I’ve been to every country in South America except for the three that no one ever goes to (Suriname, French Guiana, and Guyana). From my 17 months of experience there, these are the four trips I’m recommending if you only have time for a two-week vacation…

The Newbie Trip (Argentina)

Itinerary: 7 days in Buenos Aires and 7 days in Cordoba

Why You Should Go: The country is relatively safe and has lots of sights, making it a great place to break your South American cherry. Most importantly, it has women that will wow you, especially if you’re coming from fat America. Tourist infrastructure is well-developed and easy to use, though beginner Spanish will make your trip more enjoyable.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: There’s a high chance you won’t get laid.

Buenos Aires

The Easy Grenades & Old Rocks Trip (Peru)

Itinerary: 7 days in Lima and 7 days in Cuzco, the launching point for Machu Picchu

Why You Should Go: It’s cheap as hell, the archaeological sites will keep you busy, and Peruvian women think the white man is god, making it an ideal trip for game beginners to get their feet wet with flagging (as long as they’re not too picky).

Why You Shouldn’t Go: Women are generally ugly and you’ll probably get a foodborne illness.

Machu Picchu

Fun In The Sun Trip (Brazil)

Itinerary: 7 days in Rio de Janeiro and 7 days in Florianopolis

Why You Should Go: Assuming you visit during our winter (December-March), you’ll enjoy nice beaches while trying to bang sexy women. Brazilian culture is by far the most exciting and colorful in South America.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: It’s expensive and the women are becoming increasingly snobby.

Ipanema

Nonstop Game Trip (Colombia)

Itinerary: 7 days in Bogotá and 7 days in Medellin

Why You Should Go: Colombia is made for 24-7 approaching, particularly during the day and on the internet. If you go hard you should be able to pick up a couple notches.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: Girls are flakey and don’t speak much English. Conversational Spanish is somewhat required.

Colombian ass

South America is a huge continent and offers dozens of additional cities that are worth a visit, but I believe the above four itineraries are best for guys who don’t have a whole lot of time for long-term exploration. They’ll give you good experience for future trips within the continent.

For more tips on good travel locations, check out my travel forum.

In Brazil, grocery stores can be quite far from the favela. Because carrying plastic bags with your hands over long distances is painful, Brazilian people who don’t have cars have come up with two novel methods to carry groceries that transfer the load to their shoulders.

The Saddlebag Method

This is usually done with four bags. It leaves your hands mostly clear in case you need to carry additional items like toilet paper or a pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

The T-Shirt Method

This method can only be done with two bags. You tie the ends of each bag together and put your head through the big hole as if you were putting on a t-shirt. I like this method when I want my hands to be completely free to text girls I met at the club.

I’ve never seen anyone carry grocery bags like this outside of Brazil, even in other South American countries like Argentina or Colombia. It’s a purely Brazilian innovation that I’ve been using for about two years. My hope with this post is to spread the idea throughout the world so I can see other people doing it while I’m doing it. I can only imagine the intense look that will be exchanged.

PREVIOUSLY: PART FOUR

In my entire life it had never occurred to me what the maximum speed of a city bus was, but I can now tell you it’s about sixty-five miles per hour. I know that because the bus driver gunned it during a three-mile stretch of freeway. He turned off the interior lights while barreling through tunnels and repeatedly changing lanes, probably without using his turn signal. The back of the bus was jumping and there were yelps from older women sitting up front who also uttered a few choice words. I’ve never been afraid of death, but I really had been hoping to check out Gheridge first.

The bus hit smaller streets and then slowly made its way through centro, the commercial zone of the city, a place every guidebook warns to avoid at night. Hundreds of homeless people were everywhere, hugging the buildings, either sleeping on cardboard or limping around with their meager belongings. The more we drove by the huge buildings, which were headquarters to Brazil’s biggest corporate giants, the more it felt like a city within a city, an underworld that I wasn’t supposed to see. I thought about how things must be really bad for a person to be homeless in Brazil and not even to be able to live in a shack perched on the side of a mountain.

“We’ve been on this bus for at least thirty minutes,” I said to Henrik. “Have you seen any train tracks?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve never been to this part of Rio before.”

“Neither have I,” Henrik said. “It doesn’t look safe.”

“No shit, it’s deserted. My expectations for Gheridge are lowering.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a good feeling about this.”

“You think Gheridge is like an oasis? A bar with beautiful, clean women that is surrounded by favelas on all sides?”

“Are you being sarcastic again?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” I admitted. “Hey, look—I think those are the tracks we’re looking for.”

They were indeed train tracks. Now we had to wait for the tracks to go over a bridge. The problem was that there were multiple bridges, all similar in size.

“How big is this bridge we’re looking for?” Henrik asked, looking concerned.

“Google Maps showed it as sort of big,” I replied. “It had arch supports, so I don’t think it’s one of those little interchange bridges.”

“Does it go over water?”

“I don’t think so.”

We were two gringos in the middle of a deserted part of Rio, looking for a bridge with arches while riding on the ghetto bus.

“Look at that bridge,” said Henrik. “It has arches.”

It did have arches, but it looked smaller than I’d expected. “I don’t think that’s the bridge we want,” I said. “Let’s keep going a while. If the tracks veer to the right, then that was the bridge.”

The tracks veered to the right. There was a “Fuck” and “Damn it” and then we got off the bus at least a mile away from Gheridge. Now next to a busy highway, we’d have to follow it back to the bridge.

“Come on, let’s start walking,” Henrik said after the bus had dropped us off.

“Hold on, let me think. You know we’re in a bad area, right?”

“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Dude, it’s bad, and we’re both obvious gringos,” I said. “Maybe we should take a cab,”

“And how are we going to catch a cab by the highway? We’d have to get on a side street, but I can’t see one from here. All we need to do is walk that way for fifteen minutes and we’ll be there.”

“Okay, but take off your shirt,” I said while looking at a guy sitting on a small hill a couple hundred feet from us.

“What?” he asked.

“Just take off your shirt.” I removed mine.

“I knew you were gay!”

“Shut up. Whenever I’m in a bad neighborhood, I walk shirtless so the thugs will think I’m like them. No one has even been mugged with his shirt off.”

“Does it work?”

“Ask me if I’ve been mugged in Brazil.”

“Well, have you?”

“Never.”

Henrik immediately took off his shirt and his pale Danish skin seemed to glow in the dark. No one was ever going to believe that such a pretty boy was a thug.

He took the lead, walking several paces in front of me, going way too fast. “Slow down, Henrik, they’ll think we’re scared and trying to get away,” I complained. “Thugs walk slow. Just pretend you’re a thug.”

The guy on the hill was soon joined by two others, and not far behind us was a young man with a backpack, his eyes firmly planted on the ground. On our left I saw some makeshift tents made of green tarps, shelters for the homeless. Even though I didn’t have much in the way of valuables on me, my heart was pounding.

I wanted to keep looking back, but I knew that would have been a mistake. Then they would have known we had something worth stealing. Thugs only look back to see if there’s someone they want to rob, so giving frequent glances would only confirm that we were good targets.

What I did was stare hard at whoever was behind us and made sure they saw me looking at possessions like shoes and bags while verifying that the distance between us and what turned out to be a small flock of men wasn’t narrowing. Henrik was now well in front of me and if I was attacked he wouldn’t even hear me above the roar of the cars flying past us.

