About to go backpacking on a shoestring? I’ve got a nifty suggestion, however, if you’re a parent about to send your precious kiddiewink off on their gap year then look away now.
Sometimes there is literally nowhere else to stay when you get off a chicken bus in the dead of night than a knocking shop. I know, I too recoiled at the thought of being a woman rolling up to the front desk and ‘renting’ a room for the night, but it’s possible to skip the sexy time and stay if you can bear just a tiny whiff of fornication.
Stick with me on this one. Backpackers in Queensland apparently have taken this concept and really embraced it. Beach trips, wildlife tours, dive excursions to the Great Barrier Reef have been subbed out in favour of getting all hot and sweaty for cold hard cash. All without even leaving their rooms. Damn immigrants, taking Aussie hand jobs!
My brothel sleepover was in South America 2002. Venezuela had literally swept me off my feet. I’d been bowled over in a mugging scuffle when brazen thugs knocked down an old lady beside me in downtown Caracas in order to rip her valuable earrings clear out of her earlobes. I’d had enough of the world’s murder capital Caracas and decided to ratchet the fear factor up a notch by venturing into Columbia.
So it was that I found myself in oil town Maracaibo at some ungodly hour, turfed off the bus in a town square that gave me the faint impression I would probably not see dawn unless I found a safe place to stay toot suite.
And there it was, all shiny and enticing – a flock of ladies outside backlit by fluorescent lighting. I’d be on safe ground to assume that none of these women were making a bid for the next Miss Universe. Hell, many of them had shoehorned their excessive asses into jeans so tight I wondered how an exit strategy was factored into their fee.
I’d read that you could stay here as a backpacker and the host – we’ll call him Diego – gladly welcomed me into his establishment. Over the next eight hours I was to learn five valuable lessons on why staying here made sense and I’ll gladly share them with you.
Sunday is God’s Day
Everyone in South America is catholic. Everywhere you look there’s some unnecessarily oversized statue of Jesus or some ornate religious icon in the centre of town and churches – you could tour the continent and see nothing else. Buuut, some of the flock stray – into the arms of a scarlet woman – and Sunday seems to be church in the morning, Lusty Luciana after dark. However, as in retail – there’s always a week day lull. Turns out, Sunday is our quiet day ‘Americana’ – Diego informed me. “You lucky!” he said or he could have said ‘loco’ – either way I was in. Despite me showing him my New Zealand passport several times, he put the ‘Americana’ in Room #4, where only 17 other people had signed into on the same day. I followed my finger down the list of names and laughed as I signed in. “Yes Americana -very quiet day mmm?” Definitely loco.
Who needs an alarm?
Like an annoying snooze function on your phone, this tryst and transit hotel delivered up faint door knocking around the building every hour or so when a cleaning woman would let clientele know their time was up with “per favor”. I lay in bed(well I lay in my sleep sheet, inside my sleeping bag, inside red satin sheets) watching the murder de jour on Venezuelan TV listening to the clean up crew ready to go into battle with Bleach. So 6am, I gently removed myself from the bed trying not to come into contact with the sheets and was out of the establishment faster than you could say: “No mi gusta”.
El lingo
To be honest my South American trip was ill conceived – I’d tacked it on to a trip to see friends in Portugal and had three months to get from Caracas to Santiago in Chile. I did not speak Spanish but I had done an immersion Italian course in Perugia. The trouble with South American Spanish is that they speak it so fast and like a paranoid drug lord dealing to a traitor – tend to chop off bits. But here at the brothel, there were key words uttered over and over for me to absorb and they were loud, very loud so I had time to check my dictionary, blush and practice. I struggled to use the phrase ‘ride me like a crazy bull senora’ in conversation over the next few months but I did get a lot of practice number counting and working out various dinero prices to the nearest Bolivar.
Location, Location, Location
Diego’s gig was getting the bus clientele and he wasn’t exactly playing down his entrepreneurial spirit. So he’d positioned this place literally four or five paces from station. Come morning, I had merely to roll out of bed, sanitise everything in my backpack, swath myself in hand sanitiser and seconds later I was on my bus bound for the Colombian border. As a place to stay it really did put a new spin on the word handy.
Safe & Sound
Seriously, I’ve stayed in a load of places around the globe where I didn’t feel entirely safe, a chicken coup in Mexico, a poolside lounger in the Canary Islands or a bus for three days going in circles around Bosnia but this place was secure. This was mostly because of the security detail hanging around to protect the goods 24/7 – at least I presume they were la seguidad. Apart from the odd mistaken knock on my door with muffled Spanish which I’m sure wasn’t asking me if I wanted a turndown service or a mint for my pillow – I was left alone.
And after spending eight hours in a Venezuelan brothel, I boarded a Columbia bound bus – not entirely sure I hadn’t contracted an STD from the sheets but alive and in South American while travelling as a lone female – that’s a reason to celebrate.