It was the end of December, 2006, and I was halfway through an international rotational assignment with Pfizer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My brother and two of my best college buddies Russ and Keith had ponied up the dough to fly 5,500 miles to experience one of South America’s great cities and ring in the New Year in Latin American style. You see, Phil and I had done the Latin American New Year thing before, in Caracas, and had vowed to avoid being in the USA on future December 31sts if we could avoid it. After spending the New Year’s holiday in Punta Del Este with us in 2006, Russ and Keith were adamant that they were believers in our “not in the US for New Year” philosophy, and we all reaffirmed our pact to get across the border or die trying every year! Flash forward to New Year’s Eve this year and I found myself in Ethiopia where, because it celebrates its New Year in September, the 31st of December is just another night. So when the clock was approaching midnight on 12/31 this year, I was sitting alone under a bed net in a motel in the remote region of Gambella (on a Guinea Worm Eradication project trip) reflecting on New Years past, thinking of old friends, and, despite being in the middle of one of the poorest nations on Earth with no celebrations or fanfare to be had, congratulating myself on adhering to our pact to spend the holiday outside the US. My thoughts that night drifted back to some fond memories of the December 31sts gone by….
Background: In 2003, my brother and his three roommates were thinking about where to go for a New Year’s trip, and they made a bold commitment: they’d close their eyes, spin a globe, and wherever Phil’s finger landed, that’s where they’d go. It was a pivotal moment in Jordan history, because it’s the exact second in which a love affair with Latin America began. As fate would have it, the globe came to rest with Phil’s pointer finger touching the great nation of Venezuela, flights were booked, a debaucherous time was had by all, and they returned with tales of parties and beaches and beautiful women as far as the eye could see. My favorite story was when Phil described their last night in the country, walking into a beach bar in El Morro as the only “Yanquis” and, as Phil said, the reaction of the locals was as though Ben Affleck and Matt Damon had walked into a random bar in Southie. It was not surprising, then, that a year later on 12/31/04, Sean and Christopher Hawkins and the Jordan Brothers were sitting VIP in the hottest club in Caracas!
12/31/2004: Genesis. I can imagine you are wondering what is so great about Latin American New Year parties. My first hint that they did things differently in the “other” America was when we hurried into the club in Caracas at 11PM (sure we were way late), and found the club empty save for some staff still setting up the floor. We couldn’t understand what was going on, and frankly it looked like they couldn’t understand what the hell we were doing there so early. It wasn’t until 2AM that people started rolling in, and by 3AM the place was jumping. We later learned that New Year’s Eve is spent with family in South America, usually consisting of a huge feast, a countdown to midnight after which the women crowd together and cry their eyes out holding photos of all the family members who are no longer with them and didn’t make it to the new year. After a good cry, they put the photos down and celebrate the fact that those in the room actually DID make it to see the New Year, and once they’ve properly toasted to their luck and health and a good year ahead, the youngsters shower and change and head for the clubs sometime after 2AM. And so it was that Phil, Sean, Christopher and I found ourselves as the only Yanquis (what they call US people there) in a sea of Venezuelans (including Hugo Chavez’ redheaded son), doing our best to keep up with the salsa, merengue, bachata, and reggaeton dancing. There are too many memories to list but the highlights were undoubtedly:
– Phil and I going up to two girls to hit on them and finding out that the brunette (Steve’s selection) was 37 and Phil was (stress past tense here) hitting on her (blond) 17-year-old daughter.
– Sean paying the DJ some obscene amount of bolivares to hijack the music playlist, resulting in a near riot as the DJ complied with King Sean’s demand of not wanting to hear anything but 50 Cent for an hour. The four of us were the only ones dancing in that 60-minute window.
– Getting sunburned through the open roof at the club at 9AM as the subtropical sun rose overhead…while the party was still raging.
Clearly, beginning in 2004, all future New Years would have a hard time living up to the Gold Standard.
12/31/2005: The New Year that never happened. After a boring, frigid night in Boston not getting into any bars and exacerbated by Phil’s infamous “strikeout” and subsequent 2AM walk through the combat zone back to his apartment, we decided to strike this from all history books. Outside of a $275 delivery bill from Chinatown at 3AM, there is nothing memorable about the night. In fact, I’m only referencing the event to preserve Phil’s quote months later when he said, “It’s a damn shame they cancelled New Year last year”. On 1/1/06, we swore quietly over pancakes at IHOP to never spend another New Year’s Eve in the USA.