In the distance I saw a few convenience stores with people milling outside, and then, finally, the train bridge. Next to that was a wide road with various vendors setting up shop to sell beer and snacks. There would be many rock bars, with Gheridge being the last one at the end of the road. I looked back one more time and only saw the man with the backpack. The others had disappeared. We were safe.

“Should we ask someone where Gheridge is?” I asked.

“It should be easy. We’ll just walk down this road until we see the sign,” Henrik said as we put our shirts back on.

My body was sweaty and stinking of the street. I wanted to cool down. “You mind if we get a beer at one of these bars as a warm-up for Gheridge? That walk made me thirsty.”

It didn’t take long to find a dive bar. There were two guys and a transsexual wearing a choker that contained enormous spikes. It looked like a torture device. The barkeep was a large man with a beer belly that his wife-beater could not contain.

“Gheridge better be better than this,” I said.

“Don’t worry. My friend said Gheridge is a good spot. A lot of people go there. It’s going to be good.”

“How’s my breath?” I said, leaning in close. “I forgot to rinse with Listerine before leaving the house.”

“It’s fine.”

We sat in silence for a short while. Henrik was more comfortable with silence than the average American, content to not say anything for most of the time. I broke the ice. “Carnival was kind of shitty, no?”

“I can’t say it was the highlight of my time in Rio.” He took a swig from a tiny glass that needed refilling after just a few sips.

“I think Carnival sucks,” I said. “Brazilian Carnival is for Brazilians, not gringos. Did you notice how much harder it was to meet girls?”

“Yeah, they were always with big groups of friends. They didn’t seem as open.”

“Exactly! Let me ask you this: when was the last time you fucked a girl that you originally met while she was in a group of four or more?”

“Dream girl.”

“Fuck. Okay, how about another girl?”

I gave him not more than two seconds to think, then said, “See! When a girl is out with a big group, it’s much harder to get sex.”

“But you met that Argentine girl last week at the champagne bar,” Henrik countered. “She was with a big group.”

“Yes, but I didn’t approach her until she was alone outside.”

“Even so, I don’t know.”

“Look, my theory holds for most cases,” I insisted. “If a girl is in a group larger than three, there’s no use bothering unless you know how to make a straw rise out of her drink without using your hands.”

“You know how to do that?”

“No, but there’s a famous guy in America who picks up girls with magic. He wears goggles and a top hat and looks like a circus ringleader.”

“Does it work?”

“He’s considered the best pickup artist in the world. He even had his own reality show.”

Henrik laughed. “Only in America!”

The transsexual was making long stares at Henrik. “Looks like someone could be getting lucky tonight,” I said while elbowing Henrik in the arm. “You want me to make an introduction?”

“I think I’m okay, but thanks.”

We finished the large bottle of beer and went back outside. The crowd on the street had gotten denser with people who were hardcore grunge, or goth, or whatever you call it. No other color was acceptable except black. Girls had black lipstick, black nail polish, and black eye liner (the latter I didn’t actually mind). There were many spiky contraptions and chains.

I looked at Henrik and gave him a death stare, but he just put his hand on my back and said, “Relax, buddy. Wait until we get to Gheridge.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will miraculously change at Gheridge.”

“Now that was sarcasm.”

On the bright side, we were the only gringos on the street. We got constant stares, especially Henrik, who was the only natural blond around. Everyone probably thought I was his Brazilian tour guide.

The road curved right and the sounds of people got louder. “I’m pretty sure Gheridge is this way,” Henrik said.

Then I looked to my left and saw a large pile of rubble. It seemed like the result of a missile or bomb attack. Concrete blocks were strewn about and I could see a gap where the main door must have been. Strangely enough, the rubble had become a hang-out spot, and at least three dozen teenagers had picked a concrete block to sit on, smoking and drinking. In the middle of the rubble I saw a young girl with black everything. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen, but she was absolutely stunning. I could easily see her natural beauty behind all that gunk on her perfectly proportioned face. And who had his arm wrapped around but a twig of a boy who I could have lifted with one hand. He also was wearing black lipstick and eyeliner. They started kissing.

“Look at that over there,” I said.

Henrik turned his head and said, “I’m used to that now. Brazil is weird like that.”

“Yup. Guys who would never get laid in the States are banging girls that are hotter than anything we have. Oh, life, why do you play such cruel tricks on me?!”

Our English was getting some attention now. Kids would look at us, only to realize that they were lowering their cool quotient in the process, then immediately look away.

“Well, we’re here,” Henrik said.

We stood in front of a tiny neighborhood bar with fewer people than the pile of rubble. There was rock music playing inside and a single pool table, but nothing more than a couple plastic tables and chairs. There were four or five ugly girls talking with guys.

Looking around in disbelief, I said, “Holy… fuck. You brought me all the way over here for this? What is this shit?”

“Strange,” Henrik replied. “This isn’t quite as good as my friend described it.”

“Not quite as good? The shitty juice bar next to our place has better-looking girls than this!” I took a deep breath. “Are you positive this is the right place?”

Henrik looked at the sign and said, “Yup, this is Gheridge all right.”

I looked at the sign myself, then looked at Henrik, then looked at the sign again. I stared at each letter very carefully, as if trying to change them with my mind. I closed my eyes for two seconds, then opened them again, but the letters didn’t change: G-A-R-A-G-E.

“Hey, Henrik,” I said, looking at the sign once more. “What does that sign up there say?”

“What?”

“Can you say that word for me?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, it’s not a joke. Just say it, please.”

He looked at it for a few seconds, then said what I already knew he was going to say. I nodded, then put my hand up to my face, not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

“You… stupid… European! That says Garage, not Gheridge! I never would have come here if I knew it was Garage! There’s no good bar in the entire world that has a name like that!”

“Are you sure?” He was scratching his head. “It’s not pronounced Gheridge?”

“No, Henrik, it’s not pronounced Gheridge.”

“But how do you explain the word garbage. Why are the endings the same but the sounds are different?”

“I don’t know, man. But that’s definitely not Gheridge.”

We both stood staring at the sign in silence, as if it was a monument of some sort.

“So, you want to go to Emporio?” Henrik finally asked.

“Yeah, I’m down.”

We each bought a bottle of beer for the road and caught a bus to Ipanema.

One year later, I arrived in Copenhagen to visit Henrik. On my first night he took me for a walk through his Vesterbro neighborhood, pointing out the cool bars and cafes.

“Why are all these bikes unlocked?” I asked. The first thing anyone notices about Copenhagen is the bicycles.

“No, they’re definitely locked.” He showed me the small wheel locks that went on the back.

“But anyone can just pick it up and put it in a van!”

“Sometimes that happens, but you’ll get your bike back when the police catch the guys.”

“They catch bicycle thieves here? There must be no crime here then.”

“There’s quite a bit now,” he said. “We even have shootings between gangs, just like you do in America.”

“How many people die a year from shootings?”

“In Copenhagen? About ten. In the entire country, fifty or so.”

It was a world away from Brazil, or even the United States, but apparently such numbers were worrying to the Danes. They had even begun to have home invasions, something that hadn’t existed a few years earlier.

