What was meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure in Brazil quickly took a turn for Ethan, a regular guy from Atlanta who occasionally shares snippets of his life online. A misunderstanding with his longtime friends led to an unexpected eviction from their shared Airbnb. Instead of beach days with the group, he suddenly found himself navigating the streets of Brazil alone with only his belongings and an unsettling uncertainty about the next move.
Ethan, who known on TikTok as @wanderingcloak was persuaded to join a trip to Brazil by his college friend of six years, Will, who had been speaking to a Brazilian woman online for over a year and was eager to take their connection to the next level in person. To make the journey more exciting and affordable, Will invited three other friends and generously offered to cover the cost of an Airbnb for the group. Though Ethan says he wasn’t as outgoing or party-driven as the rest, the promise of free lodging on an international adventure was too tempting to turn down.
Six months later, the five friends touched down in Rio de Janeiro on August 2, ready for sun, beaches, and adventure. Will’s romantic interest, Karen, wasted no time joining the group. She spent the day with the guys and even brought along her own friends to meet everyone.
According to Ethan, the first day was smooth sailing; laughter, introductions, and that warm buzz of new connections filled the air. But on the second day, things took an unexpected turn. The guys decided to head out to buy cookies for the girls, slipping away without saying where they were going. This left Ethan back at the Airbnb with Karen and all her friends. After a while, the other girls left too.
Now alone in the Airbnb, Ethan says Karen asked him to come downstairs to grab some snacks that Will had ordered for her. Ethan casually asked if any of her friends had shown interest in the other guys on the trip in an innocent attempt to play wingman. Karen laughed, teasing him for being nosey, and suggested they watch a movie. Ethan agreed, but just as the film started, Karen began to FaceTime an older man. Not wanting to intrude, Ethan quietly got up and headed to the shower. While he was in the shower, the other guys had returned and knocked on the bathroom door to see if Ethan was there.
That night, after Will got back home, Karen told him that Ethan had pointed toward the bedroom three separate times, and she said it made her feel uncomfortable. After hearing this, at 3:04 a.m., Will started sending messages in the group chat for their trip, explaining what Karen had said. Right after those messages, a poll was posted in the chat with the question: ‘Should we kick him out of the Airbnb?’
The next morning Ethan woke up at 11 a.m. and was shocked to find messages from Will which were sent three hours after Ethan had gone to bed. Thinking this was a joke he replied “Did I shoot my shot from the shower?”
Ethan was confused on how any of that happened, especially because he and Karen were speaking over a translator app. What upset Ethan the most was that instead of talking things through with everyone, Will took the side of a girl he’s known for 1/6th the time he’s known Ethan.
Will then intruded on Ethan having breakfast with two of the other guys, claiming that he ‘had to go’ because of what had happened. Ethan was caught off guard– was he seriously about to be kicked out of an airbnb in foreign country over something that he did not do?
Upon getting kicked out, Ethan began making TikToks documenting his adventure in Rio, not thinking much of it since he had a small following. He ranted about how “morally speaking,” why would he try to get with the girlfriend of the person who was paying for the trip? Let alone someone he’s been friends with six years, and especially so if he had a girlfriend back home? He rejected a girl at the bar the previous night before and everyone applauded him for his fierce loyalty to his girlfriend, yet they blindly believed someone who claimed he was trying to make moves on her.
Ethan ended up reaching out to Karen to talk about the situation. Karen said she asked Will to not kick Ethan out, that she herself thought she misunderstood the situation. Karen felt mildly uncomfortable that night and Will pushed her to tell him what had happened. Ethan sent the screenshots of his conversation to Will trying to mediate the situation, but to no avail. It felt like Will was trying to play the hero of the situation to keep Karen’s friends from leaving. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened with Will. He was the type of person to stop talking to people for months and come back like nothing ever happened.
Ethan ended up having a blast on his own, he went to a samba party where he met a Snoop Dogg look alike, was invited to a favela party (but turned it down), walked the streets of Rio at night, got recognized from his TikToks, and booked a hostel where he slept on the bottom of a three tier bunk bed while amassing an incredible amount of online traction, reaching over sixty countries within 24 hours.
The only people not reaching him, were his ‘friends.’ None of the other three guys had reached out to check on Ethan to see if he was even alive. Two of them stayed ‘neutral’ and even apologized to Karen on Ethan’s behalf. One guy was on Ethan’s side, but Ethan thinks he was wary of being kicked out and therefore didn’t step up for Ethan. According to him, the Will has already done something like this before.
The mutual claimed that he didn’t talk to any of the girls because he was afraid he would be accused of something and then kicked out, just like how Ethan was. In fact, he claimed that Will said that he didn’t even care about the whole situation until the other girls didn’t want to come back to the house. Throughout the entire trip Will seemed more interested in hanging out with Karen’s friends instead of exploring the city.
Commenters on Ethan’s post wondered why Ethan was even friends with Will, but according to one of the many TikTok’s posted, Ethan had stopped being friends with Will over this behavior. Yet as he always does, Will popped into Ethan’s life months later, this time asking him to join the trip to Brazil.
Ethan decided to home earlier and began to truly explore the beauty of Brazil for his last few days there. He went to see a soccer match between Fluminense FC and Internacional, saw Christ the Redeemer (which was surprisingly smaller than expected,) hiked Sugarloaf Mountain in the early morning, went to a ‘chill’ favela party and attended more samba parties. His story was picked up by a Brazilian get-ready-with-me content creator with over 1 million followers.
Towards the end of the adventure some fans began to bash women as a whole, to which Ethan put it perfectly, “I’ve seen people take the stance of- women just lie. We aren’t going to do that. 1 in 4 of sexual assault cases get reports and of that- 6 out of every thousand actually lead to any type of incarceration. Only 2 to 8% of sexual assault allegations are actually false. It still makes sense to side with the woman with any accusation, just because this one was false doesn’t mean others are false”.
Though the trip began with the promise of shared memories, it ended with a much deeper understanding– sometimes travel reveals as much about the people you’re with as it does about the places you go. Sometimes, the best stories are born from the most uncomfortable detours.
Katya Ozerkov
Katya Ozerkov is an outgoing content strategist at The Georgia Sun. Despite not being a native Georgian, she has immersed herself in Georgia's vibrant arts scene for several years. As an artist first and foremost, she is passionate about interacting with and fostering connections with artists in the Greater Atlanta metro area and building a supportive creative community.
