I'm about to go on a 3 month backpacking trip through south america... tips?

[Justin]

So, I'm going to go on a 3 month backpacking trip in south america through various countries mainly through Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Chile and Bolivia. I figure this is a prime opportunity to meet lots of girls.

This is my first real travel experience that's not in a conservative asian country (Taiwan) and wonder if anyone have any tips on finding girls to hook up with? Whether it be locals or fellow backpackers.

I read somewhere gringos (white americans) are treated differently. I'm Chinese, if that matters.

[Leo]

Do you speak spanish? Because in South America few people speak english fluently. In my country we see chinese people like a very closed culture that don't mix with other people, to be honest we don't pay a lot of attention to them.

[Mark]

Leo's right, you need to pick up at least a little Spanish if you want a chance with the local girls. Every once in a while you'll meet one that speaks decent English, but it's definitely not common. And I agree with him that being Asian is probably neutral. There are very few Asians down there, and I've never heard people down there make any comments positive or negative about them.

Also, stay smart. There are prostitutes in many of those countries. Nothing like the classic experience of "this girl is SO into me!" turning into, "Wait, why did she just ask for $100?" I've seen it happen unfortunately. If something seems too good to be true, then there's a fair chance that it is.

Aside from that, have fun. You're going to have a blast. And for what it's worth, hooking up with backpacking girls in hostels is stupid easy.

[Justin]

I don't know much spanish. Just Unos, dos, tres.

what's a good way to learn about a month before my trip?

[Leo]

Justin Wrote:I don't know much spanish. Just Unos, dos, tres.

what's a good way to learn about a month before my trip?

Magic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man, watch soap operas in spanish with subtitles and joined a Meetup group that practices spanish but nobody learns another language in 1 month, nobody. Spanish is a lot more similar among Argentina, Chile and Uruguay and more similar between Peru and Bolivia. I mean, it's the same spanish but with certain variations among the countries. And be aware, Peruvians, Bolivians and Chileans look like natives (american indians), very hard to find beautiful girls in those countries even though one of the most beatiful women I've seen in my life was from Peru, but that was an exception. Argentinians are pretty, thin, take care of themselves and look more european (Italy, spain). I think you are gonna have to try to hook up with the female backpackers, lol!

[Justin]

Thanks for the tips. I'm just gonna go and see what happens. Hopefully I'll come across a backpacking hottie.

[Mark]

Yeah, you'll have a blast regardless. There are a number of Spanish language resources if you google around. Pimsleur audio courses are also the quickest way I've found to pick up the basics of a new language. Within a couple weeks you can be able to ask basic questions and say basic phrases. All things considered, Spanish is a pretty easy language to learn, and when traveling speaking a little bit of a language can make a big impact on people's impression of you. Also considering you're going to be down there for months at a time, I think it'd be worth it to learn a little bit.

Backpacking girls are usually pretty grimy. But they're easy and you can find a cute one here and there. I'm going to be in South America for most of the winter and spring, but primarily in Brazil.

[Justin]

Mark Wrote:Backpacking girls are usually pretty grimy. But they're easy and you can find a cute one here and there. I'm going to be in South America for most of the winter and spring, but primarily in Brazil.

If you're in buenos aires mid january to mid feb, chile in mid feb, bolivia in feb-march, and peru march-april I'd love to meet up and buy you a drink. I'm a quite a fan of your writing (hence why I'm on here).

[Mark]

I'm in Colombia and Peru next month, then straight to Sao Paolo which is where I'll probably be living until April or so. But I used to live in Buenos Aires, so hit me up if you need recommendations on places to go or where to stay and whatnot. That city parties fucking hard.

[Justin]

Word. I'm going to take you up on that offer. I was just gonna show up at a hostel and see if I get the knowhow on the hotspots around town. How do people dress up to go to the bars and clubs down there? I should probably bring a collared shirt or nice pants/shoes shouldn't I?