We sat down to eat at a kebab place to get caught up.

“I’ve started seeing a girl,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty, incredibly fun, and has the most beautiful brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I really, really like her.”

“Tired of blue eyes, huh?”

“Yeah, I never meet girls with brown eyes here.”

“Is she good in bed?” I asked.

“We haven’t had sex yet. I’m taking it nice and slow.”

I smiled and said, “You know, that sounds familiar.”

PREVIOUSLY: PART THREE

“You got her over already, nice,” I said. “So was there sex?”

“Nope.”

“But you kissed her right?”

“Nope, not yet.”

It took everything in my power to restrain my displeasure with the speed of his seduction. I had to be gentle. “You know that she’s… Brazilian, right?”

“Yup.”

“And that they like kissing?” I couldn’t think of an easier girl in the world to kiss than a Brazilian.

“I know that, but I want to take it slow.”

“I understand. Actually I don’t, but—”

“I don’t want to mess this one up,” Henrik interrupted. “I have a good feeling about it.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I’m curious about how this will go.”

Many times in the past I had made the same mistake Henrik was making, where I changed my typical sleazy game for a girl that I considered “special,” and then watched as she slipped through my grasp. The moment I thought about giving her the special game was the moment I started to lose her. By valuing her as a worthy human being, neediness leaked out from my every pore. She would eventually pass on me in favor of a guy who treated her more (in)appropriately.

Over the years, I’ve learned to be the McDonald’s of game. No matter where you get a McDonald’s cheeseburger, you’re going to experience the same taste, as if the same Mexican from your home city had been teleported to a foreign McDonald’s just to microwave your Big Mac. Whether a girl is ugly, cute, or beautiful, whether she has a great personality or not, I put her on the same fuck track. I don’t slow down my game for the better girls. I don’t take them to fancier bars and I definitely don’t bring in any additional stories or gimmicks designed to make her see me as a more valuable man. When I started to see them as the same, I started getting “higher quality” girls with more regular frequency. My dick has thanked me for it, especially since I don’t need to use condoms on hot girls due to them being cleaner than uglier girls.

I saw what Henrik was doing and wanted to tell him about my McDonald’s theory of game, but that would have offended him, especially since he seemed confident about putting her in his dream girl pipeline. If we were BFF’s, I could have been more vocal, but any heavy-handedness on my part could have damaged our budding friendship. So I bit my lip.

Predictably, things went south with the dream girl. He did kiss her, at least, on date four or so, and I got to hear a vivid description of how wonderful her lips were, but she started taking longer and longer to reply to his messages. She’d interrupt their Facebook chats and not resume them, even though she was obviously online. Henrik’s instincts told him to try harder and do more to win her favor, while hers told her to pull back even further. His dream girl was slipping away, but he was still reluctant to hit on other girls during our Casa and Emporio outings. He said talking to other girls would make it feel like he was cheating.

“Can I study your dream girl?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to study her so I can see exactly what she does to get guys like you wrapped around her finger. Then I want to use those moves on girls.”

I think my influence was working, because within two weeks he was approaching girls again. Finally he’d had enough. She never bothered to contact him after returning from a trip, and the next time we went out, he actually kissed a girl at Emporio.

“Why didn’t you treat your dream girl like the random skank you kissed tonight?” I asked.

“Because she wasn’t my dream girl,” Henrik replied.

“Exactly! Do you see it now? When you call a girl your dream girl, you won’t fuck her! By not caring, you put out the best game!”

“I don’t know.” He put his hand on his chin and thought for a short while. “Maybe you’re right, but I’ve gotten my dream girl before, up in João Pessoa.”

He told me the love story, which I admit was romantic and involved several transatlantic flights and declarations of love.

“How did it end?” I asked.

“She dumped me for another guy.”

I pointed in the air, as if was further proof of what I was saying. It was all making crystal clear sense to me. Henrik was too much of a romantic in a modern world where everyone is self-absorbed and selfish with barely an ounce of compassion or empathy. The current model of human female from the factory floor isn’t made to handle the Henriks of the world. He was setting himself up to be repeatedly crushed by the very girls he liked most.

The Monday after he kissed the random girl at Emporio, he sent a message to the dream girl. It went something along the lines of “I don’t know what type of game you’re playing, but thanks to you I did something really stupid with another girl over the weekend.” He didn’t go into detail, but it wouldn’t be hard for the dream girl to conclude that he had fucked another girl.

She replied back almost immediately. “What do you mean? I was just busy. How are you? We need to meet up.”

She agreed to come by for a movie several days later, but flaked on the day of the date. I told Henrik it was completely hopeless and that she was just playing him for shits and giggles, but he tried again and set up a new date. This time there was no cancellation.

I squeezed his arm, looked him in the eye, and said, “Tonight, you’re going to fuck her. No more ‘dream girl’ bullshit. You know she’s not reliable, you know she’s playing games, and you know she has other gringos chasing her. She’s not a dream girl, she’s a slut, and I want you to tell her that as you pump her hole tonight.”

“She’s not a slut.”

“She is! She’s a gringo slut and you have to treat her like one! You know she is—everything she’s done to you has pointed to her being a game-playing slut.”

He frowned, reluctant to accept the truth.

“Look—just fuck her silly,” I said. “Assume this is the last time you’re ever going to see her. Has she given you any indication that she’ll come through for you in the future?”

“No.”

“Has she done anything to earn your trust or respect?”

“No.”

“Hell, it’s a miracle she’s even coming over tonight!” I said. “I expect to hear her screams coming through the walls. Just do it.”

I was in disbelief when she actually walked through the door, but then again Henrik is a charming man and easily more interesting than the other frat boy gringos she was meeting at Emporio every week. They went straight to his room and stayed there for at least two hours. A couple times I put my ear to the door to see if I could hear any sex noises, but there was nothing besides his television and a faint squeaking sound that could’ve been anything.

I saw three possibilities. The first was that he was treating her like a Brazilian princess and snuggling next to her as the movie played. The second was that he had made a strong effort to fuck her and had been rebuffed. The third was that he had made the effort and she had opened her golden brown vagina.

My door was open when Henrik walked her out. From the corner of my left eye I saw her for not more than half a second, but I swear her gait had changed. It was flatter and less bouncy than when she walked in. Even her walking speed was at least half a mile per hour slower. Something had happened.

Henrik walked in about five minutes later and stood in my doorway. I looked up at him from my desk and he stared back without any expression on his face. We had a mini staring contest for ten seconds.

“Well, come on,” I said. “Do I have to ask?”

His lips started curling upward. “I fucked her.”

I stood up, nodded, and gave him a double high-five, yelling, “Thank you, god! That’s what I’m talking about!”

After the celebration had died down, I asked how the pussy was.

“It was a great pussy,” he said. “Tight and wet.”

“It’s a miracle you fucked her,” I said. “Now take it and move on. I’m proud of you, bro.”

I knew he would never experience that pussy again, no matter how much he tried. We ran into her at Emporio several times after that. She was always with a new gringo, tall and blond, just like Henrik.

