A South American adventure.

THOUGH SIGNIFICANTLY MORE signage in the customs area was dedicated to the illicit importation of Play Stations, it seems Peruvian law also only allows visitors to bring in one video camera and one film camera per person. I had four cameras with me, and filmer Joe K had about 11. Our only fluent Spanish speaker, marketing maven Steve Luther, had skipped ahead of us in line and was out past the machine-gun wielding guards by the time Joe and I were being corralled over to secondary screening. After sweatily moving my cameras around from pocket to pocket a few times while saying the words "si" and "bueno" intermittently, I was able to escape in about 20 minutes. Joe K was nary so lucky and got stuck for over two hours until Luther weaseled his way back to customs and freed him using some sort of Jedi mind trick.

"These are my cameras!" Luther told the agents, despite the fact that it made absolutely no sense. "He was only carrying them for me!" The agents looked at each other and then to Joe K, who nodded enthusiastically. Somehow this worked and we were on our way.

AS IS OFTEN THE CASE when flying into a foreign and notoriously sketchy land, we were met at the airport by some local skaters. Luther, Van Wastell, Johnny Layton, Danilo Cerezini, Joe K, Keegan Sauder and team manager Ohio Dave hopped into a small rental SUV with our new friend Alberto, while Ethan Fowler, Raymond Molinar and I followed the other dude, Jorge (pronounced Hor-hay), out into the cool night. Jorge led us through the heavily guarded parking lot, across a busy road and up the block to a gas station where he had parked his car. "I have tickets!" He explained, "Maybe if I go to airport parking lot they won't let me out!" As we loaded our gear into his very late model Cressida, Ethan bought a six-pack from the gas station. Grabbing a cold one, Jorge turned to Ethan and asked, "You drive my car?"

"Me? Hell nor Ethan responded.

"You?" He asked me.

"I don't even speak the language!" I said.

We looked at each other in surprise as Jorge stormed around to the driver's side. "Shees! Okay, okay," he blustered.

As we jammed in, bags on our laps, he pulled a pair of tattered eyeglasses out of his pocket, followed by a loose lens that he turned over in his meaty hand a couple of times before popping it into the left-hand socket. He turned the key and squinted hard as the Cressida screeched to life. I felt around beneath me for a seat belt. Finding none, I asked Ethan to hand me a beer.

Luther had contacted Jorge and Alberto weeks previously and had hired them to drive us around and act as skate guides for our week in Lima. This type of arrangement is pretty common these days. Though often taken for granted, these unsung and often abused Sherpas can, at best, turn your trip into a 1999 Muska-style bust-a-thon or, at worst, drive you around like you're on a damn tilt-a-whirl to look at spots that are only skateable if you think the Tony Hawk game is real.

We laughed and pounded beers as we took off across the dimly lit streets of Lima, Peru. In all fairness, the Sherpas have a difficult job. Not only are they expected to know where all the hubbas are, but where to find restaurants acceptable to the American teenager's delicate Flamin' Hot Cheetos palate, enthusiastic young English-speaking ladies ready to get weird, and weed. It is in the latter capacity that they are almost always flawlessly adept. In most cases, the Sherpas are local distributors, shop owners or sponsored dudes, but other times it's hard to figure out just exactly how they are related to the task at hand. Regardless, like Tenzing Norgay, they guide the Sir Edmund Hillarys of the skate world to their spots so that they can be "discovered" and documented by the American skate press.

I've made it a practice to try and be nice to the Sherpas even when, say, Dustin Dollin is screaming in their ear and calling them a faggot 50 times a day. I know what it's like to play the lackey (namely from my first few years on the job), so I share their shame in trying to please a car full of brats. But still, muddled in hours of wrong turns, unskateable skate spots and shitty driving, I often find myself asking out loud, "Who the hell are these dudes, anyway?"

