davet

I was told "sauna masculina" merely means it's not a whorehouse, i.e., no female prostitutes, as in the "sauna mixta."

"After seeing this I don't know what is going on in Brazil." If you saw this on social media, assume it's faked, distorted, or grossly out of context. Did you try to look it up in any reputable sources?

But not as fun as they were 25 years ago. Back then, before our age of infinite and ubiquitous porn, a sizable majority of the clientele in Latin adult cinemas was around 25 years old, all of them horny and many of them quite amenable. Now, the theaters are like those that used to be in the US: dark, dirty, and much older clientele. Perhaps they're the same 20-somethings now a few decades later.

Anybody with an on-the-ground report from Barcelona and Thermas? If it's even open, I assume it is lightly attended and with locals only. Can the Thermas guys actually travel to Zurich these days? Many of the boys' Brazilian and Colombian passports only worked to get them into Spain or Portugal, from which they traveled border-free throughout the EU. However, with Schengen now basically suspended, aren't they stuck in the Iberian peninsula? Without sauna work - and lord knows what other marketable skills they have - I wonder just what they have been doing.

This would be easier to answer if we know more about your language experience and history. In my case, for example, I didn't study any Portuguese. I just landed in Rio with a phrase book and started conversing. But you can do that if you know any decent amount of Spanish or Italian. If you learn better by ear, then tapes and videos would be good. If you learn better on the written page, then the options are different. If your weakness is memory and vocabulary, then flash cards are great. If your weakness is grammar, conjugations, and declensions, I'm afraid I haven't figured the solution to that myself.

I bet you know more interesting verbs than I do. Please share.

Who's going to send the live correspondent reports?

Wish I had known about these live auditions. That's one of my great unfulfilled fantasies: To BE William Higgins (or George Duroy, or even Chi Chi LaRue) and have multiple guys arriving every day begging to take their clothes off.

Or wear face condoms, aka dental dams? (cue up the worst, most ignored PSAs of the AIDS era)

My thoughts on this perennial question above: 1. The Brazilian saunas are a bit off the regular spectrum of human experience so that the usual dichotomies (transaction v. affection, gay v. straight) might not completely apply. I think most of the guys are a combination of everything. A sugar-daddy starts blending in with being a "good provider," which has traditionally been an accepted expectation and foundation of "real" relationships. An Argentine once told me some guys are just "gatitos" - little kittens that ask for a little of this and a little of that from somebody who can obviously and easily give a little of this and a little of that. Nothing too wrong with that, was the implication. 2. As for tesa~o, which I guess means sexual energy or horniness, again, these guys are not normal civilians! I've met some who I swear probably have tesao for trees and couches. A couple times, a guy climaxed with me without my asking and without asking for extra money, as they usually do. When I think back, those were end of the evening engagements, when they were going home afterward. They worked up that tesao all night, but they released it with me for their own benefit. Is that natural or unnatural tesao? 3. I never tried to pursue anything long term, because I am more about variety (and maybe ADD). However, there were a handful that, I thought, could have been an interesting guy to have around the house for a while. There was one guy I thought actually had some intriguing "depth." His body was not "up to my standards" but he literally seduced me with a great, look-deep-into-my-eyes chat beforehand. He was the only one I exchanged Whatsapp numbers with and we shared a funny text chat one late evening in November 2016 that began with "If Trump wins this thing, I'm moving to Brazil" and ended with "Oh shit." A couple months after that, however, he asked for money to go visit his parents. I've never written back since. So you see, I'm as wary and cynical as anybody. It was a small amount he asked, but I figured it always starts that way. Looking back, though, I could imagine having something longer-term and not completely transactional with this guy. 4. Going forward (if there will be a forward), I think I would open myself up more for something like this and tolerate a bit of "gatito" and see where it goes. If it turns unsatisfactory, you can break it off. Looking back, there were a few prime candidates.

You'll need to expound, but maybe in the Asia forum.

I've been curious to know, even when Brazil opens its economy and the saunas again and travel restrictions are lifted, how many of us will jump right back into swapping bodily fluids (the ones we used to think were safe) with some new garoto? I'm asking the most adventurous and experienced set of adventurers in the world.

There's not a huge seasonal change in temperature for Sao Paulo or Rio. They're both tropical or subtropical.

If you come with a civilian buddy and you both hire the same professional, then definitely you will and should pay double fee. The hard-working young man is working double! However, you might be able to negotiate more time, i.e., if regular is 1/2 hour per customer then maybe the escort will do 1 hour for both of you together. What's less interesting is the flipside of sharing: When you want to have 2 escorts at the same time. At Termas, the one time I proposed it, the guys EACH wanted DOUBLE pay, saying they have to have sex with each other too. I hope this marketing trend dies quickly. That and 3-ways almost never turn out as good as you expect, I guess because sauna boys are a bit nervous around each other and would prefer some option of plausible deniability as to what goes on inside the cabin.