The night before Gheridge, we went to Zero Zero, an upscale club in the Gavea neighborhood. We arrived early to avoid the hefty cover charge and picked a nice spot by the bar on the patio. It was one of the most expensive clubs in Rio, not a place for easy pickings, but we started to grow tired of the mediocre quality of women at Casa and Emporio. Other spots we tried, particularly in Lapa, weren’t much better. There was too much luck involved in finding the next dream girl (a term I started to jokingly use with greater frequency), and our conversations started turning to other Brazilian cities where we could ply our trade. Henrik had his eyes set on São Paulo, while mine were veering slightly northwest, to the state of Minas Gerais.

I bought the first round, a pair of fruity caipirinhas that were feminine in color. Many nights I bankrolled Henrik’s drinks because he had no money. He never asked me to buy him anything, but I fed them to him without asking anything in return because I wanted him to get into a good state that would put me into a good state. I’d estimate that he bought me a drink for every four I bought him, and while I thought about the imbalance at times, I kept the liquor flowing because I enjoyed his company and knew our time was limited.

We were sipping on our drinks when he said, “Roosh, I think it’s time to upgrade your wardrobe.”

He took a hard look at my plaid shirt with the skull-and-bones patch. I looked at it, too, as if wondering whether he was seeing what I saw.

“Look at how baggy it is. It’s like a dress. That’s for the day, but you need something better for the night. Look at all these Brazilian guys here in their t-shirts and sneakers. If you step it up just a little, I think you’ll get a lot more winks.”

Even the Brazilian guys in their basic t-shirts were at least wearing something that showed off their muscles. I spent a lot of time at the gym to get decent-sized, but I was hiding it at the moment, like a girl with a wonderful ass wearing baggy jeans. When I went back to the States, I spent several hundred dollars upgrading my wardrobe, using Henrik as a model. I hate to say it, but he was right—now I get approached by women complimenting my clothing whereas it never happened before.

There were a couple older girls in the corner, and Henrik started the conversation with his cigarette line, but neither of us were motivated to stick with them. I talked to another girl for a while, but it eventually went cold.

“Remember the Danish girls we met at Casa the other week?” I told Henrik. “For a second I thought I was going to fuck a Dane without even having to go to Denmark.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised they flaked like that.” Flake was a word I had taught him.

“And the thing is, I don’t even know how it ended,” I said. “They were completely down, got into the cab with us, and then suddenly changed their minds.”

“They must have done sign language or something. One of the girls kept wrinkling her nose. Maybe that’s the abort signal among their circle of friends.”

“At least we made them pay their share of the cab ride,” I said. “Hey, if I go to Denmark, will I be a rock star and get laid with absolutely zero effort? I’m talking about not even having to shower daily.”

“No, you’ll have to shower and look sharp, but I think you’d do well because your gorilla hair suit will be very exotic. I don’t want to get your hopes up, though, because our girls aren’t that much better than Americans. I mean, they’re better, but there’s a reason I’m chasing Brazilian girls and not Danish girls.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah. Those Brazilian girls from Wednesday night were nice, though.”

“It would have been nicer if I had fucked mine.”

“You were close,” he said.

“I think I was a little farther than close. I’m telling you it was that huge heap of garbage right in front of her hotel that did me in. It totally killed the moment. It smelled like we were standing on a mountain of dirty diapers. She ran into the building before I could even weasel my way inside.”

“That’s tough luck, man.”

“It happens.” An idea I had been working on entered my head. “Have you thought about the amount of luck that goes into having sex with a random girl? Like how many little events have to work out perfectly up to the moment of penetration? When you don’t bang, it looks difficult and hard, but when it works, it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“Banging dream girls is difficult.”

“Fuck, I’m saying it shouldn’t be difficult. If it is, then you’re putting way more into it than you’re ever going to get out of it. Look at you with your dream girl—all that work for one little fuck.” I paused, then added. “You know, I still don’t believe you banged her. That made me question my whole model of game. If I witness something like it again, I may have to update my theories.”

“Are you going to write a book on it?” he asked sarcastically.

“I might. I’ll call it The Man Who Made Every Mistake In The Book But Still Got Laid.”

He smiled. “Shut up, you stupid American. You don’t know how to treat a woman.”

I thought of calling him a snobby European, but I concluded that he would have taken it as a compliment, so I just said, “Whatever, fancy boy European.” Then I mocked the effete way he smoked his cigarettes, but I was disappointed in my insults because they just didn’t have the same bite as “stupid American.”

The club got crowded and we talked to a dozen girls, exchanged numbers that wouldn’t lead to dates, and warded off incredibly mediocre English groupies who wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the cab ride home, I asked him if he thought Gheridge would be good the following night.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replied. “The girls will be nicer and cuter, with more of a rock style, so wear your white v-neck.”

“The deep one?”

“The deep one.”

By the night of Gheridge I’d lived in the favela for a little over two months, with only three weeks left. Henrik had two weeks left, so it would be his second-to-last Saturday in Rio. It was dangerous to experiment with new bars with so little time remaining instead of hitting our usual haunts, but as I said, the mediocre quality had been getting to us and plus we were starting to run into the same girls over and over again. We craved a fresh scene with something different. Maybe Gheridge would be so good that I’d look forward to coming back to Rio someday, a prospect that was becoming unlikely as I began to tire of the city, its congestion, its heat, and its gringo-fatigued women.

The day was normal enough. I hopped on a bus to the Leblon mall to camp out at their Starbucks (it had air conditioning—our apartment didn’t). There I did some research on how to get to Gheridge, since Henrik wasn’t very good with directions. He didn’t even have an address, just the name of a little neighborhood way up in a part of town we’d never been before.

I found a bus line that would get us there, but it would be tricky knowing when to pull the cord for our stop, since we didn’t know what the neighborhood looked like. There was going to be a raised train track that ran parallel to the bus, and the moment the track went over a bridge and diverged from the bus route, we’d have to pull. I drew a little map on a napkin with a “Pull Here” label. We had to get it right the first time because neither of us had maps. I would’ve been open to taking a taxi, but Henrik didn’t have much money and I didn’t want to shoulder the entire fare.

I’ll be the first to admit that I take a long time to get ready at night. I have to cook my dinner, eat it, then do the dishes as soon as I’m done (I hate coming home and having to do dishes). Then I take a shower, shave, floss, brush my teeth, rinse with mouthwash, put on deodorant, make sure my hair is perfect, listen to some music, get my condoms, earplugs, copy of my passport, and so on. It takes me about ninety minutes from start to finish. Most guys eat some leftover junk food and then throw on their clothes (total time: ten minutes). On the night we visited Gheridge, I had to do some additional preparation: trim my nose hair, ear hair, and a bit of my chest hair so it didn’t seem like a carpet was trying to fly away. I also had to clean my shoes. By the time we were out the door, it was already 11:30.

“You take longer to get ready than a girl,” Henrik teased.

The walk to the bus stop in front of Botafogo’s dirty beach took fifteen minutes. The bus came a couple minutes after that. We boarded and paid the woman working the turnstile. I could immediately tell that the bus was either going by or directly to the ghetto, and most likely by many ghettos, because the people on board were several shades darker than what you’d see on Ipanema beach. In South America the easiest and most reliable way to judge a person’s place on the socioeconomic ladder is how dark their skin is. It’s not fair, but that’s the reality.

