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

by Neil Skywalker

  There were quite a few Argentineans around since New Zealand is a popular place for the middle-class tourists to go. What I should have done was practice my barely-existent Spanish with them a bit.

  I booked a package tour from one of the famous bus lines there. They were supposed to be party buses, but the vibe wasn’t really there. The bus went up north and we first stopped in Pahia, the Bay of Islands as it’s also called. I stayed in another hostel and it was fun there. I was playing cards/drinking games with a small group of people. A day later I went for a skydive. It was time to man up again and face some fears, so I thought I’d give it a try. The American instructor named Dean was a really cool guy. He looked a bit like James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica.

  We got into the small airplane and it was a bumpy ride to gain height. It was quite windy that day and the small propeller plane was shaking from side to side. It was a tandem skydive, and I wasn’t scared at all until Dean opened the door and we shuffled towards the exit. I looked down and at that moment I got a bit nervous. It was too late: we jumped.

  The first thing that surprised me was the enormous air pressure. It was like getting hit in the face by air. The freefall lasted about a minute, since it was a 12,000-foot jump. The view was amazing: you could see all the little islands, the forests and the fields. Still, one minute of freefall was more than enough for me and I was a bit worried that I was going to be sick. I have a weak stomach for everything that involves spinning around quickly. The parachute opened and Dean started doing tricks while yelling some woohooos and wahaaaas. It was fun but I was glad when we landed and took a few more pictures. The adrenaline was still pumping through my veins when we got back to Pahia. I was proud to have ticked another thing of my list. Skydive… Check!

  The tour I’d booked consisted of open tickets where you could hop on and off a daily bus whenever you pleased. I was short on time so I took the bus even further up north and we stopped for several interesting things along the way. We exited the bus at the most northern point of New Zealand and went to try something called Dune riding. How it works is that you take half a surfboard and slide down the enormous sand dunes with your belly on the board, using your legs to brake a bit. After a quick instruction we all got our board and hurried up the dune. Running up a sand dune is not easy and about halfway there I heard something that only happens in my travelling nightmares. A sound I was scared to death off. Krk! The sound of my lower back almost breaking in half.

  I almost fell to my knees in pain and didn’t know what to do; in my mind I was even starting to panic a bit. People were shouting out “Come on Neil, let’s go!” I pulled myself together but already knew this was going to be some serious badass pain. Come on, man up! I told myself. Maybe it isn’t so bad. I stood there like a statue for half a minute while the others had already started going down the dune and having fun. I pulled myself together and painfully walked to the top. Sometimes you know when you’re being a stupid idiot and go along with it anyway. This was one of those moments. I “surfed” down the dune and hit a few bumps, which just made it worse. When I was down I could barely get back on my feet, but a few people were watching me and I gathered some strength. I got back on the bus and sat down. Others were still having fun but I was cramping up.

  We still had to ride back, which took four hours with a lot of photographing stops. I was in some serious pain during this ride and the ibroprufen I got from others didn’t help anything. Once I got back to the hostel, I limped over to the convenience store, bought four bags of chips and some bottles of water. I lay down on my bed, took two 10mg valium pills I’d bought in Cambodia without a prescription, and slept for hours. Every time I woke up, I ate something, took another valium and dozed off. I had always had back problems when I was younger and even had a small hernia when I was working in construction. Back then, I had to walk around in a corset for two months and could barely take a dump without being in pain. I’d had back problems in the Philippines too and at one point needed a massage to loosen up before I could even think of sex. I laughed it off as luxury problems since it was caused by the banging of young girls.

  Surprisingly, this time my back problems weren’t as bad as in my younger years, but it scared the hell out of me all the same.

  What would have happened if my back had gone the same way as before? Barely being able to walk, in a country where nobody cares for you and your homeland is a twenty-four hour flight away? Especially since I already had a non-refundable ticket to Argentina.

