My master plan was to live in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina for six months each, and then evaluate which was best to live in for extended periods of time. Here are the total lengths of time I stayed in each country during my last trip:

Colombia: Six months
Brazil: Five and a half months
Argentina: One and a half months

I left Brazil a little early because of when my monthly lease in Rio ended (I didn’t have the will to mill around in hostels for two weeks).

Argentina was a different story. You know those medical experiments that end early because one condition far outperformed another? If I remember correctly they did this with an HIV study in Africa where they tested if circumcision led to lower infection rates. It proved to be such a strong benefit that they ended the experiment early to tell the uncut guys to immediately get cut. Well that’s why I left Argentina so soon—the little data I had in my hands told me that it wasn’t a place that would have brought me more happiness than Colombia or Brazil.

That said, here is my evaluation of what it’s like to live in all three countries, along with my declaration of the best.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Colombia: While there is a police presence, you can go all day without seeing a single squad car. Sometimes you only see cops on dinky motorcycles that look like dirt bikes. There is no heavy hand of the law here.

Brazil: Maybe only a decade behind the U.S. in terms of the Big Brother factor. The police are heavily armed, well financed (from an equipment standpoint), and make frequent stops. There are speed cameras and sobriety checkpoints. You don’t go long without seeing a cop car on the street. While the laws are more lax than in the U.S., Brazil is not a good place to openly fuck around. Even though Western media loves to portray favelas as lawless, police are generally on top of their shit outside of them.

Argentina: Police are positioned in street corners within rich areas of big cities. They don’t seem particularly well-trained or competent, probably because the country has been spared from narco-wars. It’s unlikely you’ll be bothered here.

Advantage: Argentina

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Colombia: Local buses are run by private companies. While cheap, the lines are confusing and the buses old and very uncomfortable. The routes are not always logical and transfers are commonly needed. Medellin’s metro line though is clean, safe, and very reliable, but often crowded. The one good thing about the buses is that they come very frequently and you can flag them down anywhere along the route.

Brazil: Buses here are slow, lumbering beasts, the big versions you see in American cities. They come often and are reliable but you generally have to walk to a designated stop instead of being able to stick your hand out wherever you please. They aren’t that cheap, starting at about 2.20 R$ for a single trip.

Argentina: They have big buses like in Brazil but are almost impossible to use without insider knowledge because of nondescript signage. In Argentina you’ll only see something like “H7,” while in the other countries they’ll be a placard detailing a dozen or so stops.

Advantage: Colombia

SUPERMARKET FOOD

Colombia: It’s hard to find lemons or lunch meats in the bird family. Most sell peanut butter at inflated rates. Boneless chicken breast is usually frozen.

Brazil: Doubly hard to find lemons, and even common vegetables like broccoli and zucchini can be MIA. Peanut butter is astronomically priced. Great selection of fruits, cheeses, and lunch meats. Boneless chicken breast is usually frozen.

Argentina: Lemons are everywhere! But limes are incredibly hard to find, as is peanut butter. Poor selection of cheese, lunch meat, and fruits, but excellent choice of wines. Boneless chicken breast is refrigerated and of good quality, though much more expensive than their famed red meat.

Advantage: Brazil

RESTAURANT FOOD

Colombia: Not much selection in local fare except for dirty diners, but you’ll find many decent fusion restaurants in tourist centers, usually run by expats. I still don’t know what typifies Colombian cuisine besides stews, arepas, and fried snacks.

Brazil: Beans, rice, and meat seem to be the Brazilian staple. Local restaurants have fixed plates that will serve bland but filling meals of rice, beans, potatoes, and meat. There is more of a food tradition with dishes like feijoada and moqueca, but convenience foods like pizza and fried bread snacks are beginning to fatten the population. Upmarket restaurants put interesting spins on typical foods.

Argentina: Great value for breakfast and lunch, especially the latter where for $5 or $6 you get a tasty three-course meal with beverage. While restaurant service here is the worst, you’ll find far more creative fare with more European influence than in Brazil and Colombia. Argentina is also a better pick for the foodie who is impressed by plate presentation.

Advantage: Argentina

WOMEN

Colombia: The hardest part of getting laid in Colombia is dealing with the language barrier (you won’t meet too many girls who speak English), but if you’re conversational in Spanish and approach during the day you shouldn’t have too many issues banging cute girls. Flakiness will be your main problem.