Anywhere else in Rio we’d just be two typical sex-hungry gringos, but on that bus we got stares from everyone. We sat next to each other and I pulled out the crude napkin map.

CONTINUED: PART FIVE

PREVIOUSLY: PART TWO

There weren’t many clubs in Botafogo, the neighborhood where we lived, but there was Casa do Matriz. The first time I went there was years ago when I met Mariana, and since then I hadn’t been able to find a place in Rio where I could pull so consistently. Of course I didn’t get laid every time I went, but smooching was common and I once had a seven or eight night streak where I got at least that much. I hadn’t been able to accomplish that type of run anywhere else.

Everything about Casa was perfect for my purposes. It had a main bar room that wasn’t too loud for talking, two dance floors for touching, a lounge room for kissing, and little nooks and crannies for picking off girls as they walked by. The cover charge wasn’t much (about $5 if you got there before midnight), the drinks were reasonably priced, and the music wasn’t bad either. But there was one problem: the quality of girls was low.

Casa attracted lazy Brazilian girls who wore dirty Converse shoes and old t-shirts, so finding a diamond in the rough takes time. Lucky for me, I had plenty of it and lived only three blocks away, so in a dozen or two visits I was able to land a handful of decent girls. At worst I kissed an average girl, but even that got the pipes going well enough that I could satisfy myself with a solid jerk at home.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that it was a little cheesy to go back to the same place, spitting the same exact lines, and getting the same results—I was like a stand-up comedian who hadn’t changed his monologue in years. It was pure laziness, but can you blame me? I’ve always had to work to get laid, so why shouldn’t I enjoy a spot where I barely have to? While I got sick of the place toward the end of my time in Rio, every now and then I get all nostalgic and blubbery about it in retrospect.

For our first night out, Henrik asked how he should dress and I told him that Casa was casual. I wore my regular blue jeans and a red plaid collared shirt that had a skull and bones patch. Henrik slicked back his long blonde hair and wore black skinny jeans, a bit faded from too many machine washings, a grey collared shirt with some type of repetitive flower design, and a black vest. He looked like an obvious foreigner while I looked like a Brazilian hipster whose clothing could have been better fitted. It was a good contrast and ensured that no girl would like us both simultaneously.

We walked to Casa and found it was dead. Halfway into our first drink, it was obvious the place wasn’t going to pop.

“Sorry it sucks tonight,” I said. “It’s usually a lot better than this. Maybe it’s a holiday or something.” I noticed a huge line at another bar nearby, Pista 3, and wondered if that party had drawn the Casa crowd. “How about I buy you another round and then we go somewhere else since it’s still kind of early.

We finished the round and then he said, “How about we go to Emporio?”

I paused a couple seconds, trying to remember the two times I had gone there during my last trip. “Doesn’t it have a ton of gringos?”

“Sure it’s a gringo bar, but the girls who go there like gringos.”

“Yeah,” I thought to myself, “but they’re even lower quality than Casa. Prostitutes go there, for fuck’s sake!” I then said, “Hold on, let me think if I know of a better place.”

I knew of a club in Lapa, but it was too late for that. There were other clubs scattered around, but they had high covers and we were sure to encounter a line. Most had awful logistics for meeting a girl. For being such a huge city, Rio sure did have shitty nightlife options.

Finally, I said, “Alright, let’s go to Emporio. It can’t be worse than this.”

When we got to Emporio, Henrik bought a round of beers from the back of a van parked half a block away. The bar itself was more a gathering point than a bar because most people just hung out in front, buying cheap beer and soft drinks from the van, which probably made as much money each night as the bar itself. We picked a strategic spot by the main entrance and sipped our beers. Henrik pulled out a cigarette and held it in a peculiar way, with all his fingers curled into a half-fist and his thumb pointing straight up to the sky. The butt of the cigarette was close to touching his palm, and when he took a drag it looked like was covering his entire mouth.

“Do you approach women?” I asked.

“What do you mean by approach?”

“Like when you see a girl you like, do you go up to her and start a conversation?”

“Sometimes. I like to wait for a sign first. If she looks at me a couple times, then I go in.”

“What’s your line?”

“Something about borrowing a cigarette or a light,” he said.

“What do you do if you’re in a bar that doesn’t allow smoking?”

“I can still ask her if she has a light as I’m on my way out for a smoke.”

“That’s probably the most natural line in a bar.”

“What do you use?”

“Usually something situational, but lately I’ve been opening by asking if the bar plays a certain type of Brazilian music called tecnobrega. Or I ask for clarification on what a word means somewhere on the wall or menu. I like to get conversations going about having her help me in some way because it lowers her guard. It’s also kind of a test—if a girl can’t even assist you on a basic human level, she probably isn’t interested in meeting someone. Your line does the same thing.”

“I never analyzed it like it.”

“It’s my job,” I said, matter-of-factly.

“What do you do?”

When I told him what I write about, he was intrigued but skeptical at the same time, a common response I get from guys who aren’t into the game. I made sure not to insinuate that my approach or methods were better than his. I never criticize the game of other guys unless they explicitly ask for advice, because I can only imagine how annoying it would be if someone I just met started shoving their dogma down my throat.

“Have you been to America?” I asked.

“Yes, about five years ago,” Henrik replied. “I did a backpacking trip with my friend and visited something like twenty states.”

“Shit, you’ve seen more of my country than I have. What do you think of the girls?”

“Honestly?”

“Dude, I’m not a patriotic American, don’t worry.”

“The girls weren’t very pretty. Your country has some beautiful parks and natural things like that, but I didn’t like the girls. They were all fat.”

“The sad part is that things have gotten worse in only the five years since you’ve been there. It gets worse every year.” I shook my head and looked down at the ground.

“Why is it like that?”

“There’s probably a hundred reasons why, but I like to think it’s what happens when you intersect feminism, capitalism, suburban living, and a lack of tradition that guides people to live balanced lives. Keep in mind that America is barely 200 years old. We have no customs, nothing that’s passed on from generation to generation like say, Denmark. Instead, we just do what the corporations tell us to, and they want us to buy more, eat more, and be more shallow and brain-dead.”

Henrik was interested in hearing about America’s problems and we’d have many more enlightening discussions in the kitchen over the next couple months. The last one had me saying things along the lines of, “Fuck America… it’s not worth saving… it will eventually happen everywhere… have you been to Eastern Europe?”

A lot of people were starting to come to Emporio. Henrik told me that people go to their main destination first and then bounce to Emporio afterwards, which serves as the after-hours spot and your last chance to hook up on a weekend night in Rio. Even though there is rarely more than two cute girls at any time (usually surrounded by dudes), the turnover is rapid. If you stay a while you can squeeze in quite a few approaches on decent girls who are guaranteed to speak English.

I began to understand why he liked Emporio so much: it was perfect for his cigarette line and poor Portuguese. The irony was that I never fucked a girl I met at Emporio and he never fucked one that he met at Casa, so the great compromise for the remaining months, which I’m sure cost me a couple notches, was for us to go to Casa first so I could run my game, then go to Emporio so he could run his.

He was glancing at a girl twenty feet away from us. It wasn’t the casual kind of glance that I would do, just to see what the situation was, but a blatant, penetrating stare.

“What’s going on there?” I asked.

“That girl is beautiful.”

“She’s not bad.”

