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  • “Its a long way to the top” – AC/DC

    If you wanna rock and roll.

  • Bottle

  • Scoutel: slept in the Amazon, woke up fluent in bug repellent

    Boat from Manaus to Belém on the Amazon River in Brazil

    This is another one of those ideas that I’ll never actually pursue, but I enjoy dreaming about it.

    A few years back I crashed at a scout headquarters carved out of Brazil’s Amazon. Concrete floor, hammock hooks, and a soundtrack of rain beating down like it had cash on the game. A couple of local scouts, barely taller than my backpack, offered me a plate of arroz e feijão and a crash course in tying a bowline one‑handed.

    I went to bed with a mosquito net for walls and the smell of camp‑stove coffee in my hair. By sunrise I could rig a tarp faster than I could scroll Instagram, even without cell coverage. That overnight stay felt less like lodgings and more like a life cheat code.

    That’s the magic I’m chasing with Scoutel. Scout halls as pop‑up hostels where travelers trade a few bucks and a chore for shelter plus a slice of practical wisdom. Learn a knot, patch a canoe, pick up “always leave it cleaner than you found it.” You leave stamped with low‑key bragging rights and maybe a tiny blister from the rope.

    Scouts get fresh stories to tell around the next campfire and a hand tidying the gear closet. Travelers get a bed that comes with lore instead of laminated checkout rules. Everyone walks away a little more prepared for whatever wild shows up next.

    It worked in the Amazon. It can work anywhere. Pack your sleeping bag and curiosity, let’s turn every scout hall into the world’s chillest hostel chain.

    Who is in?

  • Human nature, feral edition

    , , ,
    This was the place where I had a near-death experience similar to the one in Stand by Me.

    I am still breathing, which feels like decent breaking news. Chris McCandless is not. That detail hit me only a few months ago, even though he checked out over a decade back. His ride is chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s book and Sean Penn’s film Into the Wild. No spoilers here. Chris dies in the prologue too.

    I ran into the story while my head was already juggling big feelings. Folks love to label the guy without reading the footnotes. Online you will find every take from heroic dream‑chaser to flaky drifter with a loose screw. I am still standing in the aisle of that legendary bus, watching both camps argue, not sure which seat fits.

    Risk is a coin toss

    Chris tossed the coin. Heads gave him epiphanies, tails bit him hard. Smart dude, well read, still human. He reached a few conclusions, just not the ones he planned, and by then his clock had stopped.

    The catch in his dream was nonnegotiable. No modern crutches. Family, car, IDs, cash, even his birth name, all gone. Hard to call that right or wrong until you see where the breadcrumb trail ends. For him it was simply part of the blueprint.

    A quick detour

    Someone accused me of being obsessed with “wild” lately. Guilty. I ranted about it in another piece over here. Evolution breeds some odd backslides. People pretend they get themselves.

    So is wandering into unknown terrain with duct‑tape gear and half‑baked prep just a loud way to sign your exit papers? Maybe. Same odds as chain‑smoking, binge‑drinking, or commuting by bike in Brazil.

    Humans need rulebooks to keep from nuking the joint. Do not smoke. Do not drive drunk. Do not do drugs. Do not lie. Do not kill. Do not off yourself. We still rip the warning labels off, bend the jail bars, pitch the rulebook out the window, occasionally launch a toddler after it. Funny how we never jump ourselves.

    Chris was that rule‑breaker in high‑definition. He even warned everybody he might not be coming back. He did not. The tale did, though, and that might be the point.

    Trying to hack the world

    The guy questioned the script most people follow. Maybe he aimed to change the world, but “world” here was personal, bite‑sized. Everything and everyone inside his bubble. He just misjudged how much a single decision can rewrite that bubble.

    Nobody in his circle fully backed the plan. Makes sense. They wanted a cameo in his future and he was busy slashing pages from the script.

  • Wild Travelers: Hi Punkabbestia

    ,

    Adventurers, backpackers, stray humans with a map tattooed on the brain. Pack an extra layer. Not for rain. For a brand‑new prejudice wrapped in polite smiles. Turns out the so‑called “developed” crowd still runs on tribal wiring.

    Quick mental detour before the mosquitoes bite. We live in a world of many worlds. Every time progress tries to glue two together, three more pop up like stubborn weeds. I warned you it was a weird trip.

    The spark? A real trip, heavy on backpack and reflection. A thought loop kept buzzing:

    First-world people can be downright savage.
    Yet, we Latin Americans carry that label. Go figure.
    I guess I prefer being savage.

    In Europe, birthplace of youth hostels and questionable techno, I spotted a different flavor of bias. Sexual hang‑ups might be dying there, racial ones still kick, and now this new strain: Backpacker Phobia. Culture clash or philosophical crisis? Hard to say. Being a backpacker is either a lifestyle or a wearable manifesto.

    I felt the stares. People swerved like I carried dengue in my pack. Hostel roommates finally named it: Punkabbestia. Italian for gutter punk. Cute. They swore folks were feeling paura, good old fear, around me.

    So I watched closer. Fear stared back. Fear of anyone who refuses the dress code: lone wanderers, immigrants, buskers, punkabbestias. Anything with legs, a pack, and no clear destination.

    That fear is an export of the shiny world. I have seen the same jittery eyes in “modern” South American cities (Hello Curitiba 👋😊). A backpacker breaks every template. No shape. No flag. Just a walking question mark. Even we do not know what is hiding behind the zipper.

    Maybe they are right to worry.

    Get ready. This prejudice is sprouting new branches. Stand tall. Flash a grin. A smile still bends arrows mid‑flight.

    Plenty of people swear this is not real. Maybe they have never met those feral travelers from Planet Elsewhere. The ones stubborn enough to learn a world that spins backward and never really belonged to them in the first place.