Current Date: Feb. 16, 2002 (2:42 p.m.)
Location: Sao Paulo hostel
Subject: An amazing day and night in Buzios

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2002
The next day, the lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll. I woke up around 1:30…Tony was still sleeping. I wrote in my journal for a bit and decided to go do some quick e-mail. When I got back at about 2:30, Tony was STILL sleeping so I woke him up. We were both pretty beat. We recapped our nights and I told him the story about the girl from Sao Paulo. He had a great story about these girls he met and hung out with all night…although they were like 16. It was funny because we finally got a comment from someone about the age discrepancy of the couples we were seeing. This girl told Tony, “I know that in the US it is not common to see and older man with a really young girl, but here it is totally acceptable.” I guess we weren’t crazy after all, but still, I’m not gonna go out and try to hook up with some 16 year old girl. It was disturbing enough to see it happening. Not that it surprised me the way the young girls look down here. There must be something in the water.
Anyway, we decided to stay in Buzios another day instead of taking off right then. Tony was just as much in love with Buzios as I was. I’m so glad we decided go there. I have to say, pound for pound, it was better than Rio. Better atmosphere, better people, and everything centralized. Just one man’s opinion.
Before going to grab some food, we stopped by the room of the girls from Sao Paulo to try to get plans for going out that night. We were hoping we could dump the Israeli guys this time if possible but we knew it would be tough. Oh well…
So we headed out for a meal that day and I would say, for the first time ever on a trip, I went back to the same restaurant to eat. Normally, I am of the opinion that when traveling, you must experience as much of a place as possible. Going to the same restaurant/bar twice is a big no-no...but Chez Milou was such a perfect place to eat and have a couple beers we decided to make an exception. That was the day that I realized that I really had not dropped very far below my “drunk baseline” for most of the trip. Let me explain that one. It’s that phenomenon where you just never really reach the point of being totally sober. One of those situations where the next day, you have a beer, and after one, you’re already drunk again. You’re just always one drink away from being drunk again. I think the first time I ever learned about the “drunk baseline” was back at ND on football Satrudays. I’d be bombed before the game…then jump up and down and go nuts for 4 hours…go to the dining hall and eat, and go back to the dorm to drink some more…one drink in and you’re right back where you were at noon that day. Amazing.
Anyway, we had a few beers and decided to walk down to the peer and try to meet some girls as they were coming off the noon boat tour. Eventually we ended up at this little bar right next to the peer, having a few more drinks. It was a pretty fun day actually. We ended up talking to the waitress and making plans to go out with her and her friends that night after she got off work.
After spending the whole afternoon and early evening drinking in the Centro, we headed back to the hostel to nap/get ready for going out. The Sao Paulo girls came by and said they were going to go to “Zapata” again but the others were also still going. We figured, maybe we’d go there but it certainly wasn’t high on our priority list. We had a few drinks in the room and I was pretty much trashed. Right around then, we realized we hadn’t really eaten since about 8 hours prior to that at Chez Milou, so we decided to go get some food and see what we could get into that night.
At dinner, we had these STRONG ass Cuba Libres (rum and coke) that pretty much put me over the edge. Much of what occurred from that point on was constructed from snapshots from my memory and what Tony told me the next day:
We hit the scene over at Chez Milou again for awhile and then we ended up heading for Zapata. We were there for some indeterminate amount of time, never saw the girls from Sao Paulo, and then we headed back to the bar near the peer where we had hung out most of the day. We didn’t find our waitress so then we ended up walking the streets for a bit. We went BACK to Chez Milou again and we were talking to this waitress and her (MILF) Mom for awhile. Then for some reason we went BACK to Zapata after they stopped letting people in. I was completely annihilated and let me just tell you, it wasn’t that easy to maintain my balance on those cobblestone roads. Anyway, somehow, Tony talked our way back into the club. We danced for awhile and ended up hooking up with these two local girls (who might have been sisters). We stumbled back to their car around 7:00a.m. and I was done for. Tony decided to stay but I headed back to the hostel, drunk and tired…but pretty happy. It had been a hell of a way to spend our last night in Buzios. It wasn’t until about the time I was dozing off in the hostel that I realized that I had just left Tony alone with these two girls who could have been taking him ANYWHERE. Pretty stupid and dangerous move. But, as he can tell you, It all worked out JUST FINE!!!!!

AC