  The pain eased a bit after a while and I went out with some Irish girls to a local disco, but I still had to be really careful and didn’t even try to pick up some local girls there who definitely looked interested in me. Anyway to make a long story short, nothing happened that night except for lots of drinking and valium-taking afterwards. I went back to Auckland the day after.

  New Zealand – Back to Auckland

  I went to the Nomads hostel, which turned out to be a lot more fun than the first one I’d been to. It had its own bar and I even met up with Greg, the American guy I’d met in the guesthouse in Puerto Princessa a whole seven months earlier. He’s a fanatic skydiver and had done hundreds of jumps. We had a beer and talked about our trips and laughed about the crazy sandman in Puerto Princessa.

  Later that week I hung out with two Swedish girls in the hostel. We were getting drunk off the cans of beer we smuggled into the hostels and playing cards in the dorm. The next day I went with them to an island nearby and the three of us spent a day on the beach together. Neither was a stunner and I had a hard time choosing one. At night we went out together and I decided to focus on the short one, but she wasn’t interested in me. Drunk as I was, I took aim at the other girl, but though she was interested at first she told me she didn’t want to be second choice or even third choice. I remember her saying something about being third choice, and I think there must have been yet another Scandinavian girl who I went after first, before the short one.

  There was a lot of drinking that night, so my memory fails. I do remember that I still convinced the Swedish girl about something because we ended up in bed together, but she was still a bit pissed with me so we didn’t have sex. It was in her dorm bed anyway. She had some ugly tattoos, and I don’t even feel bad about not scoring a flag with her. It was surprising I got that far considering the lousy state I was in and my depressing moods about picking up girls. I needed a change of scenery, and quick.

  I had posted a message about a meet up on a pick-up artist forum, and one guy replied to me. We met up a few times and we went out together. We were both having major bouts of approach anxiety. Australia had ruined all my build-up confidence and it wasn’t much better in New Zealand either. We had a couple of small successes with talking to a few “sets”, as it’s called in pick-up terms, but got nowhere with “escalating towards the lay”. I slept in a dorm and security was too strict to smuggle in any girls. I approached some girls in the clubs and I saw him run after a girl in the streets and approach her there.

  Though we didn’t score any successes we did have some fun, and sided with a wingman I even felt a spark of the dark force coming back to me. But it wasn’t enough to get me out of my depressing state.

  Once a year, usually around Christmastime, I watch all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings saga. I love movies like that and used to watch them all in one day, locking myself up in my home cinema room with some bottles of water and five bags of chips. A lot of the movies was shot in New Zealand and I wanted to see the real locations. There are some tours but I didn’t want to see fake stuff at a really high price.

  I planned a trip from Auckland to Turangi, a small place in the middle of the northern island next to a massive nature park. I booked a hostel online and got on the bus.

  You’ll meet the most interesting people of walks of life when taking buses around the world, although you need a thick skin if you’re a realist and skeptic like me. I’ve met too many naïve tree huggers wh
o were all for the environment but apparently didn’t mind that their iPhone was built by 15-year-old Chinese girls in horrible near-slavery conditions. Follow your principles all the way through or accept the fact that the world revolves on greed and other basic principles imbedded in our genes during caveman times that will stay in our genes forever. People want green energy but seem to forget that an island like Sumatra with beautiful rainforests full of irreplaceable wildlife was 2/3 deforested because of the high demand for “green” palm oil.

  The hostel in Turangi looked more like a campsite, with lots of rooms and bungalows. I was the only resident at the time and the friendly and helpful lady working there gave me a room for myself instead of an eight-bed dorm room. I asked about the Tongariro Alpine crossing and she arranged for me to get picked up the next morning. At a quarter to five in the morning a minivan picked me up along with some other people. Around seven o’clock we arrived at the start and it was still dark.

  The Tongariro Alpine crossing is 19.4 kilometers long, and I can’t remember a day in my life before then when I’d walked anything even close to that distance, let alone in the mountains and in the horrible shape I was in. I knew it was going to be hell that day, but I was motivated to push myself.