Brazil: Brazil has proven to be a country of streaks for me and my gringo friends. You’ll bang three girls in a couple weeks then get nothing for a while. Otherwise the country is very gringo friendly and you’ll find tons of girls who speak English. The okay girls are quite easy to get in bed, but the cuter ones take more work. Towards the end of my time in Brazil I was getting sick of all the mediocre girls throwing themselves on me and having to seemingly rely on luck and the numbers game to get anywhere with the quality ones.

Argentina: These girls have a reputation for being difficult and I find that to be the case. Not only will you work your ass off to get laid, it won’t be with one of the hotties that you went there for in the first place. My second trip to Argentina I gave up on the women and found myself a Brazilian girl.

Advantage: Brazil

NIGHTLIFE

Colombia: Tables and chairs. People prefer to sit down everywhere, even in clubs, but on the plus side nightlife is concentrated in the cities so it’s easy to stumble on a variety of places that have electronic, rock, pop, or local music. Bars are a total bust in meeting people. Clubs have decent value in terms of cover charges and drinks.

Brazil: Much more Western in that people mingle. While typical bars offer tables for socializing among friends, you can find bars where there is standing and movement. Some cities have nightlife centered in specific areas, but others like Rio can be quite spread out and hard to get around. Cover charges for the high-end clubs can be astronomical.

Argentina: It has the typical bars with tables, which people start going to around midnight, and then a progressive club scene with rotating DJs develops after 2am. The nightlife is agreeable for younger kids with energy to stay up all night and dance, but for older guys over 30 it can be quite annoying to go out so late to deal with girls who aren’t even drinking anyway. A positive is that the value is very good, and you won’t pay much for cover charges and drinks.

Advantage: Brazil

COFFEE SHOPS

Colombia: There is a cafe culture with the Juan Valdez shops where you can sit with your latte and laptop for an hour or two. Ironically one of the best cafes I’ve been to in Medellin was the McCafe.

Brazil: Brazilians love their cafezinho (espresso shot), but they don’t linger. Since all coffee shops have waiters, they don’t expect you to sit down and write the next greatest American novel. For that you need to go to the mall and find a Starbucks, which is prohibitively expensive (10 R$ for a caramel frapp).

Argentina: Hands down the best coffee shop scene. Big cities have tons of pleasant cafes with wireless internet and delicious sweets. There is a lingering culture here so feel free to camp out for a couple hours.

Advantage: Argentina

SAFETY

Colombia: Safer than I was led to believe. I never had issues walking around at night even in shady areas. It’s a shame that the stereotype of the country being a warzone persists, but in a way this is good because it keeps out a lot of gringos who visit Costa Rica or Panama instead.

Brazil: Most dangerous of the three. While I’ve never been robbed in Brazil, I keep hearing stories that tell me my Brazilian-like appearance probably helped keep me safe (though don’t think Brazilians don’t get robbed). Brazil is very unforgiving for gringos who don’t have a lot of travel experience, though the most common “robbery” is getting severely overcharged by a taxi driver. I have to dedicate more energy here to staying safe than I would like.

Argentina: I’ve never heard a gringo getting mugged here—only petty theft in bus stations. Many times in Cordoba it didn’t feel like I was in South America at all.

Advantage: Argentina

FRIENDLINESS OF THE LOCALS

Colombia: Very friendly. They are much more intrigued that you’re a gringo and will always ask about where you’re from and why you’re in their country. They’re almost thankful that you’re visiting Colombia.

Brazil: It depends. I’ve met some incredibly rude and cold Brazilians, and I’ve met some who welcomed me into their home without even wondering if I could be a ax murderer or not. I would say Brazilian people are friendlier than Americans, but their friendliness is overhyped by quite a bit. A better term to describe them is warm—within a short time you’ll feel quite at ease, like you’ve known them forever.

Argentina: Outside of clubs Argentines are friendlier than Brazil, believe it or not. Even though Brazil has a more open culture to gringos, it seemed easier to make superficial friendships in Argentina with random people. I accumulated more phone numbers of both guys and girls one month in Argentina than six months in Brazil. A lot of guys though initially mistake the friendliness of Argentine women to be that they’re easy. They learn eventually.

Advantage: Undecided

TAXIS

Colombia: Taxi drivers are usually honest, and are great to practice Spanish with. All I had to do is ask “How are you today/tonight?” and we’d get into a long conversation. Towards the end of my time here I had pretty tight taxicab game, rarely getting ripped off.

Brazil: Taxis here are the worst. It’s very rare that a taxi driver, no matter how nice to me on the surface, will not try to scam me. I’ve had to argue with so many that I dreaded taking a Brazilian cab—I began taking buses everywhere instead, even late at night. While getting ripped off rarely means more than a $5 difference, it was the principality of it.

