm so, but the point is I see her on Saturday and I'm wearing the orange shorts, so I stand out.

So you notice 'em. And then I see her on a Sunday and she goes, John, why are you wearing the same thing two days in a row? And I was like, two days. Yes.

Gabby: Yes, it.

John: Definitely didn't fly here in these shorts a week ago.

Gabby: I know, like, yeah. It's crazy how your own mindset changes too. You're like, oh, I need this and this and this, and you're like, uh, I literally lived in a tent for four months, like,

John: Yeah. Yeah. You'll get you. It's um, I think it's like a poison. It's a poison that just infects us all. And it's almost impossible not to get, and the people [01:37:00] that are selling it to us study how to sell it to

us better. Um, there's like, like there's something with chips I, I saw where they had three different flavors of chips in one bag.

And the way that they found out how much of each flavor to put in the bag was a mathematical equation that related to like human desire for more

Gabby: oh,

yeah.

John: and they had derived an equation from it. And then they put that into the, the

Gabby: Into the chips. Yeah.

John: they engineered. So basically listen, okay, I got a few extra pounds and it's not my fault I was engineered this way,

Gabby: Mm-hmm. Dorito's.

John: Um, one thing since we're on this, I, I, I gotta ask 'cause I felt this, so I went very quickly from the Amazon to Paris

Gabby: Oh

John: I had been in Paris before and then I had spent over a month in the Amazon at this point. And so it was super contrast. How did you find the people [01:38:00] that you met in the Amazon, like their way of life, their being like, we have the funny story about them wearing Nike's, but you were there for I think three or four days.

So how did you

Gabby: days.

John: like, just their energy sort of thing or I don't know if you got to experience it that much in the lodge you were at because that was like a pretty remote thing, but,

Gabby: Yeah. I feel like I didn't experience it as much as you did. I just had like contact with the people who worked at the lodge. And then like a little bit in the village, but we only spent a few hours there, so it wasn't a lot,

John: Hmm. Well, I had two different lodge exper I, um, that's the wine. Uh, I had two different Amazon experiences and they were both very interesting and different. One of them was in Ecuador, but it was in the more southern regions of the Amazon. Not exactly south, but you were here and I was here and Bonos was [01:39:00] here.

Gabby: yeah.

John: go like that and you kind of get to it and maybe it connects. I don't know. But anyway, uh, I forget the name of the city, but it, it doesn't matter. Um, what was amazing about that is it was just myself and one other traveler and everything had been arranged. So I was just invited like, Hey, do you want to go with me?

I don't wanna go alone.

Gabby: Oh

John: And I'm like, you mean you, you planned it all. It's all set up. Hell yeah. I don't have to do anything. I just, I just take a bus to this random, tiny village that I'd never heard of in my entire life, and you're gonna be there and there's gonna be a guide. And she's like, yeah. I'm like, all right,

Gabby: Let's do it.

John: now thinking about that. Yeah. Like, that doesn't happen in normal life.

Gabby: No.

John: So I go there, she's there, and, uh, we do our, our [01:40:00] Amazon experience. That's where I saw the bullet amp for the first time. That was just the, but the, the part of this story is just, we were not as secluded as you guys were when you did two hours into the Amazon via boat.

But what happened is that our boatman had a birthday on the last day and they said, well, I don't know if they actually invited us or they just took us to his home. I don't think we were actually asked, but they were nice. They were nice. And our guide was very nice with us. And so we go into his home, which is in a small village of 500 people and two or 300 work at one resort owned by like a Swiss person. But these people are Amazon people. These are the Amazon people. This is like the biggest little city in the Amazon, in this region, not in the Amazon, Amazon, but in this region. It's 500 person [01:41:00] place. Everyone else is in these tiny little things everywhere. And so we go to his home. And what I loved about it is the communal aspect. And it's something that was not part of the tour. We weren't really supposed to have it, but did you ever have Cheecha, the white, milky substance that's made from the yuca.

Gabby: Um, I don't think so.

John: So you may have had it, or maybe instead you had the wood liquor.

Gabby: What? Alcohol? Yeah,

John: The wood, I love that. You just get, like, a termite is just a little extra spice in it.

Gabby: yummy.

John: Like instead of a bowl of peanuts, it's a bowl of termites. You just, uh, um, so we, uh, chicha, uh, the thing about chicha is it's basically made from a super potato, which is a yuka and grows in the ground.

And the traditional way to make it is that the women of the [01:42:00] village, um, they make everything outta this, but they dig it up. They chew it up, and then they put it into a container. And after three or four days, it becomes food that everybody can eat. And then after seven days it becomes liquor or some alcoholic beverage, and it's this thick white substance.

And the saying goes that if you get invited to somebody's home and they offer it to you, if you say no, they pour it on your head. So you have to have it. It's basically just like a court courtesy. But nobody ever gets offered it, who's a foreigner? Because it's not part of the tours or it's just a very sanitary, here's your little tiny shot of this chicha stuff.

So we get there and it's this concrete room that overlooks, uh, one of the rivers in the Amazon, and there's nine or 12 people [01:43:00] standing and then sitting all around, and we're right here. And they hand us a huge white cup of the Cheecha, Cheecha chicha. I don't know what I hand it to my friend, she's French.

She's like, I don't want this. I'm like, uh, they're gonna pour it on your head like you drink a little bit. Like this is not part of the tour. You did not pay for this. She has a little sip. I'm drinking it. I'm loving it. I'm like, I don't care if that grandma over there chewed it up and spit it out. This is the coolest experience I ever had in my life.

And then the guy or the boat man whose birthday it was, he gets one glass and one bottle of 600 milliliter beer. I love how they don't have half liter beers. They have 600. The tiniest people have 600 milliliter beers.

Gabby: Yeah.

John: Pours it in the glass, drinks it, there's foam in the bottom. He throws it on the ground.

The foam throws the foam on the ground like that, hands it to the next person, hands them the bottle. They do the same. They don't sip anything.

Gabby: oh,

John: doing that until [01:44:00] it comes around to us. And then we're holding the glass slowly, just having a couple sips like, you know, you want to drink your beer slowly so everyone can enjoy it.

And then our guide who spoke English, he's like, no, no, no, no, it's not what you do. This is the glass for everybody. You share the glass with everybody. You pour the beer in, you drink it, throw it like that to get the foam out and hand it to the next person so they can drink from it. He said, we all share one glass.

And they had a whole bunch of beers on the ground that they would keep filling up the glass with. So it was never ending, but everybody had to drink out of one glass.

Gabby: Oh, interesting.

John: Now for us, we're just like, oh, that's so disgusting. Well, a first of all, they're not like fucking a hundred people there. Sorry. They're not sleeping with, you know, lots of people there.

And they're from a smaller villages.

Gabby: Yeah,

John: just regardless, I mean, just think about them. You have to wait until the next person finishes their glass. You [01:45:00] share the glass that they share, you become a part of their existence. Basically, your consumption is not separate from their consumption. Your existence is no longer separate from their existence in this moment.

I mean, it was the most sort of communal, like we are in this together sort of like hug experience that I had had

Gabby: yeah. Wow, that's amazing.

John: Anyway, I, I loved it a lot. I loved it a lot. And then I was in Paris a month and a half later and everyone is just a grumpy bitch. And I love Paris, but I make Paris my bitch and I day drink when I'm there and I'm always smiling and I'm always talking to everyone and everyone's like, why the fuck are you talking to me?

And I'm like, I don't care. Smile.

Gabby: yeah,

John: Anyway, that was, I, I talked too much about that, but that was my favorite Amazon experience because you couldn't pay for it in a tour. It was completely unexpected. We had no idea what was going on. And for that brief moment, [01:46:00] I felt like I was a part of that guy's family.

Gabby: yeah. Part of the community. I feel like those like little moments, you're like, that's why I travel to like discover this.

John: Yeah. And

Gabby: yeah,

John: you, you cannot buy an experience like that.

Gabby: no.

John: pretty good experiences, but you can't, who's just amazing. Yeah, I love them.

Gabby: Yeah, and it's like you happened on that by chance. Like that wasn't planned. It wasn't like you just hopped along with that girl and then that happened because it was some guy's birthdays. You're like, wow.

John: It was even more interesting than that. I met the gal in the Galapagos one night at dinner, and it was a couple weeks later, maybe four weeks later, where she had said, why don't you come meet me and we'll go to the Amazon together? Basically

Gabby: oh, wow. Yeah. I love that. I love those kind of stories. You like, you meet once and you're like, oh, [01:47:00] we're gonna meet up again. Yeah. I like when that happens.

John: was, it was, it was, uh, it was lovely. I have more to say about, I don't know how much I actually want to go out on the internet. Nothing. Super interesting. 'cause I feel like, well now when I say that, people are gonna think a lot of things. All, all 25 of you. Um, but the serendipity of life is beautiful and the universe is magical.

And, and you know what happens when we travel is that the stars align in an incredibly special way that only we can witness. And you can only witness it for that brief moment. For after that moment, it is no longer special. You had that moment, and what made it special is that it was ephemeral, is that it was gone. It is gone now, and it's, I, I, I don't know the meaning of life, but we have had so many amazing experiences with so many amazing [01:48:00] people that you could never have if you did not go out and adventure and did not message that crazy, not crazy, just that random person and say, yeah, let's do this together.

Gabby: Yeah. Yeah, that was very deep.

John: Thank you. A, that's what she said. B

Gabby: I gotta balance it out. Gotta balance it out.

John: Well, you know, I, I, I have a lot of these sayings. I feel like I should have written more about it before, but. It is beautiful and I'm tired of, of, of pretending otherwise because, well, no, I, okay. Too much talking. Let's go back to Madagascar.

Gabby: Oh, Madagascar.

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