Also, did you buy this to learn spanish?

http://www.pimsleuraudio.com/product_inf...n+Audio+CD

[Mark]

I actually learned Spanish in school and with teachers. If you ever want to get serious about a language, doing it with a personal tutor is by far the most efficient way. But yeah, do 30-60 minutes of Pimsleur a day for a few weeks and you'll be able to at least do basic things down there like order food, ask for directions, ask people how they are, stuff like that. Pimsleur's great because it's very practical. It doesn't get into grammar at all, it immediately gets you saying and understanding phrases that you would most likely need in everyday life. But unfortunately, it ends there. If you ever want to become conversational (or fluent) in a language, you need to study something else.

Also, the "popular" party hostel in BsAs is Millhouse. But I wouldn't stay there fore more than a few days, if at all. The famous "party" hostels around the world are basically glorified frat parties: just a shitload of British/American/Australian kids 18-23, getting wasted every night and hardly leaving the hostel half the time. It's fun for a couple nights, especially if you've never done it, but it gets lame fast. If you just want to drink every night with English-speakers, you might as well stay home.

In BsAs, I recommend hostel Arrabol right near Avenida de Julio (gigantic road with like 20 lanes, you'll notice it). It's where I lived for a couple weeks before I got my apartment. It's affordable, clean, decent location and the staff are very cool people. If you go tell Mariana I said hello.

And as for dressing well. People in BsAs surprisingly dress like shit, especially the guys. But still, if you want to get into the nicer, more expensive clubs, you'll need a collared shirt and decent shoes.

[Justin]

Cool Beans. Thanks for the tips

Since I plan on staying in Argentina for a month, Millhouse sounds like a hostel that I'll probably do for a week just to meet people and have fun. I could actually use a week where I just get blasted. When I get serious about seeing the sights and experiencing the culture I'll hop on over to Arrabol. What's the crowd like in this hostel?

[Mark]

Chill. Good people. We were the only Americans (my friend and I). They had a few different people living there long-term (a Mexican guy who I still keep in touch with, some Finnish people, etc.) They go out every once in a while as a group, as in the staff organizes a night out with everybody. It's a nice mix of being social and having fun, but also being chilled out where you can get away from the nonsense if you need to.

BsAs is very spread out and the nightlife areas are not near each other. So don't worry so much about location. Cabs are cheap.

[Justin]

Ah... Should I think about staying in Buenos Aires the entire time I'm in Argentina? What other cities do you think are worth checking out in the country? I hear good things about the tip of the continent. but that's a bit of a trek down to the tip. My friend recommended Uruguay also, which shouldn't be too far from Buenos Aires.

I bought Footprint on South America so I still need to get familiar with the sights.

Is the ratio usually a majority guys at these hostels? Or is it a fairly good M:F? My own impression is that its mostly guys since not many girls have the confidence to do trips like these.

[Mark]

Ratio varies widely. But a surprising number of girls go backpacking. And the one's who do are pretty independent, free-thinking and open-minded (i.e., easy lays).

Cordoba, Mendoza, all over Patagonia -- there are plenty of places to visit in Argentina. The problem is the country is huge and airfare is expensive in Latin America. You can take buses, but be prepared for 10-20 hours per trip each way.

Never been to Uruguay. Heard mixed things.

[Harry Potter]

If you can set aside at least about a week to do nothing but learn Spanish:

1. Go through a reference grammar to get a basic idea of the structure. Routledge publishes a lot of these for modern languages.
2. Get a parallel English/Spanish novel. You can find quite a few online for free. Here's Don Quijote.
3. Get the audiobook in Spanish. There's a good quality free legal audiobook of Don Quijote out there somewhere, sponsored by the Spanish government I think.
4. Listen to the audiobook while reading the parallel text. Do this for about 8 hours a day.

The knowledge gained through this method will be mostly passive but after you learn some basic conversational phrases and are in an environment where you are exposed to the language, active fluency should come soon.