Argentina: Mostly honest, though less friendly than the Colombians.

Advantage: Colombia

MUSIC

Colombia: You got three main choices here: salsa, reggaeton, and vallenato, all of which are danceable, in addition to your normal house clubs. Plus you got Juanes, Colombia’s Michael Jackson, and Shakira, Colombia’s Shania Twain. Rock is also popular.

Brazil: Brazil has a very rich musical culture. Each state has their own flavor of music and you can live here for years until you know them all. From traditional samba to pagode and forro (I need more triangle!) to the newfangled tecno brega, music is an important part of how Brazilians connect with each other and pass the time, but most of the music is hard to dance to for the average gringo. Expensive clubs usually have Western music (fun fact: the song “Forever Young” is huge in Brazil).

Argentina: Reggaeton is slowly making its way here in addition to mainstays like cuarteto, cumbia, rock, and house. Argentines are pretty crazy about house music, but unfortunately they have very little idea how to dance to it.

Advantage: Colombia

CELL PHONE SERVICE

Colombia: Expensive and mostly reliable, though some text messages remain in the ether for hours until delivered. You have a lot of options on the street to make cheap calls from minuto celular vendors.

Brazil: Crazy expensive at more than 50 cents a minute if calling another cell phone from your own. Your only other option is Skype as they don’t have phone vendors on the street like in Colombia. Text messages sometimes get temporarily lost here too.

Argentina: About the same as Colombia, but no minuto celular vendors.

Advantage: Colombia

LANGUAGE CLASSES

Colombia: Group classes can be found at reasonable prices, from $5-10 an hour.

Brazil: Expensive as balls. Prices starts at $20 an hour for group classes if you include “enrollment” and “material” fees. I eventually found a private tutor for $35 an hour that I used for two hours a week, but I couldn’t help but feel raped. Everyone I met reminded me that I was indeed getting raped. Unfortunately Portuguese is harder to learn on your own because of a dearth of self-study materials.

Argentina: The cheapest, which is why so many gringos come here to study Spanish. You can find freelance private tutors starting at $6 an hour.

Advantage: Argentina

VALUE

Colombia: Great value that is slowly diminishing as both the economy (and peso) get stronger.

Brazil: While I was in Brazil I felt like I was paying American prices. Besides grocery store food there is very little value to be found. It was rare that I felt like I was getting a good deal on something.

Argentina: Super great value that will only get better as the peso crashes and burns due to continued government incompetence. They say the Argentine government is so corrupt because their ancestors are Italian.

Advantage: Argentina

VIBE

Colombia: Colombia is full of good-natured, curious people who want to learn about foreigners while showing the best of what their culture has to offer. While Colombians don’t go nuts like Brazilians, they’re a sensual people who are fun to pass the time with. Edgy city life keeps you engaged and interested.

Brazil: Brazilians are constantly in celebratory moods, and it seems like there is always some type of street party or event that makes for a good excuse to start drinking early in the day. There are lots of nightlife choices and daytime activities, and the locals are always ready to party and meet others. The sexual atmosphere is very favorable to visitors of both sexes.

Argentina: You’re not going to have much fun here unless you get into a social circle or have some sort of university class or job where you can make easy friends. Argentines are diehard conformists and always worried about what other people think of them, so there is not much in way of personal flair or spontaneous excitement. But once you get to know some cool people, you’ll have a good time and maybe bang a cutie or two.

Advantage: Brazil

There is no debate in my mind that the overall winner is Brazil. While it doesn’t outperform Colombia and Argentina in all categories, and is also frighteningly expensive, it’s the one place in South America that I must return to. It’s also the best option for the single man. While Colombia is a fine choice as well, I think it’s worth saving up your money for a Brazilian adventure that I guarantee will be the first of many.

While I’ve tried my best to explain Brazil’s charm in previous writings, it’s something you have to experience yourself to understand why fans like me love it so much. I remember something a man told me many years ago: “There are two types of men—those who haven’t been to Brazil, and those who are trying to go back.” Not a week goes by that I don’t fantasize about what my third visit to the country will be like.

I’m in the dumps. It started during my final days in Rio around the time of my five year blog anniversary. My Danish roommate already left for São Paulo and I was going through some drama with a girl. My subsequent travels through the state of Minas Gerais were pleasant, especially the weekend in Belo Horizonte, but I started losing motivation to do things.

