The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost (26 page)

When I ask the hostel owner what I've witnessed, she tells me the party is part of the local Carnival festivities. Tilcara's festival lasts nine days and is dedicated to
il diablo
—the devil. The doll bandied about was a devil effigy, which is buried the rest of the year in a rocky lair; the boys in red dressed as devils are the envied leaders of the procession.

Back at the hostel, my headache returns with a vengeance, so I pour myself more coca tea and take a seat at the stone table outside the dorm rooms. Two children from an expiring barbecue a few feet away approach and ask my name. Where am I from? How old am I? Their questions stretch the limits of my novice Spanish, but they seem happy enough to endure replies with no prepositions or conjunctions. After a few minutes, I run out of words, so they run back to their family, undoubtedly announcing that they have just had a conversation with a very simple girl.

After that, I sit in silence and watch Tilcara fade into darkness. I feel palpably remote, lost in the landscape. I
want
to be lost in it. Like I did in Buenos Aires, I start imagining my Tilcara life. I could learn how to knit and take up a stall in the square. Maybe the hostel would let me stay on in exchange for some sort of labor. More and more, quicker and quicker, the places I travel draw me in like a spell.

I haven't emailed Erica since I arrived in South America, and she feels even farther away now than she did when I was in Australia. Her life and mine, so intimately intertwined at college, feel like they've started down two diverging paths. Watching the sun set behind the Andes has no quantifiable value, like my friends' burgeoning careers, but I know that I am gaining something that is as important. I don't know how to define this period of my life, but I don't know how to define myself at the moment, either. I'm no longer a student. I'm nobody's employee or girlfriend. Thankfully, I still have my parents, but I'm no longer defined in relationship to them, either. I'm in a space that defies these traditional categories, one I have carved out that is just for me.

Hans is in the kitchen stirring rice when I come indoors. A wispy-haired girl hovers beside him, intently observing him add spices. She is so enthralled that she doesn't notice me until Hans turns to say hello.

“Would you like some rice?” he asks me. “We are about to eat.”

The girl's smile vanishes. Her eyes are daggers, and when I shake her hand, it's vampire-cold. I have to say I'm intrigued, since before this moment no one has ever despised me so wholeheartedly so immediately. It's easy to tell her iciness revolves around Hans and the meant-to-be romantic dinner I have interrupted. I glance at my pathetic packet of soup and decide to take my chances with my new nemesis because the smells coming from that pot are way more delectable than anything I have a shot at concocting.

Cassie is Australian, so I try to impress her by revealing that I'm on my way to meet an Australian friend, as if to say: “See, we're not so different. You're Australian, and I have an Australian friend. And I'm not trying to steal the Grinch—just his rice, which I think we
both
agree looks delicious.” It does not appear
to have any tenderizing effect on her, so I shift tactics. “How long have you two been traveling?”

This gives her the chance to tell me about their recent romance, which cheers her up considerably. I learn that Hans is from Switzerland, the French-speaking part. He's a true vagabond, returning home only in the winter tourist season to work and save money to spend the second half of the year traveling abroad. He has no interest in a career. His lifelong pursuit is seeing the world, and he has no intention of slowing down until he has ingested all of it. He is in his early thirties, and Cassie is a few years younger. She has taken work leave to travel for five months, and she tells us how much she misses Melbourne, looking longingly at Hans. He nods thoughtfully. “I've been there,” he says, and I can tell he's crossing it off his mental map, though Cassie's sigh indicates a different interpretation. I pull out my ultimate bonding card and tell Cassie that I've just come from four months living and working in Australia, and she becomes almost tolerant of me.

“Are you crossing the border alone?” Hans asks as I'm drying the dishes.

“Yeah.”

He frowns. “This is not a good idea.”

He doesn't elaborate, but in Salta I did hear some rumors about corrupt Bolivian officials who bribe and harass.