“Not bad? Look at her body, her face, her hair.”

“No, she’s good,” I said. “I just like them really petite. Small girls make my dick seem huge, like a horse’s dick, and I like that.”

“What?”

“Horse’s dick. You know, a baby’s arm. Funny story… this one girl I fucked was so petite that my dick was just as wide as her wrist. We measured them side by side. It was like she was getting fucked by her own arm! We had a good laugh about that—well, at least I did. It turned me on immensely.”

“You’re sick. You’re probably going to be a pedophile when you get older.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I’d considered that prospect myself. “But, hey, that girl is cute and rather voluptuous. Too bad she’s surrounded by three gringos.” One of the guys actually looked like a Henrik clone, tall and fair-skinned, but his shorter hair gave him more of a jock feel than Henrik’s European romancer vibe.

“I just need a look,” he said. “Once I get that look, I can go in, but I can’t without it.”

It was comical how hard he was staring at her. While she did glance over for a couple milliseconds, he needed something more sustained. Finally, fifteen minutes later, it came.

“There it is!” he said. “Did you see it?”

“I must’ve missed it.”

“I think she smiled. I could be seeing things, but her lips raised a little.”

“But how about the three guys? You think they’re going to let you talk to her?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

He slid a cigarette from his pack, placed it in his half-fist smoking position, then started walking. He passed not one, not two, but three groups that had an active smoker, before stopping at her group. I couldn’t hear anything, but I knew he was asking for a light. One of the gringos offered it.

Five minutes later he was having a one-on-one conversation with the girl while the three guys diddled their dicks off on the side, letting it all happen. I couldn’t believe it. After almost an hour, I got tired of waiting for him to come back, so I took a bus home.

Not until the next evening did I catch Henrik. He was in the kitchen cooking a curry dish when I was on my way out for a run by the beach. I stood in the doorway and gave him a huge grin. He smiled back.

“So?” I said.

“What’s up?”

“Tell me what happened with the girl!”

“Oh, yeah, the girl.” He paused, pretending like he hadn’t already thought about what he was going to tell me. “It was very nice, man. She’s dreamy. I think I’ve met my dream girl.”

“Really? Wow.”

“Yeah, we just talked and talked all night and I got her number. I feel happy.”

“She speaks English and everything?”

“She has perfect English.”

“Who were those guys with her?”

“Her friends.”

“Did you kiss her?” I asked.

“No, she’s too good for that. I want to take it slow with her. She’s special.”

“Oh, no, he’s putting the pussy on a pedestal!” I thought. Then I said, “I see. Well, what’s the next step?”

“I’m going to call her in a day or so. What was that bar you were telling me about in Ipanema? They had a samba band or something.”

“It’s called Conversa Fiada. It’s kind of expensive though.” I gave him the disclaimer because I knew his funds were even more limited than mine. I was making American dollars selling books while he was making Brazilian reals teaching English to flakey clients.

A few days later, their first date went down at the bar I recommended. There was no kiss. For their second date, she came over for one of his homemade dinners, where I met her for the first time. When she left the shack, Henrik had a big smile on his face.

CONTINUED: PART FOUR

PREVIOUSLY: PART ONE

Henrik was icy toward me at first. He was careful with his words and didn’t ask any other questions besides where I was from. I pegged him as a snobby European who hated America. Plus he was from Denmark, a country that, according to my high school history class, was so insignificant that it might as well have never existed.

The German girl was nicer, as were the other three roommates, who were all Brazilian. It’s a shame, really, because I wouldn’t have minded having an English-speaking guy to go out with. While I dislike going out to clubs alone, I was determined to do my work, solo or not.

All interaction between my roommates occurred in two places: in front of the door to the bathroom or in the kitchen. The latter wasn’t much larger than the bathroom and had a tiny rusted table with a lone chair where I’d eat my meals (everyone else ate in their rooms while watching television). I’d be sitting, eating my rice and chicken, and a roommate would come by to grab a snack from the refrigerator or to do a load of laundry.

It was because of the refrigerator that things started turning sour with the German girl. The problem was that it had a habit of not closing unless you put a bit of muscle into it, something I wasn’t used to in my first couple weeks. I’d accidentally leave the door cracked open for hours, sometimes overnight. No food spoiled, but it was a situation that needed to be remedied. The young Brazilian guy gently reminded me to close the door, and I made a mental note to be aware of it, but it still took a little while to get the hang of it.

One day I was eating dinner when the German girl walked into the kitchen to grab some food. Apparently I had just left the door cracked again because she yelled, “WHO KEEPS LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN. OH MY GOD I DON’T BELIEVE THIS. JESUS CHRIST.”

She knew it was me—it couldn’t have been anyone else—so unless she was yelling to herself, which I doubted, she was yelling at me. She stormed out of the kitchen, leaving me to finish my meal in anger and vowing never to forget her grievous insult.

Two weeks later I had a Brazilian girl over and wanted to get her drunk on caipirinhas to guarantee access to her vagina. There was no ice in the freezer, so I went to the store to buy a five-pound block of ice, the only size they had. I had to smash it against the cobblestone street in front of my building to break it up into smaller chunks.

The German girl came into the kitchen while I was making the drinks (she seemed to come by every ten minutes when I had a visitor over, the nosy bitch), looked at my girl, looked at the bag of ice, looked at the limes I was cutting, and said, “You bought that whole bag of ice just to make one caipirinha?” Then she snickered, one of those smug I’m-better-than-you snickers.

I wanted to snap back at her, especially since I was still stewing from the refrigerator door incident, but my cute date was right there, eagerly awaiting her drink. I knew that was the night we’d fuck, so I contained myself. Later, in bed, I was extra forceful with my hip thrusts to make the Brazilian girl moan loud enough so the German girl could hear, though I’ll never know if she did.

The initial interactions I had with Henrik in the kitchen were informational in nature. I’d ask him something about internet downtime, what day the maid came, where the bathroom squeegee was located, or why the twenty-year-old washing machine was overflowing and making horrible grating sounds like it was about to explode. He did his best to help, answering right to the point, but giving no extra information for me to latch onto. I wasn’t exactly chatty around him, either, because he was a snob and I don’t mix with snobs. I was really just trying to be friendly and to create a pleasant living environment.

But I couldn’t help myself when one night I saw him bring home a dark-skinned girl. I was in the kitchen, cooking something barely edible, and saw her enter the apartment and go straight to Henrik’s room. She walked by so quickly I couldn’t even properly check out her body.

They were in the bedroom for less than an hour. Then he walked her to the front of the building to put her in a taxi. I guessed it wasn’t a first-time seduction and he had made love with her beforehand.

Our front door had to be locked with a key, even from the inside, so as he was fumbling with the keys to lock the door on his way in, I asked, “What that a first date?”

“Who, her? Oh, no. I’ve been seeing her for a little while.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“An internet dating site. It’s called Brazilian Cupid.”

“Are those sites any good here?” I asked. “I tried that a bit in Colombia, but the quality can be hit or miss. It takes a while to go through all the profiles to find the cute girls.”

“It’s not bad here. I don’t even do anything, really, just put up a profile and let the girls show interest by giving me a wink.”

“A wink?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a button they can click to show they like you. It’s like, um, a poke on Facebook.”