LIMA, PERU IS A DUSTY BUS-WRECK of a city ringed with mountains that look like they've been on the business end of a family of giant gophers. It's as if there was a campaign to strip the hills and take a shit on every living plant and animal that was pulled from the rocky soil. Crime seems to be a top concern to the people of Lima. and even the more modest homes are barricaded behind walls topped with glass or razor wire. The snazzier compounds, and that's the best word to describe them, supplement their walls with live electrical line and private gun-toting guards sandwiched into bulletproof vests. These security guards are as common as dog turds and Jorge explained that although there are federal police, each neighborhood or apartment building must hire a private police force as well. We ran into these guys several times each day.

In the sketchiest encounter, we ignored the pleas of a teenage security guard on a bike, only to be confronted by the bona fide SWAT team he called in as back up. As we hustled to our cars, the local skaters were left to contend with 20 or so men in full riot gear, complete with automatic weapons and snarling muzzled rotweilers.

The cops rolled up in four pick-up trucks armored with diamond-plated doors and chain-link over the windows that looked straight, out of Mad Max. In a more pleasant incident, a crew of 10 security guards came to kick us out of a spot only to be won over by free !stickers, requests for group photos and turns trying out outboards. They even took us over to a double set where a neighbor had previously kicked us out.

"These guys are making a movie!" They told her as she scowled. "Just go back inside!"

IT WAS HARD TO AVOID the watchful gaze of security, which was a pain in the ass when trying to find a place to pee. There is no such thing as a public restroom in Latin America and we'd be out on the streets all day. Anytime I'd go behind a dumpster or bush to take a leak, I'd inevitably look up and lock eyes with a man holding a gun. Talk about stage fright. Skating in Lima was difficult because almost everywhere we went that had nice enough ground to skate was also nice enough to have full-time security. Still, there was plenty to keep us busy.

We stayed in the Doubletree hotel in the high-brow Miraflores district where we soon became addicted to the old-fashioned style of customer service that occurs when the people helping you are desperately poor, Forget the sass mouth and half-assery of the American service sect; in South America the customer is still always right. Which is why the restaurant at the Doubletree would open up at three in the morning to make us sandwiches (while jamming Phil Collins through the dining room speakers), and the bartender was down to stay as long as we were--and with a smile, too! No, honestly it was kind of creepy to have grown men waiting on you hand and foot for a measly tip, and I think we mostly bummed out the restaurant staff. With short days (considering we were sleeping until 2:00pm) and long nights, much of our trip was dedicated to consuming ridiculously titanic meals. Every day ended with a trip to a fine restaurant and I felt like I was getting a food hangover after a few straight days of it. No meal was under three courses, and Johnny and Ethan would often top off their four-pound steaks and loaves of bread with a 3:00am order of chocolate cake or peach melba from the Doubletree room service.

On numerous evenings, I drank Pisco Sours, the Peruvian national booze that turned me into a veritable Chatty Cathy. It was embarrassing. I'd be drinking my Pisco Sour, enjoying a pleasant meal, and the next thing you know I'd talked about complete bullshit for five hours straight. The government should seriously look into using Pisco Sours to interrogate prisoners and spies. The shit's talking juice!

Alberto has a straight job and had to work weekdays, so Jorge and his brother drove us around in the two rental SUVs. Much has been written about the sketchy driving conditions of the developing world, but after trucking around with Jorge's brother (whose name I shamefully never actually caught), I realized that the wild driving style is less the result of poor roads and narrow intersections, and more of a cultural thing.

"You know, you don't have to drive this terribly," I told Jorge's brother as he lurched us through the city in the Peruvian jam-on-the-gas-slam-on-the-brake-honk-honk-honk style.

"Que?" He asked.

"Oh never mind," I responded, bracing my hands against the dash. There were a few points where the crew was on the verge of revolt, so horrible was his driving--but other times we would all just laugh, kind of like when you laugh on a rollercoaster.

"Oh shit! We're gonna fucking die!" Ethan giggled from the back seat.

ONE NIGHT we were invited to a party at a rich kid's house in suburban Lima. After stopping and buying boxes of wine at a gas station, we arrived to armed cops directing us into a parking space. From there, a teenager who spoke almost accent-less English greeted us.

"Hey, dudes. Welcome to my party!"

