We’re on the road by 5:45 A.M. to visit Pueblo Fantasmagoría—a forgotten village about thirty minutes from the town receding in the predawn distance. The place was abandoned many years ago, after residents started seeing ghosts. It’s creepy and beautiful, now only the crumbling stone half structures of abandoned houses and an old church at the center. It’s made otherworldly by the light layer of snow dusting it.
Our route was plotted based on dry-season conditions, but the unusually heavy rains last night have turned everything to mud. Our jeep is no match for the thick stuff, inches deep. We get stuck, our back wheel spinning helplessly while Simón twists the steering wheel back and forth. The rest of us tumble out, still bleary-eyed and shivering in the cold mountain air, to prod the vehicle forward.
“Bloody hell,” Cassie mutters.
With a few grunting pushes, the jeep is back on its way. It speeds ahead of us, and we run to catch up with it. This happens every fifteen minutes or so for the next hour. By the end, our clothes are speckled with mud as if we’re a bunch of Jackson Pollack paintings.
Next we hit snow. Perched high in the Andes, we inch our way along icy trails no wider than the jeep, roads not meant to be traveled in these conditions. The car is quiet, a collectively held breath. Even fearless Hans grips his camera with white knuckles. I think for the first time in Bolivia but not nearly the last that there is a very good chance I am going to die. All it will take is one slipping tire and over the edge we’ll go, crashing down hundreds of feet to our rocky demise. Bolivian adventure is nothing like American adventure, which is peppered with permission slips and legal waivers and the promise that someone will pay if an accident occurs. Even Australian adventure felt designed more to make you pee yourself than lose your life. When I skydived, I was confident the instructor would take care of me. The challenge with bungee jumping was more psychological than physical. But here in Bolivia, I feel like anything could happen, like I’m no longer playing at adventure. And that is scary.
In Buenos Aires, I made acquaintance with a chain-smoking Argentinean at the hostel. One evening we found ourselves in a heated discussion that began with his demanding I refer to myself as a United Statesian instead of an American, since he was an American, too, and ended with him laughing at my culturally inherited notions of invincibility and optimism.
“That’s what’s so funny about you Americans,” he scoffed. “You always assume the best, while the rest of us know to expect the worst to happen.”
I once thought the world was a fair and secure place, but that faith has been shaken of late, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. When we make it across in the jeep, I consider it no more than a stroke of good luck and not the inevitable security of my continued existence, as I once would have.
“I really thought I was going to die that time,” travel-wizened Hans admits when we stop for hot coffee and stale bread smothered in dulce de leche, and we all laugh nervously.
A few hours later, we approach what appears to be a deep river cutting off the road. Two vehicles are parked, defeated, on the other side; their occupants lounge with the doors open and music blasting, waiting for I don’t know what. We are prepared to stop, too, all signs pointing to the fact that the water is impassable, but Simón plows straight into it without a moment’s hesitation. Smack in the center of the stream, the car dies. A range of emotions whips through the backseats like we’re one organism as we watch freezing-cold water slowly seep in through the doors. First, silent shock. Then we get annoyed, marked by Cassie shouting, “This is just fucking stupid” half a dozen times. But soon, as we realize we must jump ship, a kind of manic hilarity takes over. We know if we cross in our shoes and pants, we’ll freeze the rest of the afternoon. So we strip. Off come the boots, the three layers of socks, and the two pairs of pants. In our underwear, we gingerly hop into the chilly water and wade toward the shore, clothes held above our heads, much to the amusement of the locals on the other side.
The jeep miraculously roars to life once the guys prod it onto dry land. By then we have all made peace in our different ways with the fact that today is going to be a series of the unexpected. Soon enough, black storm clouds gather, and we’re engulfed by a downpour that lets up only long enough for us to pull off the road to check out the rows of pink flamingos lining the edge of a pristine lake. It is here that we’re nearly struck by lightning. The bolt strikes so close that everyone drops to the ground in panic. Except me. For some reason, my twisted instinct is to jump up in fear. We race back to the relative safety of the car and skid through a terrible snow/hail storm for the next hour. As though to add to the delightfulness of Mother Nature’s tantrum, Simón believes using the windshield wipers depletes the car’s battery, so he uses them only when an inch of snow has completely obstructed the front window and we’re skidding blindly into the abyss. Then he lets them flap once, barely clearing the obstruction, before shutting off the device again.