“Oh, right. Some sites call those smileys. Either way, I never got winks in Colombia.” I had a flashback of club nights where I worked like a mule just to get a number or kiss on the cheek. “I’m not a fan of internet stuff because too many times I’ve met girls that seemed fine online but were ugly or retarded in person. I always feel tricked, because she knows I won’t immediately dip out.”

“Usually I talk to them online for a while to make sure they’re decent, because otherwise, yeah, you can meet a lot of duds,” Henrik conceded.

“If I’m in a bind and need a slump-buster, I’ll hit up the internet and message anything with four limbs, but otherwise I’d rather make it work in the bars.”

“Do you put up a lot of photos?” Henrik asked. “That could be why you don’t get winks.”

“I put up a sexy photo of me on a Colombian beach, but I can’t say it helped. You do have blonde hair and blue eyes, though, which is pretty exotic here. How many guys on the dating site look like you?”

“Not many.”

Henrik was a couple years older than me but much better looking, and I say that as a staunch heterosexual. He was tall with an athletic body from practicing kung fu, he had two tasteful tattoos (one of some ancient medieval dagger and another of a joker), and he was classically handsome in a European way. From my experience in Rio, I knew he was quite a catch for Brazilian girls, but by judging from his internet gaming, I guessed that he was like other good-looking guys I’d met and was far lazier about approaching than I was. That meant we probably got a similar amount of poon.

Don’t get me wrong—if I had the option of being incredibly good-looking I’d pick that in a heartbeat, but working hard does help equalize things somewhat. If a guy like Henrik worked as hard as me to get laid, it’d be impossible for me to keep up, no matter how many girls I approached and what tactics I used. There’s an eventual ceiling that no man can overcome unless he becomes famous.

Henrik and I talked about internet game for a while before he went back to his room. He told me which bar he liked going to (Emporio) and I told him my favorite (Casa do Matriz). He expressed interest in going to Casa with me, but I was hesitant to mess up my Casa mojo if Henrik turned out to be a poor wingman. Plus I was getting used to running solo game, which was becoming easy thanks to being able to play the I’m-new-in-town-and-I-don’t-have-any-friends angle.

Still, no matter how well I can do on my own, I eventually need to bond with another man. I need someone to appreciate my dry humor and to hear my latest theories about life and stories about women. I can’t stand having girl stories die in my head. I hate when something funny or crazy happens and I have no guy to tell it to. If all sorts of interesting things happen to me, but I don’t tell them to anyone, and they fade faster from my memory as a result, did they really happen?

I went out alone that weekend, but the following Saturday afternoon I knocked on Henrik’s door and asked if he wanted to come with me to Casa. He accepted. That was the night he met his dream girl.

CONTINUED: PART THREE

(Download the PDF file for all five parts by clicking here.)

There was always someone in the bathroom. That’s what happens when there are six adults living in an apartment with just one toilet. If I left my door open, I could see part of bathroom door, enough to know if it was being used or not. I had to be quick when it was free before someone else walked in.

One night I was preying on the bathroom when I heard the front door open and close. Everyone else was home so I knew it was my Danish roommate, Henrik, returning from kung fu practice. His room was at the end of the hall, so if I left my door open it was a guarantee he’d stop by to have a little chat.

“Hey buddy,” he said, with a little gym bag hanging from his shoulder.

“Hey buddy, what’s up?”

“I chatted with Vanessa today. Remember that girl you met at Emporio?”

“Yeah, the girl with all the piercings,” I said.

“Right. Well she told me about this new bar we should check out.”

“Yeah?” I wasn’t enthusiastic.

The week before we had gone to some shithole in Larenjeras and while our current spots in Botafogo and Ipanema weren’t that great, we were at least getting some action. Neither of us had much time left in Rio and I didn’t want to waste it with nightlife exploration when it was possible that we’d already found the best spots.

“It’s a rock bar up in the north zone, a little farther out than Lapa. Actually, it’s a lot of bars in a small area,” Henrik said.

“The north zone? Aren’t the girls ugly there?”

“No, the girls are better. My friend made a comment that they like rock types. She said they’d like you. You just have to wear your tightest jeans.”

“She really said that?” I asked.

“She did. The best day to go is Saturday.”

“Saturday? But that’s Casa do Matriz night. I always get something there. That’s prime time!”

“This new bar will make Casa do Matriz look like camel shit.”

I stroked my chin. “What’s the name of this rock bar?”

“Gheridge.”

“Gheridge?

“Yes, GHER-idge.”

“Sounds like a luxury condominium development. Good evening, sir, and welcome to the Gherrrridge.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Hey, maybe I can meet my dream girl there!”

“Yeah, and maybe she won’t turn out to be a bitch slut.”

I laughed. He was still sour about the dream girl.

“So how do you spell this Gheridge?” I asked, changing the subject.

“How would I know? I’m not good at spelling words in English. Just Google it.”

“How am I going to Google a word that I don’t—”

Right then the bathroom door opened and Bruno, the unofficial leader of the apartment since he’d been there for eight years, stepped out wearing nothing but underwear. His age was something of a secret, but I put it at around fifty-five.

Just as I was about to put my hands on the armrests of my chair to hoist myself up, Henrik started to walk away, saying, “Hey, I have to use the bathroom. Let’s talk about it later, okay?”

Before I tell you about our night out at Gheridge, I should give you some background information about how I found the apartment.

I arrived in Rio in early December during peak tourist season to find rental prices to be through the roof. People were asking over $800 to rent a crappy room with a shared bathroom. I holed up in a $15 a night hostel in the meanwhile, firing off messages to promising listings I found on Craigslist and other rental sites. Most of the landlords didn’t write back to my English/Portuguese hybrid message. I knew that a lot of gringos wired deposits without even looking at the places, so I wondered if my request to check things out may have pegged me as a high maintenance gringo.

After a week in the hostel with no solid leads, I started to get worried. My plan to spend summer in Rio without blowing my wad was in jeopardy and I began thinking about going to Argentina, land of crazy women, until after Carnival when rental prices would be cheaper. My Brazilian acquaintances didn’t offer any encouragement, telling me that, yes, getting a rental was hard and I should leave and come back later.

Then I met an English girl in my dorm room who changed everything, and the irony was that she was Indian. Thing is I hate Indian girls. Not only do they have the flattest asses on Earth, but they’re the most frigid and masculine, making American girls seem like quality romance material. But I have found an exception to that rule: Indian girls who don’t like being Indian. If all her friends are white then she probably hates her heritage, and therefore Indian in appearance only. This particular English girl acted whiter than other white girls, so I was in the clear to spend time with her.

On her last night we went out for drinks at a bar near the hostel and chatted a little about life, relationships, and how difficult it was to use condoms consistently. She had a fiancé at home in England, but she talked about him with a barely perceptible tone of annoyance that my advanced cheat-dar was able to pick up. All the time I’ve spent in hostels has given me the uncanny ability to tell if a traveling girl with a boy back home is likely to cheat, and how far she’ll go.

I expressed my frustration in finding a room to rent.

“You’ve only been trying a week,” she said.

“Yes, but I’ve tried everything. I even asked everyone who works at the hostel. I think I’ll just go to Argentina for a few months and then come back after the high season passes.”

