We´re back, and rolling

The ´house is still in-tact, so full on my first day back that we didn´t have enough beds for all the reservations... nice job, Freddy! That´s exactly the kind of problem I was hoping for!

In my time away, newly-revealed information suggests that this beat-up jalopy of a building will still be standing here for a long while to come. So I´m not re-adjusting to life-as-I-knew-it so much as we are all re-focusing on the future-as-it-now-looks. More questions than answers on how to go about that, but all in good time. You can bask for now in the peace-of-mind that Piratas will once again be doing New Year´s and Carnaval. Reserve while you still can!

Along with the more assured longterm outlook, this week feels like the right time to overhaul the Rio Hostel Project blogging. Much as I´ve enjoyed recounting my experiences here, there are obvious limitations in storytelling when you´re always hearing the tales from my perspective, in my words. The best thing about this place is the collision of worldviews, collision of personalities, collision of traveling-types. And I have long been bothered by my inability to accurately & honestly communicate those to you.

So I got me a video camera, and a snazzy laptop with AVID editing software. My goal, beginning this Friday, is to post weekly video summaries that better capture life here at #165. Don´t expect much from the early offerings (I´ve got a lot to learn-by-doing), but as the process improves I hope to be far less of a narrator or commentator and more of just a proctor, allowing the long-termers and short-termers and vagabonds and tramps and gypsies and accompanying characters to speak for themselves. The topic will remain the same: How and why people travel, and the concept of travel in a global community. The struggle to graduate from voyeur to participant.

Be patient with my primitive tech-savvy, and try to focus on the content. Any story about a guesthouse, afterall, oughta be told by the guests.