I went to Córdoba, planning to stay for at least two months, but it became apparent that I wasn’t going to last. I made an honest effort on the girls for one whole week but then gave up completely, realizing that I really didn’t like them. I didn’t care for the challenge. Eventually I dated a Brazilian girl who I met through my young landlord. She tried to drag me to clubs but I resisted, saying I rather do quieter things.

My apartment didn’t have internet so I sat and watched VH1 Classic and Style & Life for over three hours a day. I followed a four-year-old season of Project Runway and also saw a gay guy beat out all the girls on Paris Hilton’s show. I didn’t want to study Spanish, didn’t want to write, didn’t want to travel, didn’t want to hit on girls, and I didn’t want to read. I forced myself to take Spanish lessons just keep myself busy, so I could say I was doing something productive.

I came back to America and it’s been fine so far. It’s great catching up with Virgle Kent, Roissy, and The Rookie, and especially fun to watch The Rookie in action. He reminds me of my younger self when I approached not just to get laid but to experiment or have a laugh. Now I just approach to get laid. It’s a job, putting in my time to get that notch.

My two books sell on their own. I’ve already put in the grunt work for a setup that is mostly passive. I’m not rolling in money, but I do make enough to live comfortably in developing countries. If I stopped being so fucking lazy I could make more, but with a good amount of cash saved up (enough for my future travel plans that I’m thinking of this winter), I can’t get excited enough to work more than I am now.

With the blog I’ve been doing the bare minimum, three posts a week. You’d be annoyed if I did less. This isn’t because I don’t have ideas, but I’m simply too lazy to develop them. I have a file with ideas so old that I don’t remember what angle I was going to take. So I delete them, a potential nugget of knowledge lost forever because I didn’t want to work for a few minutes.

I think I’m feeling down because I’ve reached my loftiest goals. I’ve shared all that I’ve wanted to share. I’ve banged the girls I’ve wanted to bang. I’ve experienced what I’ve wanted to experience. And I have enough money in my pocket that I don’t need to steal other people’s drinks anymore, no trivial accomplishment if you’ve been there. It’s true I could dig deeper, but I’ve hit the point of diminishing return in most things I’ve set out to do. You pass the peak of something and it becomes a grind, so it’s easier to repeat the process with something new. But what new worthy goal should I set out to do? Try to write for a magazine? Get a book “professionally” published? Accumulate lots of money? Aim for fame? I wish I cared more about those things.

Lately I’m having some morbid thoughts. I do a lot of healthy things so that I can live a nice long life, but now I’m questioning that. People are running marathons twice a year so they can live until 85 instead of 70. But what are you going to do after 70? Go to Europe a couple times a year? Watch more television? Unless you’re lucky like Hugh Hefner, who’s looking pretty frail these days, old age is no joy ride, regardless of how healthy you can keep yourself. Would you trade shoes with your grandparents? Because that’s what you have to look forward to. I never believed it made much sense to plan to work your ass off now in order to make it to an age period where the grim reaper is on your doorstep, but I understand we need a lot of people to think that so society can function.

I think many people refuse to accept death. A deep fear of it then manifests itself in obsessions and compulsions with exercise and food (only grass fed and organic!), and sometimes environmental concerns (no plastic bags!). At least it keeps them busy. The reason I work out and eat right is now for mostly aesthetic reasons. I’d eat pizza and McGriddle sandwiches every day if it didn’t make me feel lousy and increase my body fat percentage. Why not otherwise? To preserve a couple years when the highlight of my day is waking up and realizing I’m not dead yet like many of my friends and relatives? I’ve read stories of the 80-year-old man lifting a piano over his head and another a few years younger building a fried chicken empire from scratch, but I’m realistic to know that those things probably won’t happen to me. And say I have children. Are they going to want to deal with an old man who can barely hear and do very little besides sit in a recliner and stare blankly off into space, reminiscing about the glory days where all his sexual perversions were satisfied? This isn’t Colombia where my kid is obligated to take care of me until I die but America where I’d be lucky if my nursing home is within 100 miles of my spawn.

I understand that while life is long, there is a window for the best years, starting in your early 20′s and ending somewhere in your late 40′s. I know I only have 30 good years at the most, and I have already used up a third of that. But right now I’m wasting my days, and I’m not sure how to get out of it.

It’s insane how beefy Brazilian men are in Rio. It seems like every guy, even those who live in a favela, are either cut or buff. I like to think of myself as confident but I couldn’t help but feel small when walking on the beach upon my most recent visit.