When I was a kid in junior high I had a very skewed idea of what high school was going to be like, mostly because I'd gotten the bulk of my information from the teen boner comedies I'd seen on Cinemax. In addition to the exploding brassieres and toilet bowl swirlies, I knew another important part of my high school experience would be attending wild parties in gigantic suburban homes with naked chicks in the pool, pizza on the turntable, and dudes crushing beer cans on their heads,

While reality was a harsh wake-up call (with the gigantic homes replaced by some losery 23-year-old dude's apartment and the naked chicks with a fully-clothed, frigid and heavy-set new wave girl), I was given something very rare in this life on my trip to Lima--a shot at redemption. For after walking through the gates of the compound (and that's sure as shit what it was), I realized I'd finally arrived at that wild party that had alluded me so many years ago. Though I never entered the large modern, style home, the yard was vast and featured an empty Olympic-sized pool (unskateable) flanked by a large bar area on the left and a basketball court turned into a dance floor on the right. The yard was crawling with hardy partiers and I grabbed the box of wine over my head and wandered over to the dance floor that was tricked out with streamers, disco balls and over-sized speakers belting out salsa tunes and Spanish pop hits. Alberto knew many of the gifts at the party and I was quickly whipped into awkward formation by a chesty lass with a gift for spin and a halfway decent command of English. I stomped around and laughed while she wiggled, pranced and sang along to the music like all the other teenagers.

"How old are jou?" She asked loudly between dips.

"I'm 31," I shouted backed. "And married."

Her eyes got wide and she smiled politely. See, even though I finally made it to the high school kegger of my dreams, I was strictly there as a tourist--13 years too late. "My friend Dave;" I shouted while pointing over to a lonely looking Ohio Dave, "He told me he thinks you are very beautiful!"

She smiled and craned her neck to check him out. From the night of the party on the single dudes on the trip had some serious girl trouble--mainly, they had more than they could handle! The days of skater as nerd are definitely over, at least as far as this tour went, and the bachelors spent the rest of the week juggling ladies. At one point, one of the dudes had a girl in his room and another waiting for him in the lobby at the same time. It was ridiculous.

Things got so weird at the Doubletree that the concierge stopped letting the guys take girls up to their rooms.

"They must have proper documentation!" He insisted.

After some pressing, the real reason for the new rule was revealed: he thought the girls were hookers.

For the married men, it was strictly room service desserts and wireless Internet action. Johnny probably spends five hours a night on the computer, and, judging by the updates he'd give me on his e-life, so do the bulk of his friends.

"Check out this mpeg my friend in Kansas sent me!" He'd cry out.

"A what? From where?" I'd stutter back, "You mean you can see Kansas in that thing?"

ONE NIGHT WE WENT UP TO THE TOP FLOOR and took a dip in the weird two-man-sized hot tub and another night we decided to try and get on the roof. Like I said, it got dark at five so we had tons of time to kill. Upon reaching the 10th floor, we found the pool area locked, and with it, the stairs to the roof. Not willing to give up (and five beers deep each), we moved a set of shelves and opened up an air duct. After squeezing through, we crawled around down a dark tube until we saw a hint of moonlight. Giggling like goofballs, we squeezed through the tight passage and were out on a lower section of the roof. From there we climbed up a sketchy ladder to the proper roof and the expansive Lima cityscape. Ethan decided to put his open beer in his shirt pocket, and upon raising his arms to climb the ladder, accidentally dumped it out onto Johnny's head below. From there we whooped it up and checked out the awesome view. Quickly tiring of private reflection, Ethan took a leak off the side before chucking some rocks and chunks of metal down to the sleeping streets below. As I contemplated a beer run, a little man came out on a lower section of the roof some 50 feet below and started hollering into a walkie-talkie.

"Shit! Let's get out of here!" I said, as we scrambled back down the ladder. After filing one by one back into the dark air duct, I was almost at the door when I heard men speaking excitedly in Spanish. Then the light on the other side of the door flipped on.

"Shit! Shit!" I whispered, backing up and bumping into the dudes who were hunched in a line behind me. After realizing there was really nowhere for us to go, I went ahead and opened the tiny door. Greeting us were two very-surprised looking hotel employees, who smiled weakly as we all piled out.