  My back was still sensitive but not painful anymore. The first six kilometers I walked with a Swiss girl whose name I’ve forgotten. The sunrise amongst the misty mountains was amazing. We arrived at the spot where the climb to Mount Ngauruhoe started, the volcanic mountain used as a model of Mount Doom, the mountain where our little hobbit friend had to toss the ring in to destroy the evil powers of Sauron. The Swiss girl looked at the mountain and said she was already too tired to climb it. I tried to convince her but she chickened out. Now I had to climb it myself. There weren’t many other climbers around, just a few small groups of friends and some couples climbing together. I literally told the Swiss girl that I would climb Mount Doom or die trying.

  At 2200 meters, the mountain isn’t even that high, but the sides are nearly sixty degrees steep and the loose volcanic ash makes every step a chore. There isn’t really a path up and you have to climb over some parts made of rock, and sometimes use your arms as well. I kept thinking about my sister, who had gone through a rough period with her health and is known for her toughness. She used to travel a lot as well and is an even bigger fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy than I am.

  After two hours of climbing I reached the top. It was covered in clouds and despite all the exercise I was soon feeling pretty cold since I was only wearing shorts and sneakers. I was really proud of myself and thought about how proud my sister would have been and how much she would give to be there with me.

  At this point my legs were already tired and I would have called it a day if possible, but I still had thirteen kilometers more to walk. I crossed two more mountains which were also steep climbs, only resting a bit to eat and then moving on. The mountains were very colorful and the way the sun lit up the different sides of the mountains was amazing. There was a whole palette of colors ranging from dark red to pitch black.

  Suddenly the smell of rotten eggs hit my nose and when I went over yet another mountain I saw the deep blue sulphur lakes in front of me. It smells terrible but they are truly stunning when viewed upon from the top of a hill. After taking some photos I kept walking. My legs felt like rubber already. I reached a mountain cabin and resting point.

  I had been continuously walking and climbing for nearly seven hours. Well, I was in the worst shape of my life, having smoked and drank a lot in the months before and living only on junk food or street food. Some people passed me by a few times but they were at least ten years younger than me and who knows how fit they were. I met a couple there who had hiked all over the world and even they said it was hard to do in seven hours.

  The last minivan left at four-thirty and it was already three o’clock. I had to keep on walking and it was still about six kilometers. Luckily it was mostly downhill on a nice paved road now, it wasn’t really climbing anymore, but I’d already climbed so much while being so unprepared that my legs were really starting to go. The last hour of walking was mostly through a forest with lots of tree roots and small steps along the way and I was dead tired.

  My whole life I’d never had knee problems, not even when I worked as a tiler and sat on my knees all day, but now it felt like people were sticking hot needles in them. Luckily I was smart enough to have brought lots of food and some candy with me so I could keep my energy going. I learned to do this the hard way when climbing Mount Fuji in Japan and in Nepal, where I almost had a heart attack due to an extremely low blood sugar level after being sick for weeks there. I remember eating some chocolate afterwards and feeling like new in just a couple of minutes.

  My back was hurting more and more with every step I took and I nearly passed out towards the end. I had to keep myself going by listening to inspiring music on my phone like the Eye of the Tiger song and the Rocky tune I use as my alarm clock ring to get a motivating start to the day. I thought of my family and it seemed like there was no end to this hellish ordeal. I thought about one of my favorite books by Stephen King, The Long Walk (written under pseudonym Richard Bachman), about a seven-hundred kilometer life or death walk in a future fascist America. It’s the first book I’m going to read again as soon as I finish this book and I recommend others to do so also.