There are pull-up and dip bars all over the place and they’re constantly being used from men of varying socio-economic classes. There are gyms on every block, the most per capita in the world, and they’re all full at peak times. If you are a frail guy coming to Rio, relatively speaking you will look like a scrap of a man. While in the U.S. some girls like that frail hipster look (where muscles would actually rule you out from sex), in Rio that’s not the case. Puny men will have trouble competing with guys who have sexy bodies.

Looking good matched my values, so I took very easily to stepping up my workouts to four times a week. It took about two months until I was no longer among the weakest 50% of men within any club. My diet improved as well, since it’s impossible to workout that often while eating like shit. The result? I become a little cockier, I bought tighter t-shirts, and I got more looks from women. That slightly increased my make-out rate with the shallower carioca girls, who grew up in the beach culture where looks are much more important than being, say, a writer who lives in a shack.

In Rio the baseline male has muscles and there’s no excuse not to have them. How did the culture get like that? How did having muscles become normal? How about America? What’s the new normal there? Well in the States I know that there are actual organizations trying to push fat acceptance. There are trying to make being a burden to society—economically and visually—something that is normal. Feminists are playing their part too, because we know that their corps is mostly composed of dykes who could stand to lose a few dozen pounds.

Looking fat and gross doesn’t match my values, so it becomes very difficult when I did my best to look pleasant and I go inside a bar where 60% of the women are warthogs with short hair who can’t dress well. In fact it’s a serious problem.

While there is a happiness blow that comes from leaving family and friends to live abroad, I think it’s nearly compensated when you’re in a place that better matches your values. It remains a happiness wash until you get old enough where you have no remaining single friends. Then the scale tips and a permanent move abroad may be the winning choice to make. If you don’t agree with the life choices of a majority of your countrymen, then you may need to go somewhere else.

“He tells himself it’s because he’s getting old. Every time something is repeated, it loses a part of its meaning. Or rather, it gradually loses its vital force, that vital force which automatically, inherently, presupposes meaning.”
—The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting by Milan Kundera

A couple readers dropped some serious wisdom in a post last week.

From Mike:

After a certain age, around 30, if you’ve had good success with women they just no longer have the same ability to energize you and attract you. At first I struggled against this, but now I just accept it. It could be a physical libido thing, or a psychological thing (once you’ve been fairly successful at it and see what it’s all about, it no longer seems like such a big deal. At first you’re really curious about what a really pretty girl might be like, then you find out, repeatedly, and it’s good but not that special, and you no longer have anything to prove to yourself), or a combination of both, but be aware, Roosh, that you might never get the same old frenetic interest in girls back. It might be gone forever.

From West LA:

When one exhausts an old passion, the common tendency is to try to revive it, but this tends to be futile and wasteful. Better to move on to new passions, keeping the old one in your life in a reduced way, as an enrichment, an enhancement, but not the main thing. You want to avoid stalling into entropy. You want to keep progressing as a person, improving your place in the world and your capacity to get whatever you want (in this big world of diverse options).

It seems the feeling we actually value most is way below the surface of the particulars of the endeavor at hand. Finding yourself becoming indifferent to an old passion (which used to run your life) can be liberating, which can be refreshing, even exhilerating, as you are free to focus on new stuff and get absorbed in it, unfettered by your old obsession.

When I first got into the game most of my pickups were from dance approaches (to hip hop or house music). As I learned talking game the number of dance approaches I did went down until finally I stopped doing them completely. Instead I’d wait for a girl to stop dancing before I engaged her because I could make a stronger connection that resulted in less flaking. Then one night I went out with an old friend who was still into dancefloor game and he pushed me to grind with a couple girls. I couldn’t help but feel lame. I don’t know why but something I did so many times before, and got so much enjoyment from, was impossible for me to do again. So I stopped.

In Rio I had a line that would open girls 90% of the time. Because it was so deadly I got lazy and didn’t try to come up with new material. After a couple months I started to feel like a hack. Even my Danish roommate begged me to stop using the line, though it helped him on a couple occassions. The line worked, and was getting the desired result, but suddenly the process became important—how I succeeded became more important to me than if I succeeded. There had to be some art to it, because I’ve done it without art so many times that I’m merely duplicating past efforts. So I stopped using the line, experimented with several new ones for a month, and come up with something twice as fun that I packed with me to Argentina.

When you have sex enough times, the act itself loses importance. Sex doesn’t have too much meaning for me now but the story behind it can do ten times more to motivate me to keep chasing women than merely sticking another bar slut. Was it unique, different, or extraordinary? If I’m not dying to call my friend afterwards to tell him what went down and how I conquered insurmountable difficulties, then I know I just went through the motions to get my dick wet, that I took one little step closer to being a hack. I don’t know if there’s something genuinely wrong with that, but it’s inevitable that man will put in increasingly less effort into something that doesn’t inspire him.