"iLo siento, Senors!" I offered, smiling.

We all laughed and then they started laughing too. "Well, good night!" Ethan said, as we hustled back to our rooms.

Other late-night fun included Raymond throwing a bag of water out the window and smashing the awning, and Luther taking a boom box into the hotel restaurant where he proceeded to have a music battle against Phil Collins with the unamused wait staff.

Ohio Dave got to see the diabolical side of our Sherpas one night when Jorge got lost after he and Dave dropped Raymond off at the airport. "Why don't you just stop and ask someone?" Dave demanded after Jorge drove past the same gas station three times in a row. He was having none of it and started driving like a lunatic, faster and faster, gunning through red lights at 60 miles per hour. Then they ended up having to back up down some narrow streets in a dangerous looking neighborhood. Dave started to get freaked out.

"What the fuck! Just go back to the airport and I'll get a cab!" Dave yelled.

"If I wasn't here you'd be dead!" Jorge snarled back.

In other sketchiness, Jorge tried to fight Van one night and later told us that armed bandits had stolen the rental car's shitty stereo from him at gunpoint. Who knows? By then we were ready to meet some new friends anyway.

KNIFE TROLL BONG THE WORLD'S GREATEST SOUVENIR

FROM TOTE BAGS TO MINIATURE SPOONS, souvenirs are a great way to tell the world: "I was there! I lived it!" What better way to celebrate the peoples, culture, and flora of, say, a place like Orlando Florida, than with a top-quality denim jacket with "Orlando!" Emblazoned across the back in fanciful silver puff-paint? And what better says, "Fella, don't tell me about it--'cause I've seen the majesty of the Grand Canyon first hand" than an official Grand Canyon oversized pencil?

Needless to say, when exploring the wonders of Quito, Ecuador, my first instinct was to ask our host, "Enough with all these churches and ancient statues, where's the official shot glasses?" That was, until I saw Johnny's acquisition of what might be the greatest souvenir of all time.

We were at the base of some giant hilltop statue looking through the souvenir stands when he made his discovery. Nestled among the genuine alpaca Bob Marley tapestries and Virgin of Guadalupe snowglobes sat a keepsake that was, for all intents and purposes, the pure embodiment of the Ecuadorian experience: the knife troll bong.

At first Johnny thought it was just a statue, a little Ecuadorian sprite lovingly carved from wood as an ambassador of his great land. That was until he noticed the built-in pipe that started in his pointy cap and ended in a bowl bashfully poking out from between his crooked little legs. When he took it in his hands, the final secret was revealed. The entire head popped off and formed the handle of a mighty blade!

You can only imagine all the instances where a souvenir like this might come in handy. For example, you're just hanging out, admiring your little friend and thinking about how great your trip to Ecuador was when your bro comes over with a fat sack! Next thing you know you're blazin' like Evan Hernandez on a school day but, whoa--the shit ain't right. That ganga was laced with PCP or some shit! You're totally trippin' out! Your bro's trippin' out even harder, talkin' about cameras coming out of your third eye or some shit! He lunges for you! Next thing you know you grab the troll and pull out the blade. You slash him across the face a couple of times to show you mean business! He's all like, "Aarghh! My eyes!" And you're all, "Chill out, winged monkey lizard man!" 'Cause by this time your sherm's kickin' in too and that's what he fuckin' looks like. "You'll never send your miniature astronauts to moonland on my brain and take away my music!" You'll say as you press the hot bowl into his throat.

This is but one of the scenarios we imagined. Unfortunately for Johnny, we still had Bogota ahead of us. "I'm not saying it's not an awesome knife troll bong," I told him as we were packing. "I'm just saying Colombia might not be the best country to fly into with drug paraphernalia in your luggage."

He grudgingly agreed and the knife troll bong was left wedged above a lamp in our room at the Marriott, his pointy little face poking out from behind the bulb, ready to bring joy to the next weary traveler who catches his magical gaze.

QUITO, ECUADOR is a beautiful city nestled some 10,000 feet up in a valley between dramatic verdant peaks. In some spots it looks sort of like Switzerland, and in others, more just like plain of Mexico. Quito is home to the fantastic Parque Carolina, a 20-plus year-old skatepark with a fullpipe that Hellrides are made of. Cracked, kinked and steep, the park is a challenge for all but the Hewitts of this world, and we mostly dinked around in the shallow end for a couple of hours.

On our first day in Quito we were guided around by a local skater called The Moustache, and the second day it rained so our Sherpa was the driver who came with the rental van. He was real nice and took us to all the restaurants and tourist spots that we later learned gave him kickbacks for the courtesy. He also hooked the single dudes up with some girls who worked at the car rental office.

That's right! The playboys' luck had not run out! It may seem strange to many of you modern skaters (to whom skateboarding and a normal sex life are not mutually exclusive), but I found the amount of ladies surrounding this trip shocking. Maybe I just usually go with the nerd crews, but there were more chicks around on this trip than on all the missions I've ever been on combined. These guys had dates every damn night of the week. I'm not sure if it was their 360 flips, their good looks, or their American-ness, but ... well, I'm pretty sure it was because they're American.

Believe it or not, South America is one of the last places on Earth where they don't completely despise us and the gals seemed intrigued by these light-skinned dynamos with their horrible Spanish and shabby dance skills.

Ohio Dave got so confident with his sex appeal, that by the time we got to Colombia he was going up to strange girls in restaurants and asking them out. And it was working! But enough about the singles scene, let's talk about our Sherpa in Bogota, Colombia, the fantastic Felipe.

Felipe Agudelo is the unofficial director of the skate scene in Bogota and owner of several excellent skate shops called On Board. He even makes his own mag, Brutal, which keeps the Thrasher spirit alive for the local rippers. He's the epitome of a classic, do-it-yourself skater.

In Bogota we stayed at a fancy hotel by the airport that was also fight next to a mall. Unlike the rest of Bogota, the area looked like an office park in Orange County, and each day we walked to the mall and are at a Crepe restaurant.

People still pull carts with horses in Bogota, and it wasn't uncommon to see a child at the reins while smoke-belching busses passed them on the freeway. Bogota was also the only city where I saw actual squalor--great lots of garbage with near-naked people picking through it. I'm not saying Peru and Ecuador don't have their own problems, but it's really heavy to see that kind of poverty up close.

It rained on our second day and we took a gondola that goes straight up Cerro de Montserrat, one of the sheer peaks that looms over downtown Bogota. It was like taking an elevator to another world. Though raining at the bottom, the top of the gondola was above the clouds and from the back of the peak you could see vast spanses of jungle. Looking down on the city, it was like being in a plane.

Military service is mandatory in Colombia and, more often than security guards, you see soldiers patrolling the streets. Though Colombia has its own problems with domestic terrorists, Felipe assured us that most of their activity is confined to the countryside. I can't really say if Bogota is as dangerous as it's made out to be in America. It seemed like all the other cities, which, for a reference more of you might understand, are more or less like Tijuana. I did notice that Felipe often carried mace with him when we got out at skate spots. But that could have just been an extra precaution.

Skating in South America is special because it's not easy. The roads are jacked, there are cops everywhere and the equipment is extra expensive. Skaters like Alberto, Felipe, Jorge and The Moustache skate because they love it. I know this is true, because why else would anyone go through all that bullshit?

Even though I like to kid around about the Sherpas, they make my job 100-percent easier and I'd be pretty much screwed without them. Somewhere, in a future life or an alternate universe, it's gonna be me behind the wheel. I'll be the Sherpa and all the people who've carted my spoiled ass around on all of these tours will be in the back seats, screaming, farting, and complaining loudly in my ear. They'll be speaking in languages I can barely understand, and all at the same time. Jorge will be there, and the Dutch distributor, whatever his name was, and that weird woman in Japan, and all the homegrown homeboys from small towns all across America who've show me their rails over the years. I'll drive them around in circles for all eternity while they fight over the radio, eat chili cheese Fritos and yell at me. The traffic will always be bad. They will always be unhappy and impatient. They will never say thank you. It will be my next life. And I'll deserve every bit of it.