“We're crossing tomorrow to Tupiza,” he says, but it is Cassie, in a miraculous change of heart, who extends the offer for me to travel with them into Bolivia. It means missing the Pucará ruins, but I gratefully accept their invitation. We head back to our shared room, where I knock myself nearly unconscious climbing into my bunk and drift happily to sleep.

We rise at five
A.M.,
load our packs, and walk off into the still-dark Tilcara morning. I have learned to like being up before dawn (minus my stressful stint at the Sydney café), whereas in
college, I would have scratched your eyes out for even suggesting such a thing. Backpacker me is perky as a blond gym bunny at this hour, though I need my daily dose of caffeine to carry on an intelligible conversation. South American coffee is dark and bitter. It laughs right in the face of yuppie Starbucks brew like some scrappy city kid.

The morning is so cold I can see my breath, and I know for certain I have not brought proper Andean clothing. Hans's and Cassie's backpacks are much bigger than mine. After Hans's gourmet meal, I have come to think he might have an entire kitchen packed in there. The spices he sprinkled in the rice came from a small pouch that hangs off one side of his pack; off the other, salt and pepper shakers rattle against each other. I pretend we are bandits stealing across the border in the dead of night, and it takes severe willpower not to break out in the
Mission: Impossible
theme song. When we get to the bus station, the ticket window is shuttered, and I'm a little worried, since Cassie and Hans already have tickets. I don't yet realize that Andean buses are magical creatures that stretch to fit anyone willing to pay the fare. Although the bus that arrives is barely full and I easily find a seat, there will be many times in the near future when I stand or sit in aisles for hours, bumping and banging against the strangers next to me.

Hans is afraid of knots. Not of tying them but of untying them. I learn this fact three hours into the four-hour drive to the border. Somehow (and we must have exhausted a wide range of topics before winding up at this one), we find ourselves discussing his unusual fear.

“I cannot get near them.” He shivers a little. “My skin feels like, ah, bugs are under it.”

“Crawling,” I say.

He nods.

This must be a misunderstanding. I try to recap. “So you can tie knots.” I mime the act, one hand rolling over the other, then pulling two pieces of invisible thread away from each other. “But you can't …”

“Unknot them. No.”

“What about your shoes?”

He's wearing sandals. His sneakers turn out to have Velcro straps. I think of other things that need tying. “Presents? What about unwrapping presents that have bows?”

“If the bows are tied, this is not possible.”

“Did something happen to you?” I ask. I want to crack a joke, maybe throw out some sort of pun about him being knot quite right in the head, but I can't tell if we have a sense of humor about this slight eccentricity or we're dealing with some sort of PTSD. Did someone close to him die in a knot-related accident?

“Nothing that I remember.” He shrugs, then unzips his hefty pack to retrieve his sunglasses. He's been camping on and off while traveling through South America, so in addition to the usual array of clothes and guidebooks, he has pots and packets of instant soup, a sleeping bag, and a blue tarp. He strikes me as a guy prepared for anything, who fears nothing other than knots and a bland, sedentary existence where he cannot make his way through one foreign country after the next.

Travel takes hold of some people, like a virus. Carly's “bug” has been long-nurtured, but mine is just starting to show its strength, which is understandable since I've only recently unearthed the traveler within me. I consider all the places Hans has been where I want to go: Greece, Tibet, Russia, Thailand; the list goes on and on. My father has told me that he will “really start to worry” if I am still wandering around in another year. My mom is concerned, too. But right now it feels like a year is not nearly enough time to see everything.

Our predawn excursion to Tilcara's bus station turns out to be the most excitement of the day. In La Quiaca we pay a taxi driver three pesos each to take us to the border, a fee he seems to pull out of thin air after appraising us. The Bolivian border agent has a unibrow and treats us like unwanted vagabonds who have arrived to use up all his hot water and toilet paper, two things there are never enough of in Bolivia. He wields his passport stamp like a gavel and announces,
“Treinta dias”
like a prison sentence. We leave Argentina and shuffle over an uninspiring concrete walkway into Villazón, a bustling border town of rickety stalls that looks patched together by people who live, or wish to live, somewhere else.