I looked at Google Street view and, yeah, the area around the cine looks rough even for me! How do you manage coming back from it at night, as I heard even street taxis can be dicey. Would an establishment like that actually call a taxi for you, or will it be Uber? I'm surprised it's only open at night since porno theaters in most of the world, at least back when there were more such venues, seemed to be most active in the afternoon.

If you have the time to do a drive down to Cuenca, a smaller version of Quito (I've heard a few people say Cuenca was what they had expected Quito to be), you will see some of the most gorgeous scenery in South America along the way, including the valley of the volcanoes (weather-permitting, of course, as it can be rainy and cloudy in the Andes). The highway is now very good and the drive can be done in about 6 hours. However, if you break it into 2-3 days, you can also detour to the Quilotoa crater lake for more deserty scenery or to Banos for a more jungle/tropical feel. An hour up the mountains from Cuenca is the Cajas park, a high altitude moor-like watershed with lakes and orchids and fresh trout. Honestly, I know of few other countries with such incredibly diverse and beautiful scenery crammed in a small area, and we haven't even talked about the Galapagos Islands yet. But I can't help you much on the more carnal attractions.

My impression of Barranquilla carnaval was that it's much more family-oriented than Rio's (which I have not yet experienced). I didn't see any disorderly conduct, public peeing, and no, this was not a circuit party (blech!) so hardly any shirtless chests. Well, there were the kids, some of whom were not kids, wearing little more than black grease paint in a tradition that some woke northerners will soon tsk-tsk them about, but that's a whole nother weird story. When I went, I did find several super fun, and free, street parties, but LOTs of pickpockets. Let's say I donated some electronics to the local economy. The Colombians are insanely friendly and outgoing, so it was hard to tell what's just hospitality and what's interest. I got an unaccustomed amount of attention from stunning ... girls, some of whom didn't seem to be hookers.

The Ecuadoreans say the mountain people (like Quitenos) are cold and reserved, while the coastal people are warm and outgoing. Therefore, Guayaquil might be your better bet. Many, many years ago, Guayaquil had a porno theater that was a riotous orgy where queens were sucking off one straight guy after another sitting in a row. However, video killed the porno theater stars, and there is very little "scene" of any kind in Ecuador compared to the bigger countries. Guayaquil does not otherwise have much tourist attraction. Quito is a beautiful big city. They have cleaned up the streets so the old colonial area is now quite safe and sparkling. The zona rosa and modern city are to the north. The pollution is kind of bad, though, so you must get out of the city because the mountain region of Ecuador has some of the most beautiful landscapes I've seen in all my travels. Weather permitting, try to make it at least to the "avenue of the volcanoes," which is just an hour or so south of Quito.

I feel ... so ... inadequate. I didn't achieve that even when I was 20. Does it get better with age?

I'm trying to decide on my next fun jaunt. Sto Domingo is on the list. This MP gym sounds intriguing, but why is it being mentioned here? Just eye candy? Just a place to work out? Or has there been confirmed hookups from here or, even better, action right here?

Are you telling me the two ancient Turkish baths where anything and everything went (with or without Romanian pro's) are no longer happening? They'd been going on since Communist days, when East Germans came to get their rocks off. I know Romanian guys get a lot of hate on this forum, but they can be fun for what they are, and one of the sweetest, handsomest guys I ever "made a business" with was a creamy-complexioned Romanian strolling down the bank of the Danube.

By upscale, I mean he doesn't look like a starving homeless person or dangerous street trade. (Not there's anything wrong with that!) I mean he takes care of himself and can afford at least a gym membership and protein shakes. I saw a mention on another site that there are a couple chic straight mainstream discos that are welcoming to gay guys as well. That tends to be where the upscale gay-for-pay that I like show up.

Are there any venues in Sto Domingo where you can check out and chat up available young men? I'm into very good looking, muscly types, but most importantly, I have to meet a guy in person first before knowing whether I want to hire him. Pictures rarely convey the full chemistry. There used to be a big disco (Club Aire?) where I met one of the hottest hires of my life. That's what I'm thinking of, though a bar, hotel, gym, beach, or any other casual social setting could also work.

What a wonderful, enlightened, progressive law. I wish every teenager and social media idiot would know that, much as Facebook has induced them otherwise, no they do not have the right to violate the privacy of their "friends"(tm).

There are 12,000 cases in China, a country of 1.5 billion, so less than 1/100,000 people. Brazil has about 2 cases, so about 1/100,000,000 people. If that's worrisome to you, by all means cancel your trip. It would save you from the vastly greater risk of physical crime, violence, drunken accidents, and stampedes during carnaval. But then you might have to cancel all trips outside of your house, because the US has over 6 cases, so much more likely you might catch it from one of those 6 people than from the infected in Brazil. I never know how to answer a question like this because there is no satisfactory answer for fear. If your question is about cancellation of the public festivities, surely there are other wonderful things to do and see in Brazil. Some of which, ahem, poses VASTLY greater risks of other infections, though perhaps not as untreatable.