On Saturday morning I checked out of my hotel in San Ignacio and split a ride to the airport in Belize City with a New Yorker I met on my cave-exploring trip!
Percy was an awesome guide. We paused at this huge bamboo grove to listen to the CAH-RAZY sounds of the howler monkeys in the distance barking / screaching to each other!
At some point during our night of drinking and storytelling, I told Fraggle & Bilbo about how my friends used to photobomb each other with our balls out. This of course instantly became their new favorite game. I'll spare you the hundreds of photos I have of these guys' balls.
...Bertl had gotten tattoed at the bar earlier in the evening. Bilbo said "It looks good, but I don't why he wanted a tattoo of my toilet mural!" He took us into the bathroom...
Later that evening, after some solid warm-up drinking at Reggae Guesthouse, Bilbo, Fraggle and their other friend, Jesus (orange shirt, obvs) took us down the street...
...make a new travel buddy! Like this sleepy little abuela who spent most of the bus ride bouncing her tiny snoozing noggin against my shoulder. Haha. Adorable.
...over to the hotel to meet up with Amanda! Amanda had been in Hong Kong and when she'd heard that we were going to be in the Philippines, we'd planned to meet up!
Then around 5pm, our taxi driver, who had hung out with us the whole time, announced he was ready to take us back into town. Get a load of this fucking guy! Egypt's most famous "land pilot."
We all piled into a pickup truck taxi driven by a man everyone was (sort of?) friends with who claimed he was famous all over Egypt for his spectacular driving. (And by "spectacular" he meant "so fast and recklessly that you almost poop in your pants).
One more flexdown for the road! I love how he's basically putting his muscle-bound elbow right into his friend's earhole. (PS - how much does Mohamed's friend in the middle look like a young Gregory Hines? Crazytown!).
...other friends! Hahaha. I forget this guy's name, but he was hilarious. He was like one of the few guys in the town who was super into bodybuilding and was excited to have someone puny like me to flex-down next to. This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it.
I ended up drinking and shooting the shit with these three until well past 3am. And on the off chance that anyone in Swedish Immigration ever reads this, I'm more than happy to testify on behalf of Mohamed and Maria's love! It's very real and they seem very happy together! ;)
I found a small table by myself, ordered a pizza and a big frosty mug of beer and was reading a book when these three characters came over and asked me if I wanted to join them! Who could say no to that? From L to R: My new friends Thomas, Maria and Mohamed!
Maria was from Sweden and approached me because she pegged me for a fellow Swede. She was a self-proclaimed "cougar" who came to Egypt on vacation after a terrible divorce, met Mohamed and fell in love and they'd been together for a couple years. They explained to me that they were working on getting Mohamed a visa so he could live in Sweden, but that everyone was skeptical about their love and thought it was some kind of scam to get a visa!
After breakfast, I met up with my new buddy Tiny to go scuba diving again. After her shaky first diving experience, Meredith opted out of diving and instead decided to explore Ocho Rios. (By the way, that thing that Tiny's holding in his right hand? Yeah, that's a motherfucking SPEARGUN! While I was exploring the reef, he was spearing up a bagful of fish for his family).
The guy who gave us the tour was the nicest man ever. Here he is showing us raw ackee, the national fruit. Ackee looks a lot like an orange pepper - except that it's filled with a poisonous gas (I swear to god I'm not making this up). When it gets ripe, the fruit splits open and the gas escapes making it safe for human consumption.
After dinner I went back to Vana Tom and was greeted by a supercute Russian girl at the desk, Christina. I started asking her about fun things to do in town that night and she told me that most bars and clubs were closed on Monday nights. I asked her if she wanted to head out and join me for a drink, but she told me she had to stay on duty at the desk until 2am. As I was getting ready to head back to my room she suddenly exclaimed, "Actually, you are cute boy! Do you want me to call my single friend Anna and she if she will take you out on the town?" I was like "Yeah, that'd be great!" Anna answered, but she was already in bed for the evening. Anna asked if I was free the next night and I explained that I was taking the ferry to Helsinki to meet two friends but that I'd be back in Tallinn with them later in the week. So with Anna's permission, Christina gave me Anna's number and it was decided that I'd call her when I was back in town and we'd go out.
I hung out with Christina at the desk shooting the shit for awhile and then decided to walk around outside (it had started snowing) to take some pics of the town at night in the snow.
Hey look it's Giorgio and Gianguido! The two guys visiting from Italy that Fatty and I met playing frisbee in the park! We invited them to the prom and they came! (The even got dressed up!) It's nice! I like!
Friday night. We headed back into Oranjestad. It was early evening when we arrived and the town was still dead. I decided to nap in the car while Scott set out to explore. We agreed that we'd meet up back over at the Paddock at 9pm. I got there to find he'd already made some new friends.
Here's us with Scott and Eric, two guys that we met that were originally from Boston. Eric, the guy in the JERK shirt, moved to Aruba for good and is a lawyer there.
So Scott got back from the bathroom and after being introduced to the group we all went out to Ramses car. We figured that he'd drive us around or something but he was like "Aruba was a Dutch colony - nobody here cares if you smoke pot."
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