Bolivia has the most indigenous population in South America.
Over half of the people here claim pure Amerindian blood. Quechua and Aymara speakers form the biggest bloc. Unlike Tilcara, which has a mix of physical appearances, everyone in Villazón has the darker skin and hair and shorter stature of the indigenous people. The women wear thick, elaborate skirts, layers upon layers expanding outward from an invisible waist. Two braids of abundant black hair meet at their backs, the ends held together with a piece of string. Their feet are protected by chunky clogs. The young girls have tiny waists and luminous skin, while the older women's cheeks are chafed from years in the harsh Andean cold, and their bodies have expanded significantly in womanhood; or it may just be the skirts that give the illusion of endless hips. The women all carry black bundles on their backs packed with clothes, food, or a small child who is never crying, just sleeping peacefully or calmly watching the world go by. The Bolivian women walk purposefully past me on the streets, short and strong, slightly bent forward. The men stroll along at a more leisurely pace, exchanging extended greetings; they never seem to be lugging anything or going anywhere in particular.

Cassie, Hans, and I find a tiny restaurant selling beef and chicken empanadas and settle in at one of three rickety tables. We take turns in the bathroom, which has no seat cover or toilet paper. I hover precariously over the hole, gripping the roll of toilet paper I bought in town with one hand and holding the broken latch closed with the other, all while trying not to make any noise, since our table is directly on the other side of the door. It's clear I'm going to have to let go of some hangups pretty fast in Bolivia.

Our bus to Tupiza doesn't leave for two hours, so after lunch we walk over to the park to kill some time. A young boy is dragging around a large scale, the kind you might see at a carnival where people let a stranger guess their weight. I wonder if he is earning money predicting people's measurements or simply
charging them to step on the scale and see how much they weigh, obligingly subtracting twenty pounds for the women's skirts, I hope.

Although we're the only foreigners, we are blissfully ignored. I was expecting the usual stares and comments—most of them thankfully indecipherable—that have increased in frequency since I left Buenos Aires. I don't realize until I head off alone to an Internet café that it is Hans's presence that has thus far allowed me to stride unimpeded through the streets of Bolivia. Without a man at my side, I am once again subjected to a splattering of lascivious whispers and whistles. The abrupt shift is jarring, as if I'm suddenly walking around in someone else's body. I can see how a man and woman might come away with entirely different impressions of South America. I wonder what it's like to travel in a man's relatively inviolate body, to claim enough power that people ignore you and let you go about your traveler business. As a white woman backpacker here, I'm an automatic spectacle.

Our bus to Tupiza looks old but not nearly as tragic as the dinosaur beside it. (While men load and tie luggage to the top of our neighbor, several rusty parts fall from underneath and clang against the ground.) The eager crowd surges onto the bus to illustrate a phrase that must have originated in Bolivia—“hurry up and wait”—since even after everyone is loaded, we remain at the terminal another half hour for no apparent reason. When all of the seats are filled, more passengers squeeze down the aisle, sucking up any remaining precious oxygen. They stand body to body for the entire ride.

The windows don't open, and the searing sun feels like it's burning a hole in my chest. My soaked tank top is swimming beneath my purple sweatshirt. My own sour scent mixes with the others perfuming the sweaty air. We climb higher and higher into the mountains, and I hear the concrete turn to gravel below our wheels. I survey all the people tucked into every crevice of
the bus and try not to imagine collisions and toppling, crunched bodies.

Four hours later, we shoot through a series of tunnels and are reborn in Tupiza—a southwestern-looking, dry, mountainous landscape. At the bus station, two small Bolivian boys in Nike sweatshirts slither expertly through the emerging passengers. In an instant, they spot the three “gringos” awkwardly extracting their packs from the aged bus's grimy underbelly and appear grinning at our sides. Our backpacks are not only dusty, like after the trip to Tilcara, but also wet—so wet that several layers of my clothing are damp and all of my belongings emit a mild mildew aroma. Several other boys (none look older than eleven) have caught up with the first two, and all are passionately delivering their sales pitches.