There’s the often-used analogy that life is like a river, bending around obstacles, strengthening, weakening, always flowing yet eventually reaching a destination. When you try to repeat something you’ve done so many times before, you’re attempting to reverse the flow of the river, a painful and ultimately futile act. Yes it’s sad that something that gave you happiness no longer does so, but holding on will cause you to miss out on the next thing that could give you even greater happiness. Once you’ve squeezed all the juice from a fruit, it’d be foolish to eat the rind.

When someone tells me a great joke and I laugh so hard that I can’t breathe, I can safely conclude that the joke was funny. When someone close to me is in deep pain and I feel a dull ache rising up from my stomach, I know that something genuinely bad has happened. But unlike in the movies most of the things that happen to us in life occur not at the extremes but in the middle. How should we react to little experiences and events that are not obviously good or bad?

On Christmas Day in Rio I was eating a simple breakfast in my tiny, infested kitchen. It has lizards, critters I’ve never seen before in America, and tiny ants that were trying to get a piece of my sandwich. One of them already snuck into my sugar container and dug himself so deep in that it’s just a matter of time until I eat him. And the winged cockroaches that I’ve seen scampering when I turn on the lights are so big that I’m hesitant to kill them. I called my family in the afternoon and they already exchanged gifts, and were preparing the night’s feast.

All day I was alone, in a city where I only knew a couple people, trying to adjust to the heat and the challenging language. How do I feel?

I can say I’m depressed and homesick and wishing to return to the comfort of the place I was raised in.

I can say I’m lucky to be able to spend time in Rio and learn this new culture and language in a non-freezing climate.

I can say a lot of things, but a tiny spider got stuck in my arm hair and after I flicked it off I started thinking what I should do with the rest of my day.

I’m in a huge club working on the women, making progress only with the ones who aren’t my first choice. The music is unfamiliar and I can’t get into that right state where things click and I go on a tear. Like usual it’s so damn hot my belly and entire back is sweating, and I wonder how I’m going to make it through Brazil’s summer without air conditioning. How do I feel?

I can say that I wish I was back in some pseudo-hipster bar at home where getting laid was easy, meant nothing, and except for about three vigorous minutes, a mostly non-sweaty affair.

I can say that I’m going to be a better man if I can figure these Brazilian girls out in the subtropical heat.

I can say a lot of things, but my caipirinha is finished and I need to get another one before returning back to the hot girl from Porto Alegre who’s teasing me.

There really is no point to sit down and analyze my feelings in every little moment of doubt, difficulty, or even pleasure. There is no point to stop and think about these fleeting moments because my mind can trick itself either way. With just a little nudge I can abandon or embrace something that may very well go against my gut, against the direction my feet have gone for the past several months.

I ignore the day to day ups and downs of life and look back instead. What have I recently accomplished? Am I stronger because of it? Do I like what direction I’m going, and is it putting my closer to where I want to be? I ignore the voice in my head that tells me I need to feel one way or another, and I just keep going. I’m not going to let good or bad days distract me from what I set out to do, because one day has no meaning.

A few months ago I announced that I was moving into a Rio slum. Here’s a comment left by a naive reader:

Hey Roosh… I’m Brazilian and I would strongly discourage you to stay where you are… I have lived for five years in Rio and never had any problems personally. But I’ve always known how to avoid trouble…

As for having a place to pull chicks… Good luck having a middle class Brazilian hottie following you into the favela…

I have brought home a girl who lives in a million dollar mansion (her father is a renowned doctor), a soap opera actress, a stage actress, and an American girl who was an “international executive,” among others. Not only did each girl make more money than me, but they lived in a much better area of town as well.

When I read that comment I kind of laughed, because he must have not read about the ease of which it was to get laid when I lived in my dad’s basement. In the end it comes down to how your present your situation, so here’s how I introduced my favela in Rio:

Do you know the Dona Marta favela? I live there, in basically a shack with eight other people…

Yeah I have my own room. My room is nice actually—I have a nice bed, a desk and two fans, but no air conditioning. The rest of the house though is pretty… rustic.

In front of the favela there are these policeman with huge war guns, and they always have their fingers gently caressing the trigger as if they want something to go down. Sometimes I see them walking around with pistols, and this one time I saw a cop with a gun in each hand. Actually the other week they stopped and searched me. I’m lucky that nothing has happened to me so far.

(Notice how I casually presented my room as a place where comfortable sex could happen.)