12/31/2006: The aforementioned boys trip to Punta Del Este, Uruguay. For those unfamiliar with Punta, it’s known as South America’s playground, with people from all over Europe and South America descending for the New Year holiday and more paparazzi than the retinue that follows Paris Hilton. No matter who you are, you can’t help feeling ugly when you step onto the beach and see toned bodies and bikinis in every direction. Phil and I were getting footage for our Jordan Brothers production, so we had an HD video camera, tripod, microphones, and a spotlight brighter than the surface of the sun. After our dinner and a lot of drinks at the Moby Dick restaurant (pronounced “mobileek” for some reason there), we “took it to the streets” to interact with the crowd for several hours under the fireworks and discovered that the light and the camera was to females as a flame is to insects, causing Keith to develop his now famous “like moths to a flame” approach (I think he carries around a fake camera and LED light everywhere he goes now). Again, the highlights (and a lowlight):
– Taking the “Buquebus” ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo for three hours and then closing our eyes for the psychotic bus ride to Punta. “Jordan, this guy’s going for a three-car pass!”
– The water heater in the kitchen springing a major leak, flooding the floor of our apartment and, over five days, having no one fix it despite constant calling.
– Paying for a seven day rental, telling the agent we would probably stay for five days, then the owner showing up for his vacation and demanding we leave because we said we would only be staying five days. We had fun reminding the realtor that if you pay for a week, you get a week, despite her trying to tell us we needed to vacate.
– The coining of the term “The Rape Stare”. Russ, after 14 hours of drinking, was by daybreak speaking out of the side of his mouth and starting to get into angry arguments with anyone within earshot. When Phil caught Russ angrily looking at him for no reason, he told him, “Russ, don’t EVER look at me like that. EVER.” (Russ, angrily) “Like what?” (Phil, calmly) “You’re giving me the rape stare.” (Russ, angrier, incredulous) “This is not ‘the rape stare’. I’m just -” (Phil, interrupting) “Russ, the only time people see a stare like that is when they’re about to be violently and forceably raped. I’m calling you out on it”. (Russ trying to stay mad but realizing Phil is right, devolving into hysterical laughter).
– About 2 hours after “the rape stare” incident, Russ and Keith left the bar to go home, forgetting we had the keys and thus breaking into our rental. When Phil and I got home, we found our room trashed, with the bunk bed mattresses on the floor and our clothes strewn everywhere. Keith apologized saying Russ was on an angry tirade and he couldn’t talk any sense into him. Two minutes later after we had put the beds back together, Russ was in our faces yelling at us, telling us he had “looked EVERYWHERE” for Phil and me and that we “ABANDONED” them. When we reminded him that we were in the next room dancing with two girls and that we were the only four people left in the bar, and had he poked his head into the room he would have seen us, and that we were calling him out again, he laughed hysterically, turned around, and threw our mattresses down again. The next afternoon (morning to us since we went to bed at 10AM) he was genuinely curious why the mattresses were on the floor. Priceless.
– Lowlight – taking the Buquebus back to Buenos Aires, getting two taxis, then realizing one of them had driven off with Phil’s new Digital SLR setup and Russ’ new digital Elph.
– Bonus highlight – Driving on “The Road to Tandil” later that week, renting a car and heading five hours to Tandil, Argentina for a couple of days of ATVing and horseback riding. We discovered Keith had a legitimate phobia of horses, but we somehow cajoled him (using every tactic known to mankind…Phil reminding him that a) every little girl wants a pony, so how can he be scared of horses?, b) the phrase “getting back on the horse” implies you had the cahones to at least have been on a horse once, c) the gaucho guide’s three-year-old son was on his own horse at that very moment in front of us and, the clincher d) Phil was going to wait until Keith was making progress with a girl at the bar later that night, walk up, and tell her in Spanish that Keith was afraid of horses) into going on a four-hour trail ride into the Pampas that ended up being, as he stated during the “fogon” (campfire) and a round of mate, the greatest day of his life.
By the end of the trip, Russ and Keith understood our “ex-US” philosophy for December 31sts, leading to…
12/31/2007: It Continues North of the Border. We hadn’t gotten our acts together and, as Christmas approached, I was getting desperate for a New Year’s plan. At the time I had moved back from Argentina and was living back in my shithole-white-elephant-of-a-fraudulently-constructed condo in Connecticut, it was Zero Kelvin outside, and I was fresh out of ideas. Proving that desperation sometimes breeds miracles, I managed to put together a trip to Montreal and Mont Tremblant and, having infected Russ and Keith with the “not in America” NYE bug the year before, found the three of us crossing the Canadian border in my Xterra on the 28th of December. While it wasn’t Latin America, the people of Montreal know how to party, and we got to experience some epic snowboarding on Mont Tremblant and even a day of ice climbing for me and Russ (see below). The highlights:
– During our ice climbing escapade, Russ finally snapped and asked what the others were laughing about in French. To our surprise, they told us they were trying to figure out which one of us was the “man” in our relationship! All I could do was ask them how to say “I could do better” in French.
