The camera I bought at an antique shop in Medellin, pre-broken:

I departed the luxurious apartment of Camila and Pilar after taking advantage of their kindness for far too long on a last ditch effort to see a little more of Colombia. I spent a fun day in a cold cold bus to Bogota and spent a weird night in a place called Alegria’s Hostel with a smoky, barracks-style dorm room full of semi-drunken English and a cat that freaked me out 3 times in the middle of the night by jumping up onto my bunk. I rocked over through the Candelaria to Platypus Hostel the next morning and found it full of friendly, English speaking youngsters with whom I spent a night drinking bad beer in the street after a day being a good tourist and finding my way around museums.

The Museo de Oro:

Another Botero Museum:

I left the next day for Santa Marta (after a delicious breakfast-slash-lunch). The 20-or-so-hour freezing cold bus ride was uneventful, other than a late-night stop by the military police to rifle through our bags and belongings looking for drugs and whatnot. And a stop in the middle of nowhere at a huge, roadside cafeteria that sold overpriced food to bus riders. Which I ate, happily.

I cruised through Santa Marta quickly and caught the first buseta I could find to Taganga, where I realized that the name of the hostel which I’d reserved was stored in my phone, which now had no battery. So I wandered around the little beach town with the 14-year-old on my back for a couple hours in the intense heat and sweated profusely until I found an Internet cafe and found the name of the hostel. An hour or so later (the streets in Taganga aren’t marked), I arrived at Hostel Tropical Maison and met Jean, the owner. Jean is the sort of fellow that people all over the world have stories about. He’s an old guy, a jazz pianist, a linguist who speaks at least six linguas, an opinionated storyteller, and a crank.

I was the only one in Jean’s house for the first couple days, which was a bit depressing, frankly. I spent a lot of time hearing about Jean’s lives abroad and his experiences alternately spying for the USIS and being followed by the FBI. And reading trashy novels in the comfy hammocks out back. But then, some very nice kids came and we went to the beach every single day for hours and hours. And I snorkeled like a mad man. And we went to the (two) clubs in Taganga and I danced like an idiot at one of them and tried my very best to flirt with girls. Oh, and my last night there I went nightswimming (in my dorkiest pair of underpants) with very kind, very cute Lizzie and very kind, very Australian James. Which was fun.

Yo Spoon, let’s go to Da Beach:

I came back to Medellin after a tearful (on my part) departure from the funnily, bizarrely inappropriate Canadian/South African couple and even-tempered Clover O’Brien (from guess what country) and found Camila as charming and gracious and lovely as ever. I saw her for just a few sad hours before I jumped in a cab the next morning to catch a plane back to, well, here.

I’m back in the States now, feeling like a bit of a stranger. I think that I’ve rewired by brain in the last almost eight months; some synapses in there have re-fused into a network in which my goal on any given day is to A] Find a place to stay, B] Find someone to hang out with, and C] Find a way to have a little bit of fun (but not too much). But I’m getting the hang of it again.

I loved my little trip. I loved the people I met, the places I saw. And yes, I am different.

1] Wake up at Camila’s lovely little apartment, eat a delicious breakfast cooked by either lovely, kind Camila or her lovely, hospitable mom. And feel a little guilty.

2] Loll around for an hour or two, obsessively checking Facebook and slowly working on personal hygiene tasks.

3] Work my way out into the sunlight. Walk to the Metro station down the hill from Envigado, take the spotlessly efficient Metro to Parque Berrio.

4] Eat a 6,000 peso lunch (which sounds expensive, but it’s really only three dollars) before heading over to the Museo Antioquia, which houses lots of Colonial and Colombian art, as well as a huge collection of Botero artwork. And has like 40 fat sculptures directly outside, which are funny and a little grotesque.

5] Jump on my new favorite friend, the Metro, to go check out the MAMM. But arrive there to find that it’s inexplicably closed.

6] So meet up with the Met to ride the crazy huge well-engineered gondola portion of the public transportation system up the hill to the allegedly dangerous little barrio of Santo Domingo, now home to a beautiful modern library bequeathed by the nation of Spain. To wander around a little bit and meet a super-charming technological librarian and speak some halting English.

7] Get kicked out of the library’s computer lab (because it was closing) and running in a downpour down the super-modern handicapped ramp. And falling on my knees in a super-radical rockstar slide in the deluge and ripping a rockstar hole in my jeans and getting some rockstar blood all over myself. And feeling pretty not-rockstar as the little kids were laughing at me and I boarded the fantastic futuristic gondola all wet and bloody.

8] To go back down the hill and eat a really bad expensive sushi roll in Parque LLeras that was not fried in tempura batter, but some kind of corn meal, which does not work well with the Japanese food.

9] Before jumping back on the M and taking my Camino Verde bus back to my perfect apartment and loll around a bit more before welcoming Camila back home from her 14 (or so) hour day at the fancy restaurant.

Other, less common occurrences:

Cirque de Soleil was in town for Los Juegos Sudamericanas and Camila mentioned that I ought to go. When we stopped by a hostel in Parque Lleras to grab a map, she happened to know someone that worked there that somehow had access to (maybe a bit below the board) entrance to the inauguration show. So there was some rapid discourse in a language that I now don’t understand at all on many cellular telephones, and I was told to show up at a certain place at a certain time. Which I did and waited around a couple hours with some super sweet college kids for some shady guy to arrive out of the crowd with dubious access to the show. Which he never did, so I followed the college kids to a nearby bar where I was forced to drink an undisclosed amount of aguardiente and danced really poorly/sweatily with a kind/patient young woman who put up with me even though I have as much rhythm as a, well, a WASP-y white guy from a cold climate.

The college kids:

A delicious meal at Camila’s very fancy restaurant at which I chatted amiably with Rob (from California), her boss and the head chef, and ate one of the best meals of my life, all explained in lurid detail by them both. Was wowed.

Night at the disco with Camila and her very special friends, pretending that Cami is European to the poor drunk Colombian guy (self-proclaimed nickname “the body”) and dancing like a little kid before meeting Pink (not the Pink) and being forced to say some very nasty things in a language I don’t understand and joining in the cleverly written song, Pink is the Best.

Also:

Medellin is Canada. But warm. And the people are more attractive. Everything is clean and modern and attractive. The citizenry is incredibly kind and gregarious and just, well, nice. I feel safer in Medellin (rightly or no) than I’ve felt anywhere outside Patagonia in the last seven months. It’s more Canada than Canada. Is this what Scandanavia is like?

I’ve gone to the aquarium and the botanical gardens and another museum and another museum and a big fancy market and a big fancy mall and another big fancy mall. And the movies, twice.

I walk a lot. And it’s hilly and warm. I’m getting a little sweaty. But people are so nice, they never mention it.

I awoke at 5:15 the next morning and headed off to Colombia in high style. Lonely Planet, that scourge of travelers, told me that Terminal Carapungo is the place to catch buses North. So, I again took the trole to the end of the line and hopped on a bus with a giant sign that read “Carapungo.” And rode it for an hour before realizing that there was a little town on the outskirts of Quito called Carapungo, and the bus terminal confusingly isn’t located there. I jumped off the bus with my mochila gigante in tow and grabbed a shady-looking taxi to ask where the heck I needed to go. Terminal Norte is evidently what it’s called, kids.

Five hour bus from Quito to Tulcan: uneventful. Taxi to Rumichaca: uneventful. Border crossing at Rumichaca: marred by closed borders (a four-hour wait for the Colombian elections) and a mixup by myself and fellow Michigander Tyler over which country’s immigration office we were supposed to visit first, but buoyed by good conversation with friendly (of course) Canadians that had just spent a week on the farm with the Irish expat screamers, currently located 6 hours outside Popayan. Combi ride to Ipiales: uneventful. 10 hour bus ride to Cali: happily uneventful, with a bit of chatting with friendly Irish couple who’ve seen all the countries I have with the addition of Brazil in only 7 weeks. 10 hour bus ride to Medellin: uneventful and beautiful.

Medellin is a lovely, lovely place. It’s really a beautiful city, incredibly modern and clean, and surrounded by pretty little tree-covered mountains. People are more friendly and helpful (people approach me on the street and ask me if they can help. A lot.) than anywhere I’ve yet been. Camila and her mom are hospitality defined. And everywhere I look are quaint shops and charming restaurants and activities and cute little tree-lined avenues. I’m enjoying myself quite a bit, and I’ve only been here a day and a half.

But my camera is now officially broken. So you’ll just have to imagine it.

Yours.

Mr. Cool:

We stayed in Ica at a very nice hotel called Inka del Sol, which had a huge pool and a big turtle and super comfortable beds and was just a great place to chill out for a while. And we went on a date for Valentine’s Day, which was fun.

I’m Eating Breakfast!

Traveling along the West coast of South America, one encounters a lot of Pisco, which is a liquor made from the skins of grapes. Chileans and Peruvians both lay claim to discovering/inventing this super-dulce, slightly disgusting beverage, but only Peru actually has a city named after it, which is where Astrid and I found ourselves next.

There are a couple little islands off the coast of Pisco that have been billed as “The Poor Man’s Galapagos,” so we booked a little tour and joined the throngs of gringitos in multiple Zodiacs circling the islands, taking thousands of digital photos of tens of thousands of three different species of cormorants and hundred of narking, swimming, and cutely posing sea lions. We weren’t actually allowed on the islands, which was just fine becausen they were completely buried in not-sweet-smelling bird poop, in some places as much as 50 meters deep. In past centuries, Europeans (mostly the Dutch) and North Americans mined the poop to be used as fertilizer. Which is probably not a fun job.

Poor Man’s Galapagos:

In Pisco we stayed at a nice little place with a tiny abuelita hostess and a tiny little pool (which I refered to as a piscinita) that I quite enjoyed goofing around in. We stayed in the Huaraz-themed room, which got us excited about our next destination. And we ate weird Peruvian meals and marvelled at how much the town of Pisco has not made a recovery after the earthquake it suffered a couple years ago.

We jumped on a bus for Lima and arrived there to find that all the buses to Huaraz were booked for the next few days. So, not wanting to waste time in The Ugliest City in South America, we found a bus headed toward Chimbote, which is a bit North of Huaraz. And in Chimbote we found a scary mountain bus back down to Huaraz, thankfully. This little detour added eight or nine hours to our bus-riding time, but we arrived in Huaraz the day after ariving in Lima instead of three days later, so it was definitely worth it.

As was Huaraz. Being a major trekking destination for turistas (many of those Of The Faith), the shysters are out in full force at all times, especially at the tiny Huaraz bus terminals. We were accosted multiple times during our short stay in the city, mostly by kindly-seeming middle aged men attempting to hard-sell us tours of the Santa Cruz trek. We promptly turned them all down and walked around the city for a day and a half buying presents for our loved ones and eating some pretty delicious crepes. And we found a nice little tour agency from which we purchased a four-day tour with the help of three young Isreali women who did all the hard bargaining for us, and ended up getting us all a pretty good deal.

We began our excursion into the second-highest mountain range in the world early the next morning and spent the next few hours shuttling from combi to mototaxi (one covered with Nazi emblems that the Israelis suggested Astrid and I take instead of them) to vagon on some mountain roads on which I would be hesitant to drive the Sube, once accosted by youths with buckets of water aiming for gringos (travel tip: roll up your window on the road to the trailhead). Until arriving in a high valley to meet our burro driver slash prep cook and head into the heights.

The first day was a bit difficult, as we were acclimating to the insane altitude and there was quite a bit of elevation gain, but the weather was nice and we weren’t yet beaten down by the constant slog. And Freddy (como la pèlicula, dice Freddy) our guide was muy amable, if a bit reticent. He cooked us decent meals of various meats and rice throughout the trip, and always offered us a cup of coca tea as we arrived into camp grumpy and tired

On the second day we tromped across a partially flooded valley floor in the rain, getting our boots wet jumping over and sometimes falling in various streams, but flat ground, even soggy flat ground, was a nice change of pace. Until the sun came out and we started up the zig-zag (which is what Peruvians and Israelis call switchbacks) up to a very pretty and very icy glacial lake, into which I decided against Freddy’s advice to jump.

Hot stuff:

We camped a couple long hours later on another valley floor onto which the clouds opened up all night and we awoke to wet sleeping bags, but our bad moods were tempered by the constant kvetching of the Israeli girls. Their horrible attitudes in the face of dampness made our slight bemusement seem stoic and rugged.

And our third day was spent hiking up to a gorgeous mountain pass through rain and wind and slush and snow and slipping burros and fellow gringos. It was hard, but the view (and the friendly snowball fight) at the top made it worthwhile. The way down from the notch in the ridge made by our trail was a bit perilous, but our by now larger expedition made up of our crew, another tour group, and a couple of Quebecois that had initially attempted the trek on their own but had joined the other group in order to let the burros carry their heavy bits was in high spirits after the mountain pass. Until about four more hours had passed, at which point most of us were sore and a little blistery and ready for some of Freddy’s coca tea. It took another three hours, but we all made it, tired and wet and quite sick of telling the indigenous mountain children that no, we didn’t have any caramelos, lo siento.

We left the next day after hiking a short couple (vertical) hours out of the valley and back into civilization to take a long couple of combi rides into Huaraz. Astrid and I did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day with the exception of eating a dinner and watching half of Doubt. And we took another combi ride to one of the world’s dirtiest-looking swimming pools the next day, which was odd, but we had a great time goofing around in the private baths upstairs

And so, we hopped on a bus to Trujillo and then a taxi to Huanchaco where we’d reserved a room at the impressively named Hotel Internacional Huanchaco. We paid out the nose for this place but got our own little bungalow with a table outside to eat desayuno. It had a nice small pool, too, which we used a bit, but the place was a little far from the rest of Huanchaco, and the walk along the beach to the rest of the pueblito was marred by a monstrous decomposing sea lion carcass. So we moved lodging. To Naylamp, a sweet little place right on the beach with a burrito joint a few steps away and comfortable rooms and a grumpy staff and ondas muy tranquilas. Astrid and ended up staying in Huanchaco for four days just hanging out on the beach and eating ceviche and burritos and drinking copious amounts of Fanta. And I rented a surfboard from some jerks and performed miserably. But I’ll try again, someday.

And then Astrid left, which was very sad.

Huanchaco beach time:

I took off for Mancora the next day and found a little place with a rudely indifferent staff called La Posada where I could set up my tent in their yard for seven soles. Which I did, and spent the next few days alternating between the pool and the ocean and reading various novels. And again meeting up with Camille and Elsa and Aussie Rich. And chatting with a slightly odd and amazingly unlucky Michigander named Jackie.

The border crossing from Peru into Ecuador at Tumbes is notoriously bad, and I’d considered skipping Ecuador and just flying into Colombia from Peru to avoid it. But I managed to find some hidden well of determination and decided to bus it into Guayaquil with the kids. It was happily uneventful. But I was a tad sick during my day-long stay in Guayaquil (I didn’t actually leave my hostel for the duration), but felt great the next day when we headed North to a cute little berg called Cuenca, where we kept saying things like, “¡Dios, this place is bonita!”

We zipped back to Guayaquil to catch a bus to Puerto Lopez, where we marvelled at how unlike Cuenca it was, and how uncute. But we (actually Camille) patched together a jungle trek with a friendly knowledgeable local who showed us brightly-colored birds and a couple frogs and many crawlies and even a few monkeys. And Camille wowed us all with her devil-sticks routine. We showered the filth and bugs off and Rich and I drank some beer and we ate the World’s Most Satisfying Crepes that night, and the next morning headed for Manta and Montecristi, where I bought someone a hat.

I’m staying in ugly Manta for another day before heading to Quito and Riobamba to take the zigzaggy reversing train down a hole in a mountain. Or at least that’s what I’m told.

Your Faithful Intermittant Correspondant.

But! I have a few hundred words in my phone, and quite a bit more in the noggin, so I’ll brief you all on my adventures soon. Until then, rest assured that I am in fact alive and content and traveling North toward Colombia. And very, very tan.

Your Intrepid Exporer.

And a stuffed fox hung up in front of a Arequipena ad featuring a bikini-clad woman:

The following day we walked back down to the canyon bottom and swam around in a little pool (and ate another delicious meal) for four hours before heading back up the canyon wall. The other side of the canyon (as opposed to the first side, which we climbed down) is about 1200 vertical meters from the bottom to the cliff edge. I’d been hearing about the Colca Canyon hike from my hostel-mates in Arequipa for a couple days, and most of them had told me their times (from top to bottom), so I was excited to see how quickly I could do it. You’ll be happy to hear that I made it, barely alive, in 1 hour, 21 minutes, about an hour before the next member of my little group.

We were treated to a two-star hotel in the little town at the edge of the canyon, which at that point felt like about a seven-star place (the showers. were. incredible) and as the Festival de la Virgen de la Candeleria was in full swing, we were treated to some pretty rhythmic, pretty drunken dancing by the indigenously dressed locals, which some of us joined in, to a certain extent.

Then, long, boring, uncomfortable bus ride back to Arequipa, broken only by a visit to the thermal baths, which was fun enough and involved a lot of bikinis.

I arrived back in Arequipa and toured a cool, old, huge, quiet monastery (twice!), where I took a great deal of super respectful photos:

Where the nunnies washed their undies:

Various dudes in states of piety:

I waited around in Arequipa for a few days, mostly goofing around with Elsa and Camille (who are there volunteering at an English school) and enjoying a super fun, very meaty dinner with Caroline (from Valparaiso, remember?). Because, of course, Astrid was coming to Peru, and Arequipa was our meeting point.

Entonces, we went to a fancy beach resort in Chala (on the recommendation of two little blonde kids from Mount Shasta), where we goofed around and played in the ocean and ate some delicious ceviche that may have made Astrid sick. Oh, yeah, and we looked at some ruins, sponsored by Pepsi.

Astrid in a hangmat:

On our collectivo ride to Nazca, we stopped at a pretty brutal car wreck on the highway and three small children and three really terrified women got into our little van. They’d been in the car accident and needed a ride to the hospital in Nazca, so I scrunched up into a little ball at Astrid’s feet and we all managed to fit in.

In Nazca we took a little Cessna ride to view the Nazca lines from above, which was fine (mostly because, unlike the complain-y Canadian behind me, I didn’t barf). It was mostly just cool to fly in a tiny airplane. I even got to wear a funny headset.

Tonight, Ica for sandboarding. It’s going to be tubular.

Yours.

You can finally tick the box next to the floating and Taquile islands off the Northern coast of Lago Titicaca. The floating islands were well-constructed of reeds and bobbing chunks of rooty turf (they didn’t sink, at least during my short visit) and incredibly touristy. For instance, as our dragon-headed reed boat was leaving, the brightly clad indigenous women sang a few pop songs and waved us off with a cheery “hasta la vista, baby.” I was pretty embarrassed.

Hasta la Vista, Baby:

And then we went to Taquile. I was going to describe the grumpy, clumsy dance between the native people and the gringoes that we witnessed after a trucha lunch, but it was just so awkward and I don’t want you to have to cringe as much as I did.

In short: Islands at the Southern end of Titicaca = definitely worth seeing. Islands at the Northern end of Titicaca = skippable. End complaining.

But! I really liked Puno! It was a cool mid-sized city with real streets and curbs and we stayed in a nice hotel room with free towels and cable television and a maid that came every morning to make our beds. For like 5 dollars a night! And we (again, Elsa and Camille and I) ate a few delicious Peruvian meals (not cuy) and took a few super-radical mototaxi rides and visited a super-boring boat museum.

I took a lot of photos in and outside the mototaxi:

Before I headed a bit Southwest to Arequipa, where I find myself now, about to embark on a little trek into Colca Canyon that leaves at 3:30 tomorrow. In the morning.

Also, Alpaca World(!):

Who’s your favorite alpaca? I know who mine is.

Climbing the Inca Steps:

Also, I’m living it up in Copacabana in a huge room all to myself with three beds and cable television and a decent breakfast and semi-warm water in the shower. I’m probably paying more for it than any other tourist in town, and it’s still only $11 a night. So that’s nice. But the combination of mucha lluvia and cable television (a Lost marathon!) is turning out to be pretty dangerous.

Edit, 5 hours later:
The sun appeared, if only for a couple of hours at midday. So I booked a night at Hosteria de Las Islas for tomorrow night, and trekked a bit around the South end of the island to look for Templo Pilcocaina, and got a little lost traipsing through tiny terraced potato fields before finding it. It was, and is, old. And ruiny. Tomorrow I’m coming back and doing the whole tour of the island, and may have more descriptive information to impart.

Wet Llamas:

Also, I got slightly hoodwinked today. Upon arriving on the island, I promptly headed to the shack advertising 4:00 departures back to Copacabana and bought a ticket back, just in case the Argentine hoardes might fill the boats up. When I arrived back at the dock at 3:30, I asked a few people which boat I was supposed to take, and they all told me that the company on my ticket didn’t actually have 4:00 departures back to Copacabana. And the shack at which I bought it was deserted. And my ticket conveniently didn’t have a time written on it. So I bought another ticket from an equally reputable-looking man sitting on a log. All in all, I was only duped for 20 Bolivianos, which is like three dollars. But still!

Reed Boat at El Puerto Turistico:

Edit, next day:
I came back to the island and took a proper tour with a little Aymara man and Cami and Elsa today. It was much more interesting on the North end of the island, and the weather was about a thousand times nicer, so I had a beautiful time. We saw the birthplace of the Inca god of the sun, and a little island solely populated by virgenes. And I got the worst sunburn of my South American adventure thus far because I was expecting more rain & so didn’t put on much sunblock. I look like a beet. With a peeling nose.

Hiking the Ridge of isla del Sol:

Edit, next day:
Sunburnt, rainy. Catching the ferry back to Copacabana and it seems like the Argentines have left Bolivia; my embarque is full of gringos from the Commonwealth who really like to talk. I’m a bit grumpy, though, as I didn’t bring enough money to the island to buy meals and water, so I’m anxious to get back to Copa to get some suspicious, delicious Bolivian food and refreshing industrial water.

Edit, next day:
Arrived back on the mainland and rejoined my French/British/Honduran compadres for an amazing, spicy and quaint Mexican meal and a walk up to the Virgin peak in town from which we saw an amazing sunset over the entire pueblito and had the opportunity to purchase myriad miniature cars, trucks, and what looked like Mr. Brady style 70s condominiums for blessing by the virgin. But I chose not to purchase any, and took photos instead:

I now find myself on the road to Puno with Cami and Elsa. My anxiety about the Peruvian border crossing turned out to be unfounded; I guess the $140 I paid in Uyuni for a visa was actually legit. The Colombian border may be a bit different. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. So to speak.

And finally:
Bolivia is different. It’s the poorest country in South America, and you can tell. The people are incredibly nice and hospitable and soft spoken. And lodging, meals and sundries are cheap. The countryside is beautiful, and the buses haven’t been bad at all. But I have been taking turisticos (as opposed to publicos, which only cost maybe a dollar more), so that may be why I’ve been so comfortable.

Plus:
Peru is in a state of National emergency due to widespread flooding and mudslides. I saw on the television news this morning that hundreds of turistas are stranded in Aguas Calientes and hygenic conditions are deteriorating because so much infrastructure has been destroyed by flooded rivers and the storms. And Macchu Picchu is closed. So I may have to wait a little while to tackle that bit of adventure.

Your Intrepid Correspondent.

Muddy, downy:

Also, I went to see Evo Morales get inaugurated. We (Cami and Elsa and I, again!) took a collectivo to a little town called Tiahuanaco to see the informal, indigenous inauguration, which was fun, and odd, and just, well, great. And then the next day we were walking around town looking for a park when we stumbled across the stadium, and followed the crowds in. To the official inauguration ceremony. Where I listened to a whole lot of folkloric (it’s a word!) Bolivian music and danced a little bit and saw Rafael Delgado, Raul Castro, and Hugo Chavez speak. So I’m pretty much a socialist now.

That big white square is actually Evo on the screen:

Entonces, I went back inside, upstairs, to find the El Dorado window, handed the nice senorita my voucher, and was told that the voucher I’d bought was for tomorrow, not today. Blerg. I’d told the friendly woman at the tour agency earlier that I needed a ticket for the 7:00 to La Paz. She didn’t ask me, and I didn’t tell her, which day; I’d just assumed it was the same day as my purchase. So, here I was at the terminal with all my possessions in the world, a ticket for the wrong day, no hostel booked for the night in Sucre, and a pretty desperate look on my face. I asked the senorita at the terminal if it was possible to change my ticket for the later bus, but she showed me on the screen that every seat in both the 7:00 and 7:30 bus was filled, and I was pretty much out of luck.

Except. Five minutes of me trying to look as pitiful, yet friendly and gracious as possible, later, she had an idea. Apparently there’s a semi-truck-style bunk behind the driver’s seat in some of these buses where the co-pilot can catch some zeds during the trip. Senorita actually had a picture of one on her computer to show me, and, of course I said I’d take it at no extra charge.

So I retrieve my mochila from the dangerous descending hook manned by two 9-year-olds, toss it into the bus, and settle into the seat next to the driver (offered to me by one of the co-pilots). It was fun, and a bit scary, to see the road from this perspective. Sometimes it seems like bus drivers in South America are a bit reckless, even from the comfort of a reclining seat in the back of the bus, but you don’t really know how reckless they are until you’re sitting next to one and watching as they careen through tiny streets at top speed and barely avoid killing pedestrians and domestic animals while joking around and gesturing wildly with their (multiple) co-pilots and buddies and the little Chola woman seated at my feet. And about a half an hour into the 12-hour trip, they busted out the 96% alcohol, which made me a little apprehensive. But, to their credit, all it was used for was to give a few drops to Pachamama out the window, and to bless the steering wheel with an alcohol baptism of sorts. And the driver crossed himself with it maybe a dozen times.

A bit later one of the co-pilots asked me if I wanted to retire to the cabin. So I climbed back there over another guy and found the bunk a bit small (my feet stuck off the end about a foot and a half), a bit stinky, and a bit claustrophoby, but a decent way to pass a night. It was a space about 3 feet wide, five feet long, and two feet high, with a blacked out window and a blanket with a picture of (I think) a sweet wolf on it. So I turned my iPod on and prepared for a boring, dark, stinky night alone. Until a stop in the middle of nowhere at which I got out to stretch my legs and came back to find a bedmate.

It’s two in the morning. You’ve been sleeping for a couple hours in a small dark box, being thrown around by a superstitious (maybe drunk) driver’s erratic driving, listening to cumbia antigua, and smelling a scratchy wolf blanket that you’re using as a pillow. You’re woken up, you stand outside for three minutes, and you go back to your little box to find another guy in there. What do you do?

You know what I do? I climb back in. I spoon. I sleep like a baby. And I arrive in La Paz still comfortable with my sexuality.

La Paz Terminal: