The name “Your Gay Guyde” came to Carlos Alves in a dream.
He was a Brazilian living in Malta, recently out of a long-term relationship. Post-COVID, he was trying to see as much of the world as he could. In Krakow, Poland, he and a friend found out about a party while chatting with a guy on a hookup app. They only had an address, so they took an Uber to a quiet residential area. It was dark. They rang an intercom buzzer at a building and went down to the basement. It was, much to their relief, a massive, cool gay party.
Alves wanted to come up with a way to share the knowledge he was gaining as a single gay man who wasn’t afraid of going to dodgy neighbourhoods if it meant finding fantastic parties and meeting other gay guys. He decided to create a travel blog, but he wanted to position it just right.
“At the time I was reading Paulo Coelho, this super spiritual stuff. It was in one of Coelho’s books that if you ask a question before going to sleep, before dreaming, you get the answer. Before going to bed, I put a notebook and a pen next to my bed. Then literally, in the middle of the night, I woke up from a dream and I had ‘Your Gay Guyde.’ That’s how it started.”
Alves is fearless in charting the gay scene all over the world. He’ll get out of an Uber in places where many people would just go back to their hotel. And by taking risks, he’s had a lot of sexy adventures and met a lot of guys. Wander+Lust talked to him about his travels and what he tries to capture with his Your Gay Guyde videos.
It can be tricky recommending trendy new gay parties to travellers because they might only exist for a short time, and even then, they might always be changing venue and vibe.
Let’s say you have a location with more than 30 bars. My job is to tell you about the bars you shouldn’t miss. Where do the bears go? Where do the twinks go? If you want to go out on a Thursday, what’s the place to head to? What’s the place you don’t want to miss on a Friday? The way I used to find this information is getting on Grindr when I first arrive in a place. Now that I’m bigger, people send me information on my Instagram, on my YouTube channel. I’ll ask for tips and advice so I can start building content from what people tell me on my socials.
In your videos, you’re good at giving us an overview of why to visit a place, but you also include very precise details on how cruising works there, where it happens. How do you balance being authoritative with being naughty?
I like the naughty part because I think there are so many people that don’t speak about it. And the ones that do speak about it, I think they speak too much. I just want to make sure that guys can find those places. That’s my first point. Cruising places, especially the busy ones, are usually not easy to get to. It’s like: Take three trains, then you walk up a mountain, then get on a horse. Firstly, I just want to make sure they get there. I do film a little bit of what I’m doing—I will try to show a bit of a beach, for example, but I try not to show the other guys or what they’re up to in those places.
You’ve had some hot guides and fellow travellers. How do you find them?
Sometimes I meet people on Instagram. But the majority of them I meet while travelling. I travel alone, I’ve been doing it for two and a half years now. I meet people when I’m making videos, at parties. Then we end up going to two or three parties together. You build these friend groups and keep up the relationships on social media. I met these guys in London, at a sex party, then I took them to a group sex party that’s very famous. We like to joke that gays all go on the same holidays to the same places, and that you see the same faces wherever you go.
What’s your number one favourite place to visit?
Gran Canaria is a place where I will always have fun. When the Bible describes Gomorrah, they were talking about Gran Canaria—it’s pure sex there. Specifically in the southern part, Maspalomas. You can have as much sex as you want, party as much as you can. Everything is so extreme. People walk around with their butts out and nobody says anything.
But I’ve also fallen in love with Greece. I’ve been to Paros, Naxos, Mykonos. The gays who go there have a different mentality. Everyone is very open, everyone wants to connect. I will say that Madrid is a place where you don’t find love, you find sex. But in Greece, it’s very different.
What’s the least favourite place that you’ve done a video about?
Paris. I think Paris is overrated. I don’t think the gay bars and clubs there are fun. The sauna I went to was too big and it wasn’t fun. Also, Milan. In terms of Italy, it’s the place where you’ll find the best parties, bars, gay life. But compared to other places in Europe, it’s meh. I preferred Palermo because people there go to gay naked beaches. They’re very friendly. When they meet a tourist, they want tourists to have the best impression of the place.
What’s your number one piece of travel advice for gay guys?
Never trust anyone in general, even if the person is nice. We always have to be taking care of ourselves. I’ve been travelling in the gay world for the last two and a half years. Nothing’s happened to me, but I’ve heard so many stories of things that have happened because people didn’t take care of themselves. Especially in terms of the drug scene in a city.
What are your rules for going out at night?
I have a checklist all the time of what I have in my bag. Before I zipper up, zipper down, I check my keys, my cards. I never go out with a passport. I never accept drinks from people. If I’m travelling with a friend, I tell them where I am. I listen to my guts quite a lot. If a situation is dodgy, I’ll just leave.
You said you haven’t had a terrible experience. What’s been your worst one?
When I was at a sauna in Madrid, a lot of people started passing out from G. At a certain point, they didn’t have enough sofas to put all the people. They turned on the lights and announced that an ambulance had come because somebody stopped breathing. For me, it was like, wow, this is way too much.
I had trouble in Amsterdam when someone stole my passport. It was a nightmare. Usually when I film, I bring a bag with me, and they grabbed it out of my bag. I have a resident card, but I’m not European and you can’t travel with a resident card. I was stuck for a few days and it cost me extra.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