When we arrive at the salt flats the next day, we’ve earned it. At four-thirty A.M. we’re up racing along in the dark. The sunrise is a hundred different shades of orange, and the water atop the salt plain makes it seem like we’re gliding along a lake. It also reflects the sky, so the mountains and clouds are both above and below us. The salt plains themselves stretch for twelve thousand square kilometers. The area used to be part of a prehistoric lake that almost completely covered southwestern Bolivia. The lake dried up, leaving behind a few small bodies of water and these salt pans, of which Salar de Uyuni is the largest. From our final vantage point, there is nothing in any direction except endless salt and sky. We are insignificant specks in the middle of nowhere. Embracing the full force of that truth is liberating.
[18]
Our heroine and her trusty guide reunite. The two make haste to La Paz, where misfortunes beset the heroine, who must question herself and her fears and attempt to make some sense of the tricky pair.
Carly and I reunite in Uyuni. When she appears in front of me decked out in camouflage, I can’t help joke, “Have you joined the Bolivian army?” (Not that it’s totally out of the realm of Carly possibility, really.)
“Hilarious,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you in this crap town for so long I might just be desperate enough to do it.”
Our annoyances (hers at being stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting for me and mine at feeling pressured to rush up and meet her) dissipate in our excitement over being together again. We buy train tickets for the next day—the earliest we can get away—and settle in for a tedious thirty-six hours in Uyuni. At the local market Carly buys some yarn. She’s taken up crocheting in South America, and in her customary way, she’s already pretty good. She presents me with a slightly lopsided but attractive blue-and-white-striped hat. She herself is wrapped in a newly made scarf. Carly attempts several times to teach me what for her is a soothing ritual, but I can never get into it. When I relax, I want to be transported mentally by a film or book, whereas she prefers the trancelike momentum of physical repetition.
At the markets, a wrinkled man listening to a beat-up radio tells us that yesterday several trains in Madrid were bombed. Instantly, we think of Portu, who returned home soon after I left Ireland, but we never feel the impact of the event because after our encounter with the old man, we don’t see or hear anything more about the bombings. Outside of large cities, the Internet in Bolivia is unreliable and expensive. We log on every few weeks to send a mass email to friends and family, but otherwise we avoid it. So the important piece of information drifts easily away from us, as though it happened on another planet. We’re so connected with the all-encompassing realities of South America, and with ourselves, yet we’ve dropped far enough off the grid that we’re somewhat detached from the rest of the world.
The overnight train ride from Uyuni to Oruro sets the bar for extreme discomfort. Carly and I take turns in the window seat, where there is at least the hard glass to lean on, but neither of us gets any sleep. When we depart in the early mo
rning, our bodies ache and crack as if we’re eighty. The Oruro station is an excited mob of passengers elbowing their way to their luggage. A Bolivian woman smacks me in the gut with her huge blanket stuffed with what feels like bricks, but I’m too groggy to register it as anything other than one more bodily pain. Once we’ve gathered our packs, we trudge straight to the bus station to get tickets for La Paz. It is no less chaotic. Representatives from each company brandish brightly colored signs and enthusiastically yell out their prices and locations. We’re both so exhausted that we’re actually looking forward to another bus ride. No matter how uncomfortable, we’re so weary that nothing will be able to prevent us from passing out.
While we wait to leave the station, skinny kids shout, “Empanadas!” into the windows and do business with the outstretched hands motioning to them. A family of three is crammed awkwardly into the two seats next to us. The young son perches precariously atop his parents’ thighs, resting his bony elbows on his knees. As we leave the terminal, he shifts his weight a little and drops his head onto his mother’s thin shoulder, their deep-black hair colliding.
The bus ambles along without incident minus two small delays. First a flat tire keeps us lopsided in the road for a little over an hour. Carly is asleep, but I watch the male passengers depart, smoke, circle the dead wheel, and linger in the cold sun, chatting with one another while they keep an eye on the slow repairs. An hour after the bus starts up again, we are stopped at a checkpoint. Two tight-lipped men in black board and dig through the luggage piled in the nets overhead. Tense, silent minutes pass punctuated only by the rustle of mistreated belongings. Although for an extra five U.S. dollars, we could have booked roomy, reclining seats on one of the luxury buses that backpackers often splurge on in South America, Carly and I opted for the cheaper transport because the trip was only supposed to take three hours, which have now stretched into six. We are also determined to travel like the locals do. We firmly believe this is the most authentic, consciousness-raising way to travel, but some days in Bolivia are more physical and practical than enlightening. We spend a lot of time simply trying to get from one place to the next in one piece.
What are they even looking for?
“Drogas,” a man behind me whispers, as if he is reading my mind.
The dour-faced men motion for two couples to follow them. Both the women look our age. Their male companions grab their bags and silently descend the bus’s three beige steps and depart into the fading sunlight. It is only when I catch a fleeting glimpse of one of the women crossing the road to a small hut that I notice she is crying. Maybe I misunderstood the man behind me, because they don’t look like drug dealers. They look like us, some kids on a trip. I want to turn around and attempt to ask him to explain what happened, but an imposing silence permeates the air, so I keep quiet. The bus hobbles off without them, their empty seats offering no answers.
In La Paz, we push through the crowds and out into the cool afternoon to grab a taxi. A handful of relaxed drivers lean against their cars puffing cigarettes, but when they see us, they jump into action. The quickest whips open his door and ushers us into the faded leather seats. As we descend, I notice how the city climbs like ivy up the sides of the canyon surrounding it. A film of dust seems to have settled on the bleak houses and steep streets we spiral down. I try to relax and take in my new surroundings, but I cannot help feeling anxious, because a few weeks ago I met a pair of girls in Buenos Aires who were robbed on this very route. Halfway to their hostel, two men opened the back doors of their cab and climbed in on either side. Claiming to be government officials, they demanded a “tourist tax”—the price of which was hastily determined to be the full contents of their wallets. The driver said nothing during this exchange, and when the men finally departed, he dropped his terrified passengers at their destination without a word.
But Carly and I have no such bad luck. Our driver is an amiable guy chewing coca leaves who chats away first in clunky English and then in rapid Spanish. He leaves us in town with a smile and some directions I don’t understand. On either side of us, dusty stalls packed with mysterious bottles and supplies fill the narrow streets. Only later, when I’m studying the folded map in my guidebook, do I realize this area is an infamous witches’ market and those are unfamiliar potion ingredients like llama embryos, frog powder, and armadillos’ bodies. Carly confidently leads us to what seems to be a cheap, clean hotel. When I ask her how she knew about this place, she laughs and says, “I was just walking, mate.”
Inside, a heavyset woman takes our bolivianos and hands us a key. She nods in the direction of the stairs. At the top, we open the door to a room containing two narrow beds with scratchy blankets and stained sheets. I unbuckle my heavy pack from around my waist. It sags below my hips, and I slide it off with a quick shrugging motion. Inside this bag—plus the clothes and worn sneakers I’m currently wearing—is the sum total of my belongings: three T-shirts, two sweaters, a few pairs of pants, socks, ten pairs of underwear, bug spray, sunscreen, malaria tablets, some blue and green necklaces I picked up as presents, a guidebook with pages torn out, my journal, camera, a Michael Moore book I traded for a copy of The Lovely Bones a few days ago in one of the many hostels where we have gotten a few hours’ rest before heading back out on the road, and some fraying bits of red yarn left from Carly’s unsuccessful attempt to teach me to crochet. It’s enough to make my back ache on days like today. Carly’s pack is wet where her rice bag failed to protect it from the damp bus. It smells faintly, or we do. I can’t tell. We both desperately need showers, but the woman at the front desk has already warned us that there is no hot water. Since we are too cold to contemplate our third icy shower this week, we head downstairs to make some hot tea and attempt to warm ourselves up.
