by Ted Simon
Hoping we were out of range of suspicion we stopped and slept. I rode back to the scene of our 'crime' next morning to recover a piece of cord that Bruno was missing. I was puzzled by the incident, wondering why the pole had fallen, and why Bruno's head was not split open. The cord was there. The pole lay as we had left it, and I touched one end of it. It was as light as cork, having been entirely eaten away inside by termites leaving only a thin shell.
We rode a long way north that day, and were approaching Ecuador, and still the idyllic beach had eluded us. We came then into a surreal landscape of wind-whipped sandstone shapes where petroleum wells glittered and nodded mysteriously in the wilderness, like a colony of extraterrestrial beings. When the road swung back to the ocean after Talara I looked down and saw it, a broad, gently curving bay embraced by headlands, a fine beach rising up to a cliff face, two small brightly-painted fishing boats beached, two others at anchor in the bay, and no other sign of people or habitation.
I rode down to it and dissolved in its beauty. The sand was soft and unspoiled up under the cliff face, and washed clean and smooth down by the ocean, with no dividing line of sea weed to attract irritating insects. Along one part of the beach some black stone thrust up through the sand. It had been lapped and hollowed by the tide into elegant geometrical forms, lovely in themselves but also so deliberate and precise that I could almost fancy Nature mocking: 'Fit a function to this then, if you please.'
Other bigger rocks stood out into the ocean and offered good platforms for fishing. Squadrons of grey pelicans cruised complacently a few yards offshore, falling now and again like feathered bombs to prove the fish were there. Frigate birds hovered above, printing their primeval black silhouettes on pure blue. The Pacific stretched calm and glorious under the afternoon sun and the cliffs around glowed rosy and warm.
Bruno followed me down and parked the Renault on a hard shelf, by the rock face, resisting the temptation for once to rush in and sink the van irrevocably into the sugary sand. I unpacked the bike and constructed a nest for myself in the sand. It was quite unnecessary, I could have done it later or not at all, but I needed to do something to mark my arrival and stake my claim.
Then we fished, I from the rocks, Bruno by swimming out to one of the anchored boats. I caught nothing but was filled with peace and pleasure. After an hour I looked up to see a police car drawn up behind the Renault, its red light still twirling on its roof. Two policemen were standing by the van, looking fairly relaxed, and Bruno was swimming into shore. I decided to stay where I was. It was a disturbance. I could not help connecting it with the news from Lima, even the telegraph pole we had brought down, but I preferred not to speak to policemen.
I sneaked an occasional glance. Bruno seemed to be talking to them quite amicably. Two fishermen walked past me along the beach dangling several big fish at their sides, and stopped to join the discussion for a while. The fishermen walked on. The police climbed back into their car, and drove off. Bruno went back to the water and swam out again to the boats.
Later Bruno showed me his fish. It was a huge thing with golden discs shining on a gunmetal skin, called a sierra. He had not caught it, however. The police had requisitioned two of them from the fishermen and passed one over to us.
'What did the police want?' I asked.
'Who knows,' he shrugged. 'Maybe they come every day for a free fish. They warned me not to go out too far. Nada mas.'
It was an odd, meaningless event. Nothing ever came of it, and I never forgot it either. The sierra was one of the most prized fish on that coast, and we must have each eaten about two pounds of it, grilled to perfection. I lay back with tea and cigarettes at exquisite peace with the world.
Even Bruno was unusually calm. He was a good traveller, tough and inquisitive and (it must be said) unusually flexible for a Frenchman. But he was in his mid-twenties with a lot of life ahead of him, and in a bit more of a hurry than I was. That night he seemed willing to let time stand still.
'Who wants to be in Paris in some shitty box?' he said. T wish I didn't have to go back.'
'Why go then?' I asked.
T don't know. It's expected. It's the system - and there's the family farm to sort out now that my father is dead.
'But I don't want to get fucked in that bloody machine, stuck in a box for the rest of my days,' he said angrily. The French call a business a box, one of their better ideas.
'There was a man in Paraguay, out in the Chaco, a Frenchman. I really admired him. Self-made, self-taught, he lived in his own world surrounded by books and his farm. But his mind, it was extraordinary. He thought everything out for himself, and his ideas were original, marvellous. That is a life I envy, but I could never do it alone. I suppose I'm bound to get a job for a while . . . it's not too easy these days.'
Lying on that warm beach under the stars it seemed like the utmost folly even to contemplate it.
We stayed there another day and a night. Some of the time I sat and studied the crabs. They were small and lived in holes spaced about a foot apart. Around the holes was a curious pattern like the footprints of many birds, which first attracted my attention. I waited to see what it was. After a while the crabs would start to emerge, popping their brightly coloured periscope eyes over the top, before daring to climb out. Almost invariably each crab had a small ball of sand tucked under one arm, reminding me of an American footballer about to make a run. Some crabs kicked the ball, others walked a little way and then broke it up. Either way they then went over the loose sand with their pincers, stamping it down to leave those marks I had noticed.
In front of me were three holes set to form a triangle. One crab sat confidently at the mouth of its hole watching the other two. When another crab appeared the first crab made a rush for it, but always failed to get there before the other had bunked down its hole again. After many unsuccessful attempts, the aggressor decided on a final solution. It filled up both the other holes with sand, stamping down on them until they had disappeared. I waited a long while to see if either buried crab would reappear but did not see them again.
I had no idea what the game was but, for all its strangeness, the episode had an uncomfortable familiarity.
From that beach the road led almost directly into Ecuador. Right up to the frontier the country continued barren and rainless. Immediately beyond it we were enveloped by lush wet vegetation, waist-high grass, marshy land, muddy roads and mile upon mile of banana plantations.
In Quito we were accommodated by two Frenchmen seeing out their military service as teachers attached to the Legation. Of all their luxuries, we appreciated most the hi-fi. For an entire afternoon we both lay in their living room with the volume turned full on, playing, again and again, the same recording of Wagner's Overture to Tannhaiiser, until we were drunk and saturated with it.
The teachers themselves, for all their hospitality, were less satisfying. One of them was particularly boorish. We all joked at times about the awkwardness of South Americans, but he had no room for humour.
'Ilfaut les supprimer,' he said again and again. 'They must be put down.' When I realized that he was seriously thinking of exterminating them, like vermin, I became rather uncomfortable and was glad to leave.
In Quito, at a crossroads, I encountered two Americans riding a Norton Commando. We all stopped, on a whim, and talked for a while in a cafe. The meeting led us to stay together for ten days in a hacienda that they were sharing with some others near Otavalo. It was an enchanting experience, not least because we were there long enough to know and talk to some of the Indian girls who came to help with the house and garden. Even Bruno contained his impatience well. The Americans, Bob and Annie, left a deep impression on me. They were, at that moment, contemplating marriage. Indeed they made a valiant attempt to fulfil it in the next town, but were defeated by the residence qualifications. So they were happy, of course, but their happiness had an unusual quality of clarity and depth, like a clear pool that invited others to jump in and share.
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After a few days they spoke to me about a ranch somewhere north of San Francisco, and some people they thought I would like to meet. I knew this was significant to them, but they were being deliberately vague and so I asked no questions. I had an address of friends where we could meet up again in California, and I put it aside until then. It always seemed strange afterwards to recall the apparently haphazard way in which we had met. It was one of those meetings which, with all the hindsight in the world, must have been a pure chance that changed my life.
The Andes resolutely refused to pall. North of the Equator they became more beautiful than ever, as they spread out across Colombia. From Ipiales to Pasto to Popayan, I was prepared to swear that I would never see anything more beautiful than these great mountainsides clad in greenery and bursting with flowers and flame trees. The homes were more evolved, and built in the most pleasing shape of all, around patios, with red tiled roofs running out over verandas. Unlike Peru, Columbia was a soft, habitable country, with streams and waterfalls, and good earth apparently everywhere.
It also had the reputation of being the most dangerous country anywhere. Throughout South America I had been accumulating stories of what happened to travellers in Colombia. Armed robberies at night, tourists shot in hotel rooms, fingers cut off for rings, watches ripped off wrists, every kind of daring hit-and-run theft, and a record of privately motivated murder and violence unparalleled in modern history.
From the beginning of the journey friends had suggested that I should carry some kind of weapon. Some had ideas, borrowed from political thrillers, of guns that broke down into pieces that looked like motorcycle parts, or tent poles. At least a small pistol like Bruno's, they thought, could be hidden away somewhere. Guns never made any sense to me. When I pictured myself fighting off bandits with firearms I knew the idea was ridiculous.
For one thing, if I were to be attacked at all it would almost certainly be on the road. Short of having rocket launchers slung under the handlebars it would be impossible for me to defend myself while riding. By the time I stopped the bike and got to my gun it would all be over.
But my revulsion for firearms went much deeper than that. I was convinced, from the start, that merely to carry a gun invites attack. When there is a fear of hostility my mind is torn between two kinds of response; to lick 'em or to join 'em. With a gun in my pocket I would be thinking more about licking them, and I have come to believe firmly that what is going on in my mind is reflected in a thousand little ways by the way I behave towards others. I am not beyond believing that just having that gun in my pocket would be enough to get me shot. Anyway, there was a notion of manliness associated with weaponry that I could not understand. Guns seemed to me to speak only of fear. I would prefer my chances of walking empty-handed up to any bandit, rather than trying to shoot him first, and all the accounts I later heard seemed to bear me out.
Even so, it was impossible not to be impressed by tales of highway robbery in Colombia, and I decided at least to make life a bit more difficult for the robber. I bought three padlocks and a chain to secure my leather tank bags.
The only robbery I suffered in Colombia was soon after we arrived there while we were staying in Popayan. I was standing in a grocer's shop with the contents of my pocket on the counter, searching for loose change when someone deftly pocketed my keys. It was a quite senseless theft. The keys were surely useless to the thief but I had lost the duplicates and before I could leave Popayan I had to have my three padlocks sawn off with a hacksaw.
So much for paranoia, I thought, and tried never to be bothered with it anymore.
Bruno and I had come a long way together by then. We were two thousand miles north of Lima and into our third month. He still hoped to reach Mexico with his van. It was struggling valiantly and looked like getting there against all the odds, when we left Popayan for La Plata. The dirt road was winding and mountainous as they all were, but it was narrower than most and, for the first time, I had trouble with the lorries.
Normally the lorries and I co-existed. They swept along regardless of all other traffic, indifferent to accidents, noisy, filthy, painted and repainted with wonderful fairground colours, and brave mottos, spraying transistorized music and football commentaries from the cab. They never went for me, and I never duelled with them. It was no part of my pride to fight battles with Colombian lorry drivers. Where there was room, I slipped past. Where there wasn't I got out of the way.
On the road to La Plata it was distinctly harder to get out of the way, though it was really just a matter of going slower, and being ready for a lorry to appear round every bend. Most of the bends were concealed and I had a lot of anticipating to do, but that was alright. That also was what my journey was about - a sort of Zen meditation on reality. I went more slowly and appreciated it all the more.
Bruno's case, however, was different. All the anticipation in the world could not get him past a lorry where there was no room. I had been waiting a very long time for him at a bare-boarded cafe next to a brothel in a mountain top village when a bus driver came through and said my friend was in trouble. I found him with one wheel in a ditch and up against a concrete culvert. His half-shaft had broken its joint. We found eventually that he could still crawl along and we crept painfully back to Popayan. I was not sorry to be back. I had found Popayan to be one of the finest cities, ranking with Cuzco and Ouro Preto as places that generated contentment. I think there must be happy occasions when the size of a community, the appreciation of the people and the shape and disposition of their dwellings all coincide at a point most favourable to the human spirit. These three cities seem to have passed through that time, and the memory lingers on.
We moved into one of the most beautiful hotels in South America, El Monasterio, and shared a room for $8 which we thought of as a lot of money, having lost touch with the Western world. Bruno put on a virtuoso performance for the Renault agent, and had his half-shaft replaced for pennies. We gorged ourselves on the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Popayan and Bruno left early next day, determined this time to drive as slowly as humanly possible, while I went looking for someone to saw through my padlocks.
I left at lunchtime, in glorious weather, hoping to miss the regular afternoon storm. Then a fuse blew again and I spent too long trying to trace the fault, with the tank off and everything unpacked. I just had time to put in a temporary hot line from the coils to the battery and get packed up before the storm broke over me and made me very wet, but it was over soon enough. The sun came out, and dried me through and through. There was so much natural beauty on that road, that I swung out of control and managed a thirty foot skid on loose dirt across a blind bend.
When I thought what a lorry would have done to me there, I had to chalk that one up as a life lost.
But it was Bruno's day of reckoning, not mine. Incredibly, he met another lorry and this time there was not even a ditch to hide in. They both braked masterfully. The impact was not enough to hurt either driver, but the Renault was converted from a rectangle into a lozenge. I was not present at this sad scene. Bruno spoke of it later with much emotion, although like a true gaucho of the highway he did not allow grief to unbalance him. Many Colombian lorry drivers assembled at the scene, he said, and they were able, by force of numbers, to persuade Bruno that the accident had been his fault and that he owed six hundred pesos for the repair of a lorry fender and the repainting of several hearts and flowers. Leading with his right wheel several inches ahead of his left, he was able to meander on along the road to La Plata, and I overtook the pathetic pair later. The geometry of the car was certainly peculiar, and his front tyres were almost bald after only thirty miles.
We decided to make a camp and go on to La Plata in the morning, and I found a green field leading down to a river. We drove in, and halfway down the field sank into a bog. For half an hour or more Bruno laboured to bring his crippled car back up to the gate. He could get speed up across the field but always that last short stretch when he h
ad to turn up the hill was too much, and he slithered to a halt. Finally, in desperation, using every device we had learned on the way, we heaved the car out. The field was a horrifying sight, denuded of pasture, rutted and ripped to shreds. It seemed better to move on before the owner came and shot us. So we came to La Plata after all and took a room at the Residencias Berlin. There we made the acquaintance of Jesus and Domitila Clavijo, their ten children, and Roberto the parrot.
Domitila, the mother, was a woman of great vigour and good humour. She bustled constantly, in the kitchen, the dining room, the many bedrooms scattered around the yard, issuing instructions to her small army. Her children, boys and girls ranging between eighteen and zero, seemed exceptionally bright and well-mannered. We played chess with the boys, talked to them all, and admired the way they supported their mother: They seemed alert and generous and sensitive to feeling to a degree far beyond what I would consider normal in a European or North American home. Something of this had already impressed me about Colombia in general, as though the very hazards and cruelties of life there were bound to generate their opposite qualities.
The father, Jesus, made a strong impression also, but of a quite different kind. He sat generally on a chair in the dining area, a middle-aged man with a spreading bulk, a lightly-woven hat perched over an expressionless face, and his left hand in his pocket. The hand was so firmly in the pocket that I had the feeling his sleeve was sewn to his trousers. He spoke softly and sibilantly, but he exerted great authority over his family. They clearly feared and respected him as much as they loved their mother. He did nothing in the hotel, though he had some land outside La Plata which he supervised. On Saturdays he went to the billiard saloon and drank with his cronies. The Saturday I was there he returned drunk, accused one of his daughters of whoring in town, brought several of them to tears, and then went to sleep it off. One of his sons explained this to us.
