Ari Shaffir's Craziest Travel Stories: Exorcisms, Prostitutes, and Magic Mushrooms | #697

TL;DR

Ari Shaffir recounts eight months of off-grid travel through Latin America, sharing wild encounters and political observations from countries like El Salvador, Bolivia, and Peru.

Key Points

• 1.Ari ditched his phone for eight months by getting a new number with no contacts. He deliberately cut off all social media and communication to mentally reset during an extended solo travel tour through Latin America.
• 2.The first week without a phone triggered dopamine withdrawal. Ari described feeling cranky and emotionally off-balance, comparing it to quitting cigarettes or another drug.
• 3.A beach in Mexico was the reset point, lasting 8–9 days before he felt mentally free. He still checked Yankees scores on a laptop during the first few days but eventually logged off entirely after they were eliminated.
• 4.Ari found a local Mexican baseball team, Guerrero, and followed them through the playoffs as a phone replacement. He attended games where a 12-year-old girl sold beer and full burrito plates replaced hot dogs.
• 5.Going phone-free unlocked creative thinking — Ari says he structured his entire new comedy special during the trip. He framed it as a book with chapters, an idea he said he would never have conceived while buried in emails.
• 6.Nicaragua turned Ari away at the border after 2.5 hours of interrogation. Officials called Managua repeatedly, asked about his Instagram followers, ticket prices, and show attendance, then denied entry — sending him back to El Salvador by boat.
• 7.El Salvador shocked Ari with how safe and vibrant it felt under President Bukele. Locals celebrated openly, with one guide saying he couldn't show his daughter the capital just three or four years earlier due to gang violence.
• 8.A local guide in El Salvador explained that all indigenous people were massacred in the 1940s–70s, explaining the ethnic homogeneity. This directly answered Ari's observation that the population changed dramatically at the Guatemala border.
• 9.Gangs in El Salvador had committed extreme atrocities including fetal soccer — Ari debated whether to share this on air. The guide described this as part of what made an extreme government crackdown feel justified to locals.
• 10.Bukele's tattoo crackdown is more targeted than reported — only gang-specific tattoos like kill tallies or cop badge numbers trigger arrest. Ari said the media narrative of random civil rights violations didn't match what he observed on the ground.
• 11.In Bolivia, Ari accidentally witnessed a presidential inauguration in Sucre. He had been staying there to acclimatize to altitude when the new president was sworn in after 20 years of the previous leader who gave farmers a 2-to-1 voting advantage over city people.
• 12.In Peru, Ari was in the president's hometown when she was ousted mid-trip. She was removed because locals, inspired by Bukele's success, wanted tougher action against Venezuelan gangs shaking down bus drivers for a dollar a day.
• 13.Finding weed while traveling is treated as an adventure — Ari dumps it at every border and starts over. He described beach dealers offering joints versus inland methods of finding a jewelry-maker in a town square who connects you to someone.
• 14.Australians love cocaine despite having the worst, most expensive, heavily-cut supply in the world. Ari theorized that when they travel and find quality product they go overboard, and meeting an Australian at a hostel reliably led to doing blow in a bathroom.
• 15.Ari stayed in a salt hotel at Bolivia's Uyuni Salt Flats where the walls are made of lickable salt. He described the optical illusion effect of the flat terrain distorting distance perception, and took photos using giant Bert Kreischer shoes he was carrying.