Londrina Calling: Diaries of a high performance solitary holiday
"One of the main reasons we decided Londrina would be a good place to abandon me was that it was called Londrina."
In an interruption to normal broadcast proceedings, this week’s newsletter is brought to you by a guest writer: my travel companion, David Hughes. I asked Dave if he fancied detailing his time spent alone in Brazil during the week I dashed back to London (partly so I’d find out what on earth he did all week) and he didn’t take much encouraging. Usual Pells service to return in a few days.
Midway through my solitary holiday in Londrina I had to move from one Airbnb to another Airbnb about 20 minutes further from the centre. Both were owned by the same man, Antonio, who seemed to have a monopoly on accomodation in Londrina which was both affordable and didn't look like somewhere where I would be killed.
Antonio seemed like a very nice man. He let me stay a night in the second Airbnb for free after he incorrectly listed the availability dates on the app in an embarrassing blunder, and also offered to drive me from one Airbnb to the other. Given that I was harbouring the majority of Rachael's luggage as well as my own (while she abandoned me for a fortnight of living the high life in London and Portugal) this was incredibly welcome.
However, Antonio had conducted all of these acts of kindness on WhatsApp, using Google Translate, and our only in-person interactions had been to smile or occasionally nod at each other in passing. I think he gave me an encouraging thumbs up at one point, too, although that might have been intended for someone else walking past at the same time. This meant that we would meet properly when Antonio ferried me to my new Airbnb.
Antonio doesn't really speak any English and my Portuguese is much worse. I told him that I spoke "un poco Español" but was very relieved that he didn't speak any Español, and therefore couldn't put my claim to the test and immediately expose it as a shameful lie. Antonio didn't see any of this as an obstacle, though, and proceeded to make dogged attempts at conversation throughout the drive.
It was excruciating and heartwarming in equal measure, and we covered a surprising amount of ground thanks in part to me recognising occasional Portuguese words that were similar to English or Spanish, and perhaps more significantly thanks to Google Translate. I was able to list the countries we had been to (I said these in English with a bit of an accent which seemed to work) and told him that I was a journalist, because that seemed easier than getting too bogged down in the subtleties of editorial SEO. I also managed to explain that Rachael had gone back to England for a wedding but would eventually return, which felt important because I didn't want Antonio to think that I had killed her. By gesturing at our bags on the back seat and saying "mucho maletas" and doing a sort of exasperated face I added that Rachael’s detour was the reason why I had a frankly insane amount of luggage for one person. I think this came across as more of a "bloody women have loads of bags don't they mate" sentiment than I'd intended, because Antonio laughed and said something incomprehensible about his wife so then I laughed too. This made me feel a bit disloyal to Rachael and maybe like I was contributing to a wider societal problem, but also we were just a couple of blokes bantering about our respective ol' ball and chains, and I'm not ashamed to admit that this felt good.
When we arrived at the Airbnb Antonio walked me around the property, which was very nicely decorated – he had unexpected flair as an interior designer. At the end of the tour he stopped to explain how to operate the washing machine in great detail. He then realised that while I was nodding dutifully I obviously didn't understand anything he was saying and laughed, before miming that he would send me the instructions on WhatsApp. For a weird moment I thought he was going to hug me, but instead he shook my hand with real gusto and sort of bumped me on the shoulder affectionately before saying "thank you, goodbye!" in English. And then he left.
This was the longest in-person conversation I had during the two-and-a-bit weeks I spent alone in Londrina. An hour or so later, I received a WhatsApp message from Antonio and I opened it eagerly, expecting a Google Translated version of his washing machine instructions. Instead, Antonio had sent me a picture of the tiny off-licence below the Airbnb with the message: "Cold beer, Cold beer, every day until 10pm".
Are you familiar with the Jake Humphreys High Performance Podcast? On it, he earnestly preaches the mantra of “World Class Basics”: how, by approaching the smallest and most mundane daily tasks with a sort of psychopathic intensity, you can foster a culture of excellence which pervades every aspect of your life, and thus transform yourself into a High Performance individual. When I learned I would be alone for an extended period of time I thought to myself: “This could be me.” While in Londrina I would perform every task – from making a cup of tea to hanging up my washing – in a "world-class" manner befitting Humphreys himself. Maybe I would adopt the notoriously deranged daily routine of Mark Wahlberg, who wakes up at 2.30am and by 8.00am has completed an hour-and-a-half workout, played a round of golf alone and even found time for 30 minutes of prayer.
By becoming World-Class at taking the bins out and putting on my shoes, I would nurture an all-round High Performance vibe that would empower me to complete the three main aims of my hermit’s holiday: write a novel, master Spanish and transform myself physically through an intense exercise regime. It’s fair to say that I didn't make an enormous amount of progress with any of these goals.
