I was extremely surprised when I came across this article the other day, talking about tourists paying to go on a simulation of a Mexico-USA border crossing. The participants pay a relatively small fee (one is cited as 15 USD) to race after mock human traffickers without food or water. The slow ones are captured by “border patrol vans” and “deported”. For me this rang a similar note to Favela …

this is me in april 2006 on a 5 day boat trip on a river in brazil. not just any river – the amazon. it is also the only photo left to remind me of what was probably the best week of my life.
in september 2005 i took off for a one year trip around the world and when people ask me about my favorite part of the trip i …