  Coughing my lungs out and more dead than alive, I finally made it to the rendezvous point. The last minivans were about to leave and I hopped on one. All the other climbers complained about how hard it was to do everything in one day. Some had only done the official 19.4km mountain walk and not also climbed Mount Doom. I took off my shoes and longed for a hot shower. I had walked and climbed for twenty kilometers and had only rested maybe five times five minutes. By the time we were back in town my legs started cramping up and I stumbled into the massive supermarket and bought a liter bottle of Steinlager beer and four bags of that delicious chips they sold in New Zealand. I took a hot shower and locked myself up in my room with my beer and groceries, knocked down a couple of valiums and slept a long time.

  A few days later I went back to Auckland and spent a couple of nights there in a hostel, desperately trying to learn some Latin Spanish on my laptop before I left to yet another fascinating continent: South America.

  Chapter Five – South America

  Argentina – Buenos Aires

  The flight to Argentina took twelve hours and I had flown back in time. The route description to the hostel I had written on my phone sucked; as soon as I got off at the metro stop close to the hostel I was lost, and it was my first chance to speak some Spanish. “Donde esta calle…?” I asked, and surprisingly it worked. I found the hostel, which was kind of a rock hostel. It was my second choice: my first had been the Millhouse hostel. I had heard the wildest stories about it. Some described it as total debauchery with sex everywhere. Others were very mild about the place. Either way, I figured it was one place where I’d have the chance to get my mojo back and score some flags. Well, unfortunately that hostel was already all booked up when I looked online even two weeks before. I guess it’s a popular place.

  The one I did get into was a hostel in the Palermo neighborhood, an area where all the bars and clubs were. I took a dorm room and went out alone the first night. I had to see for myself what all this talk about Palermo was about.

  I left the hostel around eleven and started walking, and kept walking because I couldn’t find any bars with people who were out drinking. I saw a lot of restaurants that looked like bars but people were still sitting in big groups and eating at tables. How the hell could I meet a girl in a place like this if they were all sitting down?

  I kept walking and walked into a dark street with no-one around except a large group of teenagers and I was walking towards them. They were sitting there smoking and drinking and there were at least fifteen of them. They had seen me too and stopped talking and just looked at me. I’m no pussy but this scare
d me a bit. I had met an Argentinean guy on the plane from New Zealand to Argentina and he had told me some scary stories about kids walking around with guns at night. I thought he acted like a pussy at that time and didn’t really pay much attention to it. Now I was wondering if he was right. What could I do? If I stopped and turned around they would know I was worried about it and maybe had valuables to hide. It seemed best to Man Up™ and just keep walking like I always did in situations like this. I kept walking straight at them, looked over to them, stopped and lit up a cigarette and walked past them with the meanest cigarette smoking face I had, looking a few of them in the eyes. I heard them say something with gringo and laugh but they didn’t do anything. I’m not saying I scared them because they could easily have robbed me blind and beat me to death that night and no one would even see. But by walking straight at them with my chest out and looking at them while taking a few deep puffs of my cigarette with a mean face and giving them a small head nod, I had probably gained their respect for showing no fear whatsoever. Spitting on the street while keeping an eye on them is also making a manly “I don’t give a shit” impression. Just don’t do that right in front of them. I’m not saying that these techniques will always keep you out of trouble but it worked for me on several occasions in Russia, South East Asia, and now South America too.

  I never did find a good bar to go to that night and walked back to the hostel. There they told me that people in Buenos Aires don’t go out before two at night and that I probably past a lot of bars that would be booming later that night. I stayed in, lazy from walking at least thirty blocks that night.

  The following night was a Saturday night and I met some people in the hostel bar. Most were just regular backpackers but there was also a couple from Australia. She was actually from New Zealand and since I just came from there it was easy to start a conversation. The guy was a straight-up alpha natural. Good looks, muscular build and naturally charming. The girl was freaking hot, not to put too fine a point on it. The guy told me he got lots of sex when he worked on surf beaches all over Australia. He didn’t seem like a bullshitting type of guy to me and it was the first time I was actually a bit jealous of a guy. He was obviously naturally popular with girls and traveled around the world with a truly hot girl at his side. It strengthened own goals.