[Mark]

Harry, where did you hear that worked? I've never heard of that method, and to be honest, it looks a little too good to be true. You mean fluency fluency? Because I've probably put in 400+ hours of study of Spanish over the past 2 years and lived in Spanish-speaking countries for almost 6 months, and I'm just now getting to the point where I would consider myself fluent in most basic conversations. More complex conversations I still struggle and have to think my way through.

[CharlesB]

Justin Wrote:I don't know much spanish. Just Unos, dos, tres.

what's a good way to learn about a month before my trip?

I tried to answer this question here:
http://postmasculine.com/forum/showthrea...w-language

[Harry Potter]

Mark Wrote:Harry, where did you hear that worked? I've never heard of that method, and to be honest, it looks a little too good to be true. You mean fluency fluency? Because I've probably put in 400+ hours of study of Spanish over the past 2 years and lived in Spanish-speaking countries for almost 6 months, and I'm just now getting to the point where I would consider myself fluent in most basic conversations. More complex conversations I still struggle and have to think my way through.

Here's an overview of the method. You probably won't get native speaker fluency of course, but you should be able to speak with a varied vocab with many uncorrected mistakes; based on what some people who did it reported anyway (although it should be noted that no one followed the method to a T). I never did this intensively but do this on-off with Italian and French with OK results.

CharlesB talked about Assimil in the other thread. Assimil is basically the same as this but with shorter texts over a longer period of time.

For something more long-term and which I have personal experience with, I recommend the SRS method/10,000 sentences method. Some useful links for this:
Antimoon
All Japanese All the Time

I did this for Japanese. I had studied the basic grammar in school and really wasn't going anywhere -- classes taught so little each week. After about two months of daily SRS practice I could read comics and non-fiction easily and be comfortable in extended conversations, although I still make mistakes. This is with the advantage of knowing the meanings of kanji from Chinese and knowing all the basic conjugations of course.

[Leo]

Sorry man! But this is a HORRIBLE advice. Don Quijote de La Mancha was written in 1605 and that's a very old spanish from SPAIN, and that spanish is different if you compare it to spanish from South America. I just started to read few parragrpahs form the e-book and I couldn't keep reading, that's a very old spanish, I can't understand it completly. Language changes, everything changes. We don't use those expressions anymore. Verbs in spanish are very difficult, even more for a foreigner, of course!
I did something similar to learn english, I like to watch movies, I rented a lot of DVDs (from this century) in english, watched them with subtitles in spanish to see the correlation. I changed after to subtitles in english to understand the structure of the language and sometimes I watch the movies without subtitles. And of course you have to face your AA related to a foreign language, you have to go out talk to people, make A TON of mistakes and learn from them, make sure you laugh about yourself, don't take it too seriously (just like PU).
The best way to learn another language? Get a GF that speaks the language that you want to learn, you have fun, have sex and learn the another language pretty quickly. That's how I learned portuguese, with my ex G-F from Brasil.
Funny, a friend of mine gave me a handout from her spanish class and it was the same, spanish from Spain from like 2 centuries ago, I couldn't understand anything and I was born in Souht America, lol!

Harry Potter Wrote:If you can set aside at least about a week to do nothing but learn Spanish:

1. Go through a reference grammar to get a basic idea of the structure. Routledge publishes a lot of these for modern languages.
2. Get a parallel English/Spanish novel. You can find quite a few online for free. Here's Don Quijote.
3. Get the audiobook in Spanish. There's a good quality free legal audiobook of Don Quijote out there somewhere, sponsored by the Spanish government I think.
4. Listen to the audiobook while reading the parallel text. Do this for about 8 hours a day.

The knowledge gained through this method will be mostly passive but after you learn some basic conversational phrases and are in an environment where you are exposed to the language, active fluency should come soon.

[Chaos]

Yeah, altought most versions of Don Quijote are revised to use the currently used Spanish words (instead of the ones used when it was written) the style and the prose can be highly confusing (I find it odd sometimes and I'm a native speaker).

I would go for something lighter. In my case, when I was learning English I went for Harry Potter books and specially Friends. Nowadays I consume almost every film or tv show in English. My progression was:

- Basic grammar and vocabulary
- Tv shows and films subtitled in Spanish
- Tv shows and films subtitled in English
- Books in English
- Tv shows and films without subtitles thought for a worldwide audience (ej: smallville, galactica, star wars)
- Tv shows and films not initially though to be worldwide, they put less effort on correct pronunciation and use a lot more slang (ej, friends, charmed)
- House: so many medical terms make it really hard.
- Final: Any news channel. Usually that implies no care for british or otherwise "good" pronunciation and an out of context story (for local news)

It took me several years to become fluent, which is to be able to think in a foreign language... Honestly I don't think you can do it in two weeks, no matter the effort.

[Leo]

Chaos Wrote:It took me several years to become fluent, which is to be able to think in a foreign language... Honestly I don't think you can do it in two weeks, no matter the effort.

Por supuesto!!!!!!!

[Chaos]

Main problem with shows and films is there's some vital vocabulary missing. I can give a great speech about warp theory, correct use of plasma conduits and the intricacies of Klingon democracy but I have trouble ordering a simple meal in a restaurant

And this is only partly a joke... I really do have trouble ordering food, since it does not usually come up in books or media, or asking for cleaning tools (I didn't know how to say mop or brush and I needed a native American to explain me what the line "flush before brush" meant) so if you don't want to get hungry or be surprised with your food make a list of common food terms in order to be able to order what you really wanna eat... I've had some unpleasant surprises regarding what I was served versus what I though I'll be eating

[Jon]

trying to learn spanish by reading Don Quixote in two weeks. If only there was a word for something so overly ambitious and doomed to failure.

[Mark]

Ohhhhh you're so clever Jon.

I've finally reached a point with Spanish where I feel like I can hold most conversations with minimal effort. Some of the more esoteric verb tenses still give me a little trouble (past subjunctive) but all in all I feel like I'm as fluent as I'm going to get without actually living in a Latin country long-term. I studied in classrooms in school for 3 years and it got me nowhere. When I went down to Argentina, I could barely say more than really basic sentences.

I began taking it seriously down there and have progressed a LOT the last year (despite only studying actively 4-5 months total). Here's the method I'm slowly honing in on that works for me after studying Spanish and Russian.

- Start with a basic phrase book and/or Pimsleur. I think nailing the first 100 words and getting really basic sentences under your belt is huge.
- Learn the basic grammar. Just enough to form sentences without sounding like an idiot. Everyone seems to agree, only learn as much grammar as you need early on.
- Speak with people as much as possible (duh).
- Get a tutor. Split the tutoring time between conversation and grammar. 2/3 conversation, 1/3 grammar. Do exercises on your own time. This mix is what I've found to be best.
- Once you can hold a respectable conversation without looking up words in the dictionary every five seconds, put a movie on with English subtitles. Then with Spanish subtitles.
- Once you can hold most basic conversations easily, it's time to expand your vocabulary. Read newspapers and books in the language. Continue to have as many conversations as possible.
- Like Leo said, dating a girl who speaks that language is the fastest way to learn it.

I am intrigued by the Assimil method or whatever it is that Harry mentioned above. I'll experiment with it in the coming year and see how it goes.

One thing I'll note is that I take the statement "I'm fluent" with a huge grain of salt from people now. I've just met and talked to enough people at this point who have claimed "fluency" which really just means they're pretty comfortable in normal conversations. Or in some (rare) cases, they only know enough to make themselves understood and to understand, yet they arrogantly think they're fluent without realizing that they're butchering the language left and right. As soon as you get them out of their "comfort zone" of the basic topics they've learned, or into complicated multi-person group conversations with some slang, they get completely lost.