I’ve never been much of an Olympics watcher. Never. I’m strictly a watch-the-highlights type, if that. But I’m even less into the Rio de Janeiro games, if that’s possible, due to those images of raw sewage that won’t leave my head. I know — shut ’em out, focus on the stadium images. But all those stories about untreated crap flowing into Rio’s Guanabara Bay (“the shittiest Olympics ever“) have infected my attitude. If nothing else the sewage coverage has persuaded me to never fly down there. I don’t know why I’d go anyway, but now Rio is really at the bottom of my list. I’m more of a Caribbean island and Central America type of guy anyway when we’re talking exotic western hemisphere travels. I visited Argentina, once, when I covered the Mar del Plata Film Festival. South America has never held a fascination.