I have a large number of ideas for novels, most of which can be summarised as "male character who is a flattering version of me goes to a place that I have been or experiences something that I have broadly experienced and then a murder occurs". This year, I have added such potential bestsellers as "Murder on the Cruise to Antarctica" and "Murder at the Remote Farm in Uruguay" to "Murder at the Local Cricket Club" and "The SEO Murders" on my to-write list.
On the first day of my extended period of aloneness I bought a notepad which said "KIND HEART, brave spirit" on the front and a packet of three biros (two of these were blue and one was black, which I found a bit weird). To be fair to me, I did write a few pages of fairly in-depth notes about the only novel idea I have which doesn't feature a murder or directly correspond to my own life, but I concede that this doesn't represent a huge amount of progress.
My plan to master Spanish was centered on a couple of "Learn Spanish For Adult Beginners" books I had downloaded as part of a free trial of Kindle Unlimited. I am currently on a 226-day Duolingo streak but I remain quite bad at Spanish and can only really say "I eat apples" ("yo como manzanas") with any confidence. I reasoned that maybe the dynamic, new-age learning style utilised by Duolingo was the thing that was holding me back. Instead, I decided I was better suited to learning Spanish by rote, writing it all out by hand in my new notepad like a creepy little Victorian boy.
One of the “Learn Spanish” books I had downloaded boasts that it is "8 books in 1" and the other makes the even more impressive claim of being "10 books in 1". I reasoned that by absorbing these alleged 18 books I would be fairly fluent in Spanish by the time Rachael returned, and she would be very impressed.
I didn't learn Spanish in the end because, just like the rest of Brazil, in Londrina they speak Portuguese. I had known this going in of course. I'm not an idiot. But I had drastically overestimated my capacity to motivate myself to learn a language that was essentially of no immediate practical use to me at that moment without anybody forcing me to do so.
And Portuguese is truly baffling, just a mad series of sounds which bear absolutely no resemblance to their written form. This meant that even when I attempted to interact by reading directly from Google Translate I would usually be met by blank stares and would have to hand my phone over to whichever shop worker or barman I was inflicting myself upon while repeatedly murmuring “desculpe”. In the end I went to my local supermarket so often that I was able to learn the format of the entire conversation with the cashier from start to finish, and recite my answer to each question at the appropriate moment: "No." "No". "Credito, por favor". "No, obrigado” (or sometimes "Sim, obrigado" if I needed a bag), then a cheery "Obrigado, ciao!" to finish things off. I found this weirdly satisfying each time, but unfortunately it was quite difficult to scale up this conversational approach beyond the supermarket.
My initial physical transformation goal was to get absolutely massive. However, although I occasionally did 10 press-ups (in one go!) and a motley assortment of other exercises which I had selected purely on vibes rather than with any clear strategy in mind, I quickly realised that it would take quite a while to get as massive as I hoped to be. Instead, I took the decision to pivot to running, basically because it didn't make my arms sore. I reasoned that this wasn't a failure because the most successful people, the Jake Humphreys people, are not afraid to adapt.
My friend Sophie recommended Strava and I adopted it with the deranged enthusiasm of an aunt who has just discovered Facebook. Every day that I could be bothered I would jog down to the local park and run around it as fast as I could for anything between 3km and 6km, before slumping to the ground and lying there for a while because it was 33°C. Excitingly, I would then return to my Airbnb and look at the statistics on Strava, and because the app has a really wholesome hyper-positive energy it would inform me that I had just completed my 8th-fastest 3.5km.
Sophie, my only follower on Strava (who presumably regrets ever suggesting it to me), would then give me "kudos" on the app because otherwise after 15 minutes or so I would send her a screengrab of my statistics and ask why she hadn't given me "kudos" yet. While I wouldn't say I've been physically transformed, I can now run 5km in under 25 minutes as long as it isn't too hot and there is a fairly forgiving downhill section at the start to ease me into things. This feels like progress of sorts.
On the days when I wasn't running I would walk several miles to various destinations around Londrina while listening to podcasts where British comedians talk to each other about stuff. I was also logging these walks on Strava, which encouraged me to walk weirdly quickly (on one walk I covered 17.5km in 2 hours, 15 minutes, which Strava helpfully pointed out was my new PR for 17km).
One of the main reasons we decided that Londrina would be a good place to abandon me was that it was called Londrina. There was certainly a geographical logic to it, but also it just seemed quite funny that while Rachael was gallivanting around the real London I would be in its Brazilian namesake, which I presumed would be fairly similar. Londrina has a few red phone boxes dotted around the town centre and some shops called things like “London Store” which seemed to sell solely mobile phone cases. I also saw a sign for “Abbey Road” but it had a picture of a pig on it and was in front of a restaurant called “Porks” so I don't think it was the real street name. Overall, unless I missed something fairly significant, there didn't actually seem to be a huge number of similarities between Londrina and London.
The centrepiece of Londrina is a big lake. The lake is attractive enough and you can see some quite decent-sized fish right by the shore which groups of local men gather to fish for in the early evenings. There were also sometimes people rowing or pedaloing across the lake, and on one annoying occasion two men on really loud jet skis. However, there were no bars on the waterfront (a fact I verified by walking the lake's entire 8km circumference at magnificent speed) which seemed like a baffling oversight.
Londrina's nightlife was instead focused on a busy road just out of the centre. There, I discovered Chopp Club (“Pints Club” in English), which had a happy hour where you could get a very large Campari and tonic for 15 reals (about £2.10) and, on seemingly random nights, a proper draught pint of pilsner for 7 reals (just under £1). Across the road was the John O'Groats Scottish Pub, which I was absolutely fascinated by. It had completely blacked-out windows, which gave it an air of mystery and danger but also made it seem like a weirdly gloomy place to go to on a balmy evening.
Eventually, on a night when my spirits were high after Nottingham Forest beat Leicester 3-1, I plucked up the courage to venture inside. All the staff were wearing kilts, just to demonstrate to any naysayers that the pub was authentically Scottish, and there was a really enthusiastic live band playing classic British rock. It was bloody great. Chopp Club and the John O'Groats had the only two English-speaking members of staff I encountered in Londrina, and both of them asked me "What are you doing in Londrina?" with an air of genuine bemusement.
My favourite place, though, was a small bar about 40 metres from my first Airbnb. Most of the local bars consisted of a big fridge, a counter containing some slightly sad fried pastries and a handful of red plastic tables and chairs, and were populated exclusively by hard-faced men glaring at each other and passersby in silence. Bar da Su admittedly did have all of these things but it was also painted a lovely green, and this meant it felt a bit more cheerful than its rivals. It also had a big jukebox which exclusively played English-language hits from the 1980s, which went down an absolute storm with the locals. The owner (presumably Su herself) was a formidable woman who I initially found quite frightening. However, during our first stumbling interaction she realised very quickly that I couldn't speak Portuguese, didn't seem to care why, and thereafter regarded me with the sort of resigned patience you reserve for a harmless simpleton.
Like every bar in Brazil, the beer there was served in 600ml bottles which arrive in an adorable little plastic jacket to keep it cold. At Bar da Su I realised that if I removed the empty bottle from its plastic jacket and left it on the table then Su would almost immediately bring me a new bottle of Antarctica Original (600ml for 12 reals, about £1.70) without asking. This meant that I could go an entire evening without being called upon to speak any Portuguese, which left me blissfully free to read my book, illegally stream Nottingham Forest matches on my phone or simply stare into the middle distance. It was wonderful there, and in a moment of recklessness I even waved cheerfully at Su as I walked past the bar one day. She didn't acknowledge me, but that just struck me as classic Su.
Unfortunately, the area I moved to for my second Airbnb had slightly more of a “stand on the street sinking cans and comparing facial tattoos” vibe to nightlife. On my first afternoon there I visited a bar which had vaguely welcoming outdoor seating and ordered a chicken burger. However, when the burger arrived an aggressive man who seemed a bit down on his luck started shouting at me and gesturing that he wanted my burger. After a couple of minutes of stalemate he started to try and wrestle the burger from my grasp so I fled inside to relative safety, but I couldn't help but think Su never would have stood for it.
Traditional tourist attractions were fairly thin on the ground in Londrina. There was a cathedral in the centre which was massive and shiny and felt a bit like the headquarters of a cult, but when I went in it was being renovated and builders were drilling incessantly in one corner, and this didn't create a particularly peaceful ambience.
However, there was a really good park named Parque Arthur Thomas after a man from the real London who I assume had some sort of connection to Londrina. The park was a decent walk from my Airbnb (6.7km in 55 minutes, according to Strava) and boasted walking trails, a surprisingly beautiful waterfall and various creatures, allegedly including monkeys. The first time I visited I immediately saw an agouti (a sort of giant rat thing which manages to not be horrifying because it hops around like a rabbit) and later a coati (basically a raccoon), as well as a few fairly big lizards scuttling around looking evil.
I was encouraged by this and delved deeper in search of the monkeys, eventually reaching a place where a promising-looking path into the denser forest had been half-heartedly blocked off, presumably by a local council jobsworth. It looked safe enough but I didn't want to be shot by an overzealous park ranger, so I began to turn back. However, I then saw some bigger boys climbing up from a much more off limits path who looked like they had been smoking illegal drugs. I bade them a cheerful “Ola!” and decided that the park police were probably unlikely to devote too many resources towards hunting an innocent lost gringo when there were real criminals on the loose.
The forbidden section of the park turned out to be quite magical, like how Jurassic Park looks in the sequels when it has fallen into disrepair and been reclaimed by the velociraptors. However, as soon as I entered it began raining about as heavily as any rain I had ever seen. As well as ending my attempts to find (and subsequently befriend the monkeys and maybe become their king), the storm drenched the pages of my novel (which I always carried around with me in case I was suddenly inspired to actually write it), rendered my phone temporarily unusable and, most importantly of all, destroyed my trusty Novo Smok 5 vape.
I refused to be put off by this, though, and channeling a level of resilience that would leave Jake Humphreys purring with admiration, I returned to the Parque Arthur Thomas a couple of days later. This time, the conditions were perfect, so I strolled into the forbidden section of the park without a backwards glance and followed the path to a sinister abandoned building, at which point I turned around because I became scared in case there were drugs people in there. It was only on my way out of the park that I was rewarded for my perseverance and I finally encountered the monkeys who had evaded me up to this point. They were an absolutely great laugh as you'd expect, chasing each other up and down the trees and generally monkeying around.
When I wasn't doing medium-intensity exercise, walking oddly quickly between random landmarks in Londrina or sitting in silence in the corner of Bar du Su I was mostly pottering around my respective Airbnbs, trying to perform my basics in as world class a manner as possible. I listened to podcasts endlessly – my time in Londrina reinforced my belief that while I'm very comfortable being alone I also need constant background noise: the concept of “rawdogging” any situation absolutely terrifies me. I read some fairly silly books about spies and detectives, watched a large number of films and TV series that I knew Rachael would have zero interest in, and stayed up a really long way past my usual bedtime (which admittedly thwarted my plan to wake up at 2.30am like Mark Wahlberg).
Vibes-wise it wasn't dissimilar to the bit in Home Alone when Macaulay Culkin first realises he's been abandoned and gets really overexcited, but instead of a child it was an almost 34-year-old man, which is probably less adorable. I drank a lot of cans of cheap Brazilian lager and cooked a series of hearty pasta sauces and ricey chicken things. I ate these in enormous portions over several days because the local restaurants all shut in the evenings, and it felt weird getting an Uber several miles to the shinier restaurants in central Londrina to eat sushi or a massive steak on my own.
I also consumed a significant number of Lactoboms. Lactoboms are a sort of Yakult-adjacent miniature bottled yoghurt, runny enough to slurp down in one satisfying gulp, that I discovered on one of my first trips to the local supermarket. Unlike Yakult, they don't claim to have any particular nutritional benefit, and I respected this unvarnished honesty.
Lactoboms come in three main flavours: strawberry, mixed fruits and my favourite: banana and blueberry, which was a mysteriously vivid, almost luminous purple colour. They were also the cheapest brand of small bottled yoghurt I could find (about 14p per Lactobom at one supermarket) and I think must have contained some sort of delicious additive that made them incredibly moreish. At one point I was getting through at least five Lactoboms a day - the sweet first bleary-eyed Lactobom of the morning, the motivational pre-run Lactobom, the post-run recovery Lactobom, the Lactobom after lunch and, perhaps best of all, the Lactobom with a can of lager while watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning at 2.45 in the morning.
My days in Londrina quickly settled into a pattern of running, walking briskly, cooking, reading, eating, drinking, watching films with almost no consequential female characters, and sleeping until quite late in the morning. Despite my noblest intentions, it wasn't a particularly high-performance period of my life and, aside from a couple of fairly impressive showers and one memorable delicates wash, I'm actually not even sure my basics were especially world-class. I was happy enough, though, and eventually concluded that there’s probably more to life than impressing Jake Humphreys.
Travel bits and tips from this week
We stayed in this Airbnb in Londrina, and after a week Dave moved to this one. Conveniently, both were owned by Antonio so he was on hand to give Dave and all our stuff a lift, what a hero.
Antonio’s empire of Airbnbs were unavailable on the night we arrived, so we booked a last-minute stay here. Looks nice from the photos, right? In reality it was giving serious Dead Grandma aesthetic, and between the single nude foot stocking in the fridge and the creepy little figurines and dried flower arrangements, I was a bit scared to touch anything.
For such a huge and middle-class city, Londrina is distinctly lacking in bars, but Dave sampled beers at the following places: Chopp Club, John O'Groats Scottish Pub, Zebrao Bar e Lanchonete and, the best of the lot, Bar Da Su.
An aggressive man tried to steal his burger at Lanchonete e Pastelaria Balalaika.
Since my return to Brazil, Dave has been successfully easing off his five-a-day Lactobom habit.
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