– Meeting two great girls from Alberta and hanging out with them for a few nights, even ringing in New Years at Club Rouge together. Seeing the bartender get so drunk she could hardly stand up – and paying two bills so she would give me my credit card back – was the lowlight!
– Being abandoned by Russ and Keith (while waiting an hour to get my card back after paying two bills) at 4AM, wandering the streets in the snow and below-zero weather, ordering a large meat lovers pizza, taking a taxi back to the room, eating the entire pizza by myself, and waking up in the middle of the night sitting in a hotel chair with pizza crusts all over me.
– Keith inventing the term “Hamstering”, when he recounted waking up in the middle of the night with his head smashed into the mattress, being too catatonic to pick up his head, grabbing a bottle of water and putting it up to his mouth while slurping and sucking in like a hamster drinking water from a feeder. Priceless.
– Me learning that data roaming charges on an iPhone will kill you. Luckily, AT&T forgave my $400 bill….
12/31/2008: Waterworld. With a baby on the way, Pete decided now was the time to do his once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip on a mothership off the Pacific Coast of Panama. With my dad and Phil onboard, we all headed to Central America for an excursion that is difficult to put into words. For about a week, our home was a 120-foot retrofitted Norwegian icebreaker vessel. Every day, we’d head out on 28-foot fishing boats to chase dorado, sailfish, amberjack and marlin and come back around sunset for a shower, drinks and dinner on the top deck. Every night we anchored in a different location, usually in a cove off a remote island, and it seemed like the views each night were better than the last. With no connection to the outside world, the four of us rang in the New Year looking forward to a big year ahead, which kick off the trip highlights:
– Pete’s son (Trevor) joining us in April
– Phil announced he was proposing to Anne, his girlfriend, in April as well (they’re now happily married!)
– Barry and Steve (with some help) catching a 450-lb blue marlin and 450-lb black marlin, respectively. Barry brought new meaning to “the old man and the sea”.
– Getting to know the Red Devils of Panama.
It wasn’t a crazy year, but it was a memorable one, and another positive experience outside the US on the 31st of December!
12/31/2009: San Diaaaago. After bringing Lorena to Boston to meet the family in what became one of my most memorable weeks in my home town, we decided to take it easy for New Year and I finally relented on my “not in the USA” requirement for once. With our best friends there, we hung with the Foothill Blvd crew in a semi-formal event that they generously turned into a fundraiser for my brother’s charity school in the Dominican Republic. While it was a tame night, it was fun, and was highlighted with a ludicrous two-mile downhill bike ride home. The highlight was undoubtedly being awakened by the same crew at 9AM and walking to the beach to have a breakfast of bloody mary cocktails at Lahaina’s bar.
12/31/2010. In the African bush. This year, I had to leave Lorena in Addis as I traveled to the region of Gambella, one of the poorest areas of Ethiopia that borders the Sudan. With Ethiopia following a different calendar, there were no celebrations or countdowns, and without internet or phone coverage there was no way to wish my friends back home a happy new year. The trip, however, was worth it, and seeing the conditions in which many millions of people live here in Ethiopia and seeing the horrible neglected tropical diseases that threaten them (malaria, trachoma, onchocerciasis, dracunculiasis, lymphatic filariasis, to name a few), it brought home to me how lucky I am to be seeing 2011 with my own two eyes and how incredibly fortunate I am to know that I’m heading back to the greatest nation on Earth. Thank God for that. Highlights:
– Seeing firsthand that people in some areas of the world – often by choice – still drink water from ponds that look like the missing link is going to spring from them.
– Taking a two day drive through some of the more spectacular mountain and rainforest scenery I’ve ever seen.
– Lowlight – throwing up for the first time in 16 years after getting a water/food-borne bacterial infection on 1/2/11. It was bad enough that I thought to myself that if I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness, I can think back to that night on the floor of the bathroom and take solace knowing I’ll never have to go through that again. But I kept my sense of humor, asking Lorena to check the Patriots score during the worst of the ralphing!
Looking back, it’s hard to believe really that I’ve spent five of the past seven December 31sts outside of the US. That’s a 71% success rate, so not too shabby! You might ask, what has all of it taught me? Basically, that there are a lot of places out there – Latin American and Montreal at the least – that know how to ring in the new year a whole lot better than we do. But 12/31 is only one day, and for the other 364, there’s no place I’d rather be than the USA.
Happy New Year!
SJ
P.S. In case you are wondering, on 12/31/11, if all goes as planned, I’ll be with Lorena, Phil and Anne someplace deep in the wilds of Patagonia….
I Never Could Sit Still 