The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost (35 page)

As exaggerated as it sounds, it is the first time I've ever truly asserted myself, used as I am to being the good girl, the one who avoids confrontation at any cost. I was used to navigating the icy space between my parents. I had found safety in their approval and, later, the praise of teachers and coaches and boys, anyone who would offer it to me. Now, however, I realize that if I'm going to take charge of my life, I have to start standing up for myself, and arguing with a Peruvian tour operator in broken Spanish seems as good a place to start as any.

We splurge on a forty-five-minute flight from Cusco to Arequipa, a city near the bottom of Peru bursting with Spanish colonial-era architecture wrought with striking alabaster-colored volcanic rock. We spend the day rock climbing and rappelling in a canyon outside the city center, accompanied by two skilled teen guides. It takes us thirty-six hours by bus to reach La Serena, Chile, from Arequipa. In that time, we descend from roads that zigzag through the Andes into the Atacama desert, the driest in the world. It extends 1,600 kilometers from the Pacific to the Andes. In certain places not a single drop of rain has ever been recorded. We head farther south down the narrow strip of land that is Chile, and the scenery changes yet again at our destination. La Serena is a sleepy little seaside town. It's the off-season here, just the Serenians and a few backpackers on their way to somewhere else. We're staying a block from the tiny main plaza in a place run by the Chilean version of my grandmother. She is stout and
heavy, with the same drooping nose and chopping-block laugh. It wouldn't have surprised me one bit to hear her exclaim, “Oy vey!” Other elderly Chileans pepper the old hotel, but they have the air of fixtures. We appear to be the only guests.

La Serena is the city of churches. There are twenty-nine of them to see, if you're into that sort of thing, a few dominating ones and many tiny stone structures tucked away on side streets like secrets. In the plaza, a group of seniors gathers each afternoon to strum guitars and sing folk songs. There is a picturesque—though incongruous—Japanese garden, furnished with manicured lawns and wading swans, where we pass a blissful, lazy afternoon.

In La Serena, we exchange polite nods with trim Chileans we pass on the street, or are ignored altogether. I feel a distinct sense of relief at being back in the Chile/Argentina region of South America. It has been strengthening to face the challenges of traveling as a woman in Bolivia and Peru, but I cannot deny that I feel more at home in the other two countries. Carly, too, seems more relaxed, though I know she is as eager as ever to test herself with new trials. Our trip together is almost over. Since we met in Ireland, we've always had a plan to reunite, but now, for the first time, it's unclear when we will see each other again after I leave Buenos Aires in two weeks.

“I'm going to miss you,” I tell her.

She laughs. “I'm still here!”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I'm going to miss you, too.”

We've been living and traveling together for so long that I can't even imagine what it will be like to wake up and not have her in the next room or the neighboring bed. In many ways, we understand each other more than anyone else in our current lives. She has borne witness to the person I've become on the road, and I have done the same for her.

In La Serena, we visit the famous Chilean observatory I've
been so eager to see. At seven
P.M.,
we board a van with a quiet British guy; two British girls who spend the entire drive agreeing with each other about how difficult Spanish is to learn; and a six-foot-tall Swedish girl who asks after eyeing the magnificent twinkling sky through the powerful telescopes, “I'm just seeing a lot of stars. Is that it?”

We drive through Vicuña, home of the poet Gabriel Mistral, then up a mountain where the Observatorio Cerro Mamalluca occupies a royal spot above the city. It's pitch black and the clear night is stuffed with stars, like the night I spent in the Australian Outback feeling like I was exactly where I wanted to be. Our guide takes us into a white-domed room where a gleaming thirty-centimeter telescope extends out through a gap in the ceiling. He shows us Jupiter and Saturn (you can actually see the rings), Orion, and the Southern Cross. He tells us about the new planet they photographed a few weeks ago and talks excitedly about what we'll be able to see in the future when our telescopes are able to zoom even farther into the galaxy.

I had a brief love affair with astronomy in college. During my freshman year, I took an introductory solar-system course taught by an animated professor. In a spherical room with stadium seating, he lectured on the development of astronomy as a discipline, the motion of the planets, the sun's effects on the earth—all the basics.

I loved our discussions of other planets' atmospheres and moons, how they compared to Earth's, but most of all, I loved black holes. I was fascinated by gravitational time dilation, in which time passes more slowly or quickly depending on an object's distance from the black hole. If there was one thing I thought I could be certain of, it was the breakdown of years into months, months into days, days into hours, the even rhythm of the clock ticking away the minutes and seconds. The way time became flexible in the presence of these entities completely blew my mind.

Because I liked it so much, I excelled in my studies, and my professor encouraged me to take higher-level courses, but I begged off. I felt a sense of danger inherent in this new interest in the vