Around the World in 80 Girls: The Epic 3 Year Trip of a Backpacking Casanova (47 page)

Juliana
had done a full makeover from slouchy mom to hot vamp. She looked amazing wearing a sexy black dress, high heels and with beautiful makeup and hair. I had seen some potential in her looks when I met her at the bus but this exceeded my wildest expectations. Not knowing how to entertain three people in Spanish and not being willing to pay for three people all night I didn’t really know how to handle the situation, and used the help of a giant bald guy who sold cigarettes and other small stuff on the street corner. He was a friendly guy who spoke some English and helped me talk with the three ladies.

The
older American from the hostel also “accidently” showed up. I let him translate for me and he made it clear to her that I wasn’t expecting three people.

We
made another date, but she flaked on me. Never heard from her again. The weird thing was that she always called me instead of sending me texts, even though I could translate those.

My
Spanish stills sucked ass and there was no way I could use it to do day game. This made me worry about capturing the flag and I had to depend on night game only.

Cali
is the salsa capital of South America and after my seven hours of private lessons in Peru I felt like I should use this to my advantage. The hostel recommended a famous salsa bar to me and I hopped into a cab and drove all the way to the other side of the city. I sat down at the bar, which was crowded with many foreign couples. It surprised me to see so many foreigners in one place because during the day I didn’t see them at all. They were good dancers and when I saw the Colombian guys dancing almost like professionals all my hopes and dreams of using salsa as a pick-up crutch went out the door. How the hell could I be so stupid and think I could compete with locals? I had already forgotten most salsa moves and it was already weeks since I had my salsa lessons. I quickly downed a few beers and went back to the hostel.

I
needed another strategy if I wanted my flag. I had flagged five countries in a row and didn’t want to fail in Colombia, even though I knew it was a hard place to get laid with little money and no place of your own. I’d arranged at the hostel that I could take a private room if I brought someone there. I would only be allowed to once, but that’s enough for me.

The
following evening I met up with a girl from the Couchsurfing website. We went for a few drinks and drank a small bottle of aguardiente, a local alcoholic drink. For a long time I thought the drink was called Aqua Calientes (hot water) just like the place I had been in Peru and it reminded me of old cowboy movies where native American Indians would refer to alcohol as hot water. It wasn’t until after I wrote this book and a reader pointed out the mistake that I understood why the girl laughed so hard when I said Aqua caliente. As usual my convo techniques worked and I had her in my pocket. She said we could go out with her friends that night and met them at a nightclub. They were very nice people and we had lots of drinks together.

At
one point the two of us went out for a smoke and looked for some food. I saw a park and walked over there with her. I kissed her there and she seemed to be into me. She was a little hottie, twenty years old and at least a seven in looks. We kissed all night and at the end of the night we took a taxi. I tried everything to get her back to my place but she didn’t want to. Over the next few days she would flake on me.

I
met two other girls from the same website but it didn’t work out. The first one was a case of misleading profile pictures. She was a six and chubby instead of the slim seven she probably was five years ago in her profile picture.

One thing I noticed when I went out with her was the extremely hot girl and her boyfriend/date that came with her. The girl had big fake boobs and maybe a fake butt too but looked at least like an 8. The guy who was with her was big and strong, dressed sharp as a knife and was handsome. He acted like a total beta. I’d been told that Colombian guys were supplicating betas but this was extreme. Had I seen this guy in my own beta days I would probably have thought he was some smooth player, but when you are focused on pick-up and become somewhat good at it, you will start noticing other men’s mistakes. This guy was making them all. He started off by sitting in front of the girl at a small table instead of sitting on the couches the way I did with my date. The whole date he tried to touch the girl who kept him at a distance, leaning in to the maximum trying to get closer to her. He gave her a love stare but she kept cold. I couldn’t make out his words and I’m sure he could bang a lot of foreign girls with his Latin player romantic approach, but he failed badly with her. Hell, she even gave me a wink when the dude went to the toilet.

On
Saturday night I had another meeting with an online girl early in the evening. I had asked the girl working at the hostel reception for a place to go out. All the places I had been exploring in the days before were sit-down places with mixed groups or salsa joints. I asked the receptionist about a big discoteca where all kinds of music were played and people would stand up and dance. I specifically said American pop music, or even better reggeaton. She gave me the name of a discoteca, and I decided to go on the date and ditch the girl if it wasn’t working out so I could go to the club.

The
other girl I met for a date brought her younger sister with her boyfriend. The younger sister was really attractive and had a nice-guy boyfriend. We watched a football match in a bar in the mall close to my hostel. The girl I was meeting was mestizo (half native/half white) and had a great head of fine curly hair. It felt great when I touched it but I was slightly bothered by her sister and brother-in-law being there and didn’t want to go into full pick-up mode. I noticed that she had already friend-zoned me and it was time to say goodbye. I asked them directions to the club and they even brought me there with their car. They were very friendly and had even paid my drinks before and I felt a bit bad about making up an excuse and leaving them.

They
dropped me off at the club and I walked up to the counter. I had to pay ten dollars just to get in. I had big money in my pocket because it was a Saturday night and I might end up in a love motel, but as soon as I walked in I could see it would be a total bust. There was a large dance floor in the middle of the giant hall and only tables around it. Groups of people were sitting at tables and there wasn’t a bar to stand on.

The
waitress put me on a bar stool next to a small dancing stage. Then she tried to sell me a bottle of aguardiente. I objected because why would I want a thirty-dollar bottle of strong liquor? It was already hard to talk to her in Spanish and when I asked for a beer she said they didn’t sell beer. I pointed out the refrigerator with beer they had in the back and some manager guy showed up. After some struggling they finally agreed to give me a beer. I was like “What the fuck? A guy can’t even get a beer here?” The beer was served in a small glass and cost eight dollars. What a rip-off.

The
place filled up after a while and people sat down at their tables. Almost all tables were filled with mixed groups and I understood later that Colombian girls would bring guys to pay for drinks. Whenever I looked over at a table, the dudes at it, who were mostly big muscular guys with golden chains around their necks, looked at me with a pissed-off look. I caught on that if I didn’t want my ass beaten I’d better not look at their girls.

The
dance show was cool, with a big-ass girl dancing one meter away from me on the stage I was sitting on. But I hadn’t come there to look at professional dancers. I came there to pick up girls. My glass was empty and I saw no options whatsoever to talk to any girls standing by themselves. I walked out the door to smoke a cigarette and saw two girls doing the same. One of them was a nine in looks and stood close to me. She made a hand movement saying she needed a light and I slowly walked over there to give her one. Don’t let them know they’re hot is my motto, so never hurry up for a girl. I asked her if she spoke English and tried to make conversation but she just gave me a quick no. I’d had enough of it, got a taxi back to the hostel and looked around in the streets close to the hostel if I could find a reasonable bar. It was pointless and I went to bed all grumpy.

I
complained to the receptionist the next morning that she had sent me to the wrong place but she didn’t know what she’d done wrong. I realized that this was all she knew and that she’d probably never seen a regular disco from inside.

I
tried to day game a bit at the supermarket but failed and gave up after a couple of tries. The language barrier kept blocking me and everywhere I went was Spanish only.

The
girls at the mall weren’t that hot and I wanted to check out some other places and parks. Since I could only ask the receptionist girl for directions, I was stuck asking her. I asked her for a large park with lots of people. She said she knew one and gave me directions for the buses.

After
a few buses and lots of walking I finally arrived at the park she’d recommended. It was small and there weren’t any girls around. The malls I hadn’t been to yet were on the other side of the city and I went back again. This sucked badly and I was losing hope of getting a flag. I had gone out every night, visited the mall a couple of times, visited a “park”, met three girls from the travel website and all I had done was some kissing. I got really nervous, smoked a lot and started drinking early. I had eleven girls who mailed me back to meet them but it was a big flake fest. Girls at the mall and supermarket didn’t give me the light of day and made no eye contact whatsoever. I was ready to give up.

There
was a Guatemalan woman in the hostel with giant fake tits, who responded well to my flirting and said she would go on a date with me soon if I stayed a bit longer. I ran into her a couple of times but I only heard excuses when I texted her for a date. Apparently Guatemalans is no stranger to flaking either.

Two
Australians had arrived at the hostel. Both were pilots in their early forties. I didn’t like them much because they always seemed to talk a lot but without saying much.

One
of them said he’d got laid the night before and showed me a picture of a hot girl on his phone. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish but his friend did. He had translated for him and they had met her in an English pub nearby the hostel. My first thought was
Why didn’t that stupid bitch receptionist tell me about that bar?

The
old English guy said to the Aussie that I’d been trying to get laid all week. The Aussie laughed and said it had happened on his first night there. I asked him lots of questions to find out how he did it. He had met her in the bar, spent quite a lot of money on drinks, took a taxi to a club outside the city, paid entrance and cocktails again and then went to a hotel with her. He said that the hotel was “only” sixty dollars. That guy had spent way over a hundred dollars on that lay, and such amounts are too much for me. It made me feel a bit better and who knows, he might have paid her something in the room. Nobody would ever know.

I
was totally fed up with Cali and had no time left to go to Bogota or Medellin anymore. My mission of visiting and flagging every country in South America had failed. My 80-girls challenge, a challenge I was losing since the clock was ticking and the date I went home was already set. I was at 51; getting 29 in just a few months would be impossible, even for me.

That didn’t mean, of course, that I wasn’t determined to get as damn close to 80 as I could.
I had set the bar high by refusing to get to the 80 by only being with Asian girls. I felt that after Cambodia, I needed a short break to let everything sink in. I could have easily gotten 20 notches in Thailand too but wasn’t too bothered with it. Of course I the Phils I went overboard again to an extent.

The
last day in Cali I talked with yet another German guy, who rode around in a camper van and sometimes banged girls in it. He said he knew a good place to go out and we drove off in his camper. I thought the van was a great idea. It looked like a normal bus and he told me some interesting stories. It’s a great way to see places off the beaten track. We went to a place to play pool. When we walked in I saw a pool table and some buck-naked girls walking around. They were completely naked and obvious entertainment girls. We didn’t use their services but one of the black girls had a crazy attractive body and I sure thought about it.

The
taxi radio played Inner Circle’s
Sweat
and I felt bad because that had been “our song” for Peruvian Evita and me. I missed Evita and thought about how I was going to meet her again a week later. I had a long ride ahead of me all the way back down to Bolivia.

Epilogue Colombia -
Cali

It
was a big mistake to visit Cali instead of Bogota or Medellin. I heard from my buddy Darren that he had gone out quite a few times there and most of the places were good clubs with girls dancing to reggeaton beats. He was sure that I would have succeeded there. I told myself that I would have my revenge by going back to Colombia, but not before I learned how to dance some decent salsa and speak excellent Spanish. Colombia is a beautiful country and I had barely seen it outside the nightlife. People were friendly and it made me think about back when I was travelling through Russia. Over there I wasn’t worried about picking up girls at all and was meeting new and friendly people all time. It gave me a ‘What the hell I’m doing with my trip?” feeling, and I was afraid I would hate myself later for not enjoying the scenery and local people more. This feeling would go away in a few days, once I was back in Quito.

8
-day bus trip

My
plan was to take a bus all the way down to Bolivia again, with a few stops along the way. It would take about eight days and anyone else would take a plane, but this way was cheaper and probably more fun, since I planned to see a few people again. The trip started back in Cali and after another rip-off taxi ride I arrived at the bus station and rode for another twelve hours to the Ecuadorian border. I couldn’t cross the border because it was too dangerous after dark. I stayed one night in some hotel and crossed the border without any trouble the next morning. Six more hours of bus later, I was back in Quito, where I tried to get a date with the Colombian girl I had kissed before. No luck.

I
set up a date with two of the four girls I had met in Quito before. The two sisters were back in their hometown, but I had my eyes on Jane, the one who left with the Canadian guy the last time. She had warned me already not to come on to her because I had already kissed one of her girlfriends and cuddled with another one. I ignored all she said and thought I would convince her anyway. I was way too late at Bungalow 6 and couldn’t find them in the crowd of people. After a while of looking for them I went to the other club, the one I liked best: Club Nobar. The last time I was in Ecuador I had printed out a thousand business cards that D-Lux had designed for me, promoting my website. With a little translation help from the girl working in the hostel I got a pack of photo–quality, full color business cards for thirty dollars. I handed them out to people I met along the way or left them in hostels. I also left them in places like Nobar or Bungalow 6 for a little promotion.

Inside
Club Nobar a girl walked up and wanted to dance with me. Her name was Katy and she was a short mestizo girl, a mix of black and white. She spoke good English and we got along just fine. Then she introduced me to two guys, one of whom she said was her half-brother. She danced quite sexy with him. I didn’t trust the situation at hand, turned around and danced with two other girls. It was hard to talk to them only in Spanish and Katy was clearly pissed off about me turning my back on her. I later approached her again and asked if she was angry with me but said it in a funny way. We danced again and she started grinding her little booty on my crotch like crazy. I grabbed her head and kissed her right in front of her (half) brother. He laughed and it didn’t seem to bother him.

Katy
and I went outside a couple of times to smoke a cigarette and kissed there. Then she told me that I couldn’t fuck her and if I was looking for a girl to fuck I should talk to other girls. I was thinking
My god, what does a foreign guy have to do to get laid around here?
I thought it might just be some LMR (last minute resistance) and walked with her to the other club because I’d left my jacket there. We ran into Jane and her girlfriend there; she had some foreign guy with her and I thought to myself
Dammit, this girl is up for it but has friend zoned me knowing I’m a player
. She seemed to like the dorky kind of guy. They saw me with Katy and we said goodbye.

Even though
Katy had said she wouldn’t have sex I took her to my room and we drank some rum and coke there. We were both quite drunk and started making out a bit. One would think that a girl who goes home with a strange guy after three o’clock at night is DTF (down to fuck), but she made a stand and wouldn’t take her clothes off no matter what I tried. After a while I just went to sleep and was none too happy with her next to me.

I
had to get up early the next morning to keep to my schedule. We kissed a bit in the morning and her shirt came off but no way in hell was she taking off her jeans. I took a shower, packed my bags and we took a taxi to the bus station she had told me about. Maybe if I stayed one or two nights longer she would have had sex with me, but I don’t like “maybes”. I couldn’t risk it; I was already behind on my schedule and wanted to get going to see Evita again. I was thinking of her more and more and wanted to be with my little cutie again.

The
buses in Ecuador are probably the cheapest on the continent; they cost about a dollar an hour and there’s always a lot to see on them. Most buses stop a lot along the way, though, so if you’re in a hurry, take an airplane. People will try to talk to you and lots of guys come on the bus and give a loud twenty-minute sales pitch for whatever they are selling. Then they hand out samples of their product to everyone in the bus, talk about it a few minutes more and then pick it up again from those who don’t want to buy it. It’s a fairly unique system I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world. What’s more entertaining is that sometimes young guys will get on the bus with a boombox and do some freestyle rapping, mostly making harmless fun of its passengers. Afterwards they collect money.

After
a few transfers I arrived at the Peruvian border. The bus wasn’t going any further and dropped me off there in the middle of the night. I got my passport stamped and there I stood alongside the empty road, with no bus in sight. I was lucky because half an hour later a bus came by and I bribed the bus driver to take me into the cabin with him. He would drive me to Piura, a Peruvian city, for ten dollars, and I agreed. I sat in the cabin with him and we talked a bit. He was very impressed with my story of travelling the world and later put me in the air conditioned bus when a space freed up. That was a lot better than sitting in a stinking cabin which was packed with bananas(!?). On arriving in Piura I took another bus straight away and fell asleep again. On trips like this your whole day and night rhythm is gone and you kill time by sleeping a lot. I survived on chips, cookies and Inca cola, a local Peruvian soda brand. Maybe once a day I took some warm food but never took too big a chance with it since I knew I would get sick quickly in Peru.

Arriving
in Trujillo I was surprised not to find a connecting bus to Lima and had to stay the night there. I found a cheap hotel with the help of a taxi driver and went out later. It was a Friday night, so that should be good.

Evita
had texted me that she couldn’t see me anymore because she didn’t want her feelings to get hurt. I was quite devastated by that message and thought that I had probably screwed it up by not staying in touch daily.