Curiosity gets humans to do crazy things, like wanting to visit a favela. Spin a tale of danger or something different and people will want to learn more. After my favela spiel most girls straight-up tell me that they are “curious” about visiting. If they don’t then I slipped and got too lazy about hyping up the danger factor.

The commenter above used logic to say why a well-off, pretty, and other successful women wouldn’t want to come to a shack, but I swear when I say it offers me absolutely no disadvantage. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s an advantage (for casual sex purposes). Every girl knows the shitty apartments in Copacabana or Ipanema, but a favela? I’ve framed it like I’m giving her an opportunity to visit the slum. Hell, other tourists are paying money to tour the damn things!

My Danish roommate, on the other hand, chooses a boring angle when discussing where we live. He says, “Oh but it’s very very safe. There is no crime or anything.” There is nothing special about living in a safe slum. After a short while I got better at painting it in a horrible light, telling the girl not to bring a lot of money in case we get robbed and also not to dress “like a rich person.” And they listen, asking if they should bring identification in case we get stopped for a random search. When we pass the cops with the big rifles and the girls tell me they’re scared while squeezing my massive bicep, I know there is an 90% chance I’m getting laid within minutes.

When I lived with my dad, there were three cases where I had no choice but to bring a girl over. There I framed it in a way that she could only come if she was quiet because I couldn’t get “caught” by my pops. I added that she had to be careful not to trip over any of my brothers toys on the floor, especially the fire engine with the loud siren, lest she wake the entire family up. It was like we were in high school again and I’ll be honest: it was exciting. I was 29-years-old at the time.

There is always a way to spin a perceived negative to be fun, exciting, or dangerous, to be a different experience than what she is used to. The worst thing you can do is hide your situation or make excuses for it, because that alone will decrease her attraction for you more than living with your parents or in a favela.

I guarantee I could get laid if I lived in a homeless shelter as long as I smelled fresh.

PREVIOUSLY: INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHISM

For my second trip to South America I put 30 books in a duffel bag. One of them was The Essential Epicurus, a collection of works by the Greek philosopher. From Epicurus.net:

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) founded one of the major philosophies of ancient Greece, helping to lay the intellectual foundations for modern science and for secular individualism. Many aspects of his thought are still highly relevant some twenty-three centuries after they were first taught in his school in Athens, called “the Garden.”

Epicurus’s philosophy combines a physics based on an atomistic materialism with a rational hedonistic ethics that emphasizes moderation of desires and cultivation of friendships. His world-view is an optimistic one that stresses that philosophy can liberate one from fears of death and the supernatural, and can teach us how to find happiness in almost any situation. His practical insights into human psychology, as well as his science-friendly world-view, gives Epicureanism great contemporary significance as well as a venerable role in the intellectual development of Western Civilization.

While reading the book I’ll admit that I dozed off while going through his explanations on clouds…

Clouds may be produced and take shape as the result of the compression of air by the forcing together of winds and as the result of the interlacing of atoms that grip one another and are suitable to bringing about this result…

earthquakes…

Earthquakes may result both from the imprisonment of wind inside the earth, and from the earth’s shifting in small masses and its constant movement, which produces the quaking.

and falling stars…

What are called falling stars may be produced partly by the stars’ rubbing against each other and by the falling out of their fragments where a blast of wind occurs…

But I stuck in there and was rewarded in the end was very nice quotes that do provide a blueprint for living. Here are my favorites:

The man who alleges that he is not yet ready for philosophy or that the time for it has passed him by, is like the man who says that he is either too young or too old for happiness.

For there is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.

Becoming accustomed, therefore, to simple and not luxurious fare is productive of health and makes humankind resolved to perform the necessary business of life.

[The wise man] thinks that it is preferable to remain prudent and suffer ill fortune than to enjoy good luck while acting foolishly.

No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means of obtaining some pleasures bring in theire wake troubles many times greater than the pleasures.

If every pleasure were [maximized] and existed for a long time throughout the entire organism of its most important parts, pleasures would never differ from one another.

Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.

We do not need the help of our friends so much as the confidence that our friends will help us.

Speaking frankly, I would prefer, when discoursing on nature, to utter useful things, like oracles, to humankind, even if no one should understand them, than to agree with popular opinion and enjoy the constant accolades offered by the crowd.

Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without relaizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.

The voice of the flesh cries, “Keep me from hunger, thirst, and cold!” The man who has these sureties and who expects he always will would rival even Zeus for happiness.

The wise man who has accustomed himself to the bare necessities knows how to give rather than to receive. So great is the treasure house of self-sufficiency he has discovered.

There is also a limit to frugality. The man unable to consider this suffers a similar end as the man who indulges in excess.

You ought to do nothing in your life that will make you afraid if it becomes known to your neighbor.

The following method of inquiry must be applied to every desire: What will happen to me if what I long for is accomplished? What will happen if it is not accomplished?

If the gods listened to the prayer of men, all human-kind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.

No fool is satisfied with what he has, but instead grieves for what he does not possess.

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Know that what passes for good and evil among the throng if ephermeral, and that wisdom shares nothing in common with fortune.

Many men who acquire wealth do not find deliverance from evils but an exchange of their present evils for greater ones.

My take on his philosophy: peace of mind and confidence can only come from knowledge based on facts, and it’s the prudent application of knowledge that leads to a happy, social life where being poor but wise is preferable to being rich and lucky.

You can read his works for free at Epicurus.net.

A tough question is when people ask me why I’m in South America. The answer I feel most comfortable with is a three page manifesto, but is it really that complicated?

While the South American way of life in different than in America, my way of life doesn’t change much from country to country…

11am: Rise and shine
2pm: Coffee shop to sit in front of laptop for several hours
7pm: Gym, grocery store visit, or various chores
9pm: Cook dinner then jerk around on internet, watch movies, or go out

This is the routine that keeps me productive and happy no matter where I’m at. It’s not glamorous but it fits me well, and only a couple parts of it will change in foreign countries. They are:

1. Language. Obviously there are communication issues but to me that’s a fun challenge that exercises my brain. Neutral effect.

2. Money. I experience considerable cost savings by living in South America where I have to work much less for a lifestyle of leisure and chasing tail. Positive effect.

3. Family. Our lives are finite and every month I don’t spend with them is another month that is basically gone forever, so that does bother me a bit. Negative effect.

4. Coffee shops. In South America you can’t really spend four hours after only buying a cup of tea. So I look for corporate places like McCafe and Starbucks where the staff doesn’t care. (In Rio the mall in Leblon has comfortable sofas with free internet.) Neutral effect.

5. Grocery stores. They do not have the incredible selection that American stores have. The grocery store nearest me doesn’t have broccoli, cauliflower, lemons, and any kind of berry, for example. Negative effect, but honestly my life isn’t too different if I can’t eat broccoli and strawberries.

6. Going out. The point of going out is to bond with other guys, drink, and get laid. The guys I meet here are more like short-term buddies than the deeper friendships I have at home; the alcohol is more substandard (caipirinha with turpentine cachaça anyone?); and of course the girls are from a different planet.

Is my life different if I’m actively spending time with a South American girl that treats me like a king and is hyper-feminized? Yes, I believe so.

Recently I was at a bar with my Danish roommate and there were three Australian girls around us getting aggressively gamed by four Brazilian guys. During that time they kept looking over. I had a hunch that they wanted us to “save” them.

Next thing we know the girls moved right beside us to where one of them was brushing against my arm.

“Looks like you guys have a fan club,” I said, without any emotion.

“Oh my god these guys won’t leave us alone!”

“Well if you keep talking to them then they’re going to think you like them.” I found it hard to believe that they didn’t understand this simple concept.

“Can you help rid of them for us?”

“You seem like big girls I think you can do it.”

Then the other one looked at me and said, “Don’t be such a big jerk!”

This very brief exchange showed issues that I don’t experience with South American women. First, they’re attention whores that are stringing along other guys just for kicks. Fights between horny drunk guys usually start because of girls like these. Second, they’re testing me to see if I’ll save them within only 15 seconds of talking to them. And third, they’re displaying a snappy attitude that is more suited for debating than romance. Don’t test me or ask me for premature favors and then get an attitude when I don’t bend over backwards for you. These are things I don’t want to deal with.

I looked at the most aggressive of the Brazilian guys and said, “Ela gosta de você… MUITO” while pointing to the girl who told me to stop being a jerk. That roughly means, “She likes you… A LOT.” Sure enough his eyes opened wide and he pursued with renewed vigor that made me quite pleased.

When I get homesick all I have to do are two things.

The first is open my budget spreadsheet to see how much money I’m not spending. The second is talk to Western women. And I’m not kidding—when I get homesick I just hit on gringas at the bar. I zero in on their pasty, flawed skin, their masculine attitudes, their slovenly appearance, their self-entitlement, and I swear to god I’m energized for a month or two before homesick thoughts cross my mind again.

I dislike American women and I can’t live very comfortably Stateside working only 2-3 hours a day. Therefore I’m in South America because of money and women.