“What was your original plan?”

“Well, to live in Colombia for six month, Brazil for six months, then Argentina for as long as it takes to get tired of the women. Two months max, I figure.”

“And how long have you been in Brazil so far?”

“I reckon a month.” With English people I like to use fancier words so they understand me better.

“So you’re ready to throw away your plan after just one week’s worth of difficulty?”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t know, it just sounds to me that you don’t want to stay here after all. If I had a plan likes yours, I’d stick to it. I wouldn’t give up so easily.”

I listened.

“Have you heard of choicelessness?” she asked.

“I haven’t.”

“It’s a Buddhist term where you imagine that you have no other choices or options and that you must face your current situation and make it work, no matter what. So applying that to your situation…”

“I have no choice but to find an apartment and I can’t leave until I do?”

“There you go.”

I sat in silence for a minute, thinking about her concept. “I don’t want to blow your head up,” I said, “but that’s pretty brilliant. Such a great idea from such a young woman. How old are you again?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Oh, well, that’s not that young.”

“Hey!” she said, pushing my shoulder.

We smooched a little that night, but by the next day she was so wrought with guilt that she was extremely short with me. It didn’t matter—I had already tapped her value with the Buddhist lesson, and just as I was about to hit all the rental sites again, I found an email in my inbox from a Brazilian woman. She had a room available and left her phone number. I hadn’t emailed her before and she wasn’t from one of the sites—had someone else given her my address? I took it as some sort of heavenly sign and called her immediately. Within the hour I was on my way to her apartment.

One thing about Rio is that you’re always within rifle range of a favela. If there is an open space on a mountain, there will be shacks, and where there are shacks, there will be industrious young men packaging drugs for sale to Rio’s middle class. The irony of Rio’s drug problem is that the sons and daughters of those who are fighting the drug war are supplying dealers with money through their marijuana and cocaine purchases. No one talks about the demand side of the drug problem—it’s entirely the fault of the dealers, and any means necessary must be used to take them down.

Sort of like how a little child is instinctively afraid of snakes and spiders, it doesn’t take watching grisly news reports or hearing gunshots to know that a favela is not a place you want to be. So I was getting a little nervous when the favela in the distance got closer and closer as I triangulated the address of the apartment.

“This has to be a mistake,” I thought, but then under the address I looked at the quoted monthly price again: 750 R$. That was about $400. I hesitated when I crossed the favela border that began at the end of the paved road.

Any normal person would have turned back. Any normal American person, anyway, but something inside me spun to life. I was out of the gringo zone now, and while I was still in Brazil, a “dangerous” country, for the first time since my return trip I felt nervous. My heart was beating fast and my hands became even more sweaty than its normally moist state. Probability of death rising… rising. That feeling is like a drug to some men, and though I hadn’t yet looked at the apartment, it was obvious to me that I would accept it, regardless of what it was like. I was going to live in a favela, whereas five minutes earlier I would have scoffed at the idea.

My tour of the room was a mere formality that took no more than two minutes. It didn’t matter that the building was over sixty years old, that the front gate was stubborn to lock, that the kitchen was crawling with gigantic cockroaches, or that I’d share one bathroom with five other adults. Even though I wasn’t in one of those shacks perched up on the hills, I was so close that from my bedroom window I felt like I could reach out and touch them. I handed my first month’s rent over to the landlady and moved in a few days later for what would be a three-month stay.

CONTINUED: PART TWO

Roosh’s Argentina Compendium is a book that helps you sleep with Argentine women in Argentina without having to resort to prostitutes. It gives travel information and stories on eight popular cities while sharing the best advice and analysis on how to pick up the women. It is available in paperback and ebook.

Contents

The 64-page Compendium is organized into four chapters:

• Girls & Game
• Guides
• Stories
• Favorite Reader Comments

Here’s what you’ll find inside…

• The minimum number of approaches you need to do to get your Argentine flag
• The optimum dick vibe you should possess that doesn’t overdo it (with examples)
• Description of strange cultural features and effective countermeasures
• How to avoid the most common trap that an Argentine girl will lay on you
• What you need to know about eye contact
• The two principle strategies you should use to bang an Argentine girl that accounts for the length of your trip
• A simple line to transition to a love hotel
• Enlightening techniques from a local on how to bang his country’s women
• Whether you should start your approaches in English or Spanish
• The type of Argentine girl that is as easy to lay as a Colombian girl
• Ten key insights I learned upon my second trip to Argentina
• Why approaching ugly girls acts as a gateway to better poon
• The reason you can’t escalate on an Argentine girl like you can with a Western slut

The Compendium contains travel and logistical information…

• The logic (or illogic) or traveling to a country that is harder to get laid than in the U.S.
• Humorous analysis that compares Brazilian, Argentine, and American girls
• Detailed guides with day, nightlife, and cheap lodging recommendations for Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Rosario, Salta, Mendoza, Puerto Iguazu, El Calafate, and El Chalten
• Breakdown of street safety for the entire South American continent
• My favorite reader comments that offer additional insight and analysis on Argentine girls, cities, and culture

I also include a handful of more lengthy pieces…

• The shame I felt after my dealings with a Buenos Aires bag lady
• How visiting Argentina has forever desensitized me to beauty
• Blow-by-blow account of my time in Patagonia
• Review of the best sights in Buenos Aires

Two Argentine Game Tips

It’s usually obvious when an American girl likes you because she asks personal questions and starts touching. You can then escalate the encounter and go for a kiss. Argentine girls are a little more tricky. Even if she’s touching, you still have to restrain yourself and wait just a bit longer until she starts giving you a focused look or smiles when there’s nothing to smile about. This is important because if you bite too early, she will close up and you’ll get nothing.

Let me share another quick tip…

Argentine nightlife is pretty easy to figure out. You’ll find tons of bar and club listings on the internet or in guidebooks, but you should do your damndest to avoid those spots because the girls will be excruciatingly hard to lay. Even though Argentina is relatively poor, clubs with their own web sites attract the “rich” and white Argentine girls who are ten times harder to bang. If you want to meet girls who are easier, venture into the seedier bars where they’re are a little darker but no less “Argentine.” Chances are you’ll be the other gringo in the place.

The Compendium is filled with tons of tips like the two above, things that are not common sense to guys who are used to American or English girls. It’s intended for guys who don’t want to spend a lot of time struggling to get Argentine women in the sack and rather learn from a man who dedicated the bulk of his three months in Argentina to figuring out the women. This isn’t a “magic” book that claims you won’t have to put in effort and creativity, but I share so much potent insight and analysis that I guarantee your job at banging Argentines will be far easier.

Order Your Copy

The eBook edition of Roosh’s Argentine Compendium (containing both PDF and ePUB formats) costs only $4.99 and is processed by your choice of Google Checkout or Paypal. That’s about the same price as a large bottle of Argentine Quilmes beer. It comes with a 1 year money back guarantee (overkill, I know). If you don’t like it for whatever reason, email me at roosh (at) rooshv.com and I’ll refund your purchase no questions asked. Click the image below to order the ebook package…

The paperback edition costs $10.97 and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee from Amazon, and the Kindle edition comes with a 7-day money back guarantee. Click the image below to order the paperback or Kindle edition from Amazon…

Good luck in Argentina!