In the common area, a long-legged girl is draped over a bulky leather easy chair. “Have you done the Death Road?” she asks us in greeting.
I watch in horror as Carly’s eyes begin to glow. “No,” she says, leaning in. “What is it?”
The girl shuts her book and tucks her spider legs beneath her. “Well, the road from La Paz to Coroico is called the Death Road because apparently one vehicle goes over the edge every two weeks!” she tells us with what can only be described as sheer delight. “It’s the most deadly road in the world.” She pauses to let this sink in before bestowing her final piece of information upon us. “They take tourists mountain biking down it. You drop four thousand meters in four hours, and it’s sheer adrenaline the whole way. It’s so cold your arms and butt go completely numb and you feel like throwing up from the altitude.” This last bit seals the deal for Carly, although, truthfully, the girl had her at “Death Road.”
A glance in my guidebook confirms this tale and continues: “So, if you’re up to an adrenaline rush, you’ll be in your element, but if you’re unnerved by unsurfaced roads just wide enough for one vehicle, sheer one-thousand-meter drops, hulking rock overhangs and waterfalls that spill across and erode the highway, your best bet is either to walk to Coroico or to bury your head and don’t look until it’s over.”
Back in our room, I read this page out loud to Carly and tell her that I’m flexible: I’m open to either walking to Coroico or burying my head until it’s over.
“Oh, mate, come on. How many times do you get to bike the Death Road?”
Umm, zero, if I have my way, I think. I don’t. We have already decided to go into the jungle, a deal I made with Carly in exchange for visiting a Chilean observatory, a much more civilized expedition, in a few weeks. Unless we fly there, which we have already agreed is too expensive for my rapidly receding funds and Carly’s determined thriftiness, the Death Road is our only option.
There is a bravado among backpackers, especially the ones who have flung themselves into the more impoverished, off-the-beaten-path nations of the world. Stories of near-death experiences are the currency among this group, and in South America, many of the bragging rights come from getting somewhere spectacular through n
ontraditional means. Have you rafted to the Igauzu Falls? Hang glided over the Rio beaches? Hiked twenty-six miles through the Andes to reach Machu Picchu? Biked the world’s most dangerous road? Like a group of scouts sitting around a bonfire, we regale each other with tales of near-misses, and respect is bestowed in direct proportion to the level of danger, planned or not. Carly, as competitive as an Olympic athlete, is vying—might be vying for the rest of her life, in fact—for the boldest, baddest adventures that can be had. Me, well, I could feed the flames of my travel legend indefinitely off the terror-fest that was my jeep tour a few weeks ago. Hell, I think I should get three hundred gold stars just for setting foot in Bolivia in the first place. But Carly won’t rest until we’ve trapezed our way through South America with one arm tied behind our backs. This was part of what drew me to her, as I was looking for a way to test myself, too, though I had no idea how in over my head I was about to be.
The guy who sells us our “Death Road packages” has dozens of photos tacked to his wall displaying various red-faced riders giving the thumbs-up as they straddle their bikes or grinning broadly as they admire the awesome views. This will not be me. Carly, sure, but I’ve never even mountain biked before.
“One ticket for the last day of my life,” I tell the salesman. Carly rolls her eyes, then pries a credit card from my clutches.
The Death Road does have one advantage, however. It will get me out of La Paz, a city I am desperate to depart, a city that almost compels me to quit South America altogether. La Paz is Bolivia’s de facto capital (the government is here), although the second capital, Sucre, remains the judicial center. In La Paz, indigenous skirts mix with business suits, black bowler hats with briefcases. It’s frigid here, thanks to an altitude of 3,632 meters. And it’s even harder to breathe than in Tilcara, though we’re starting to get used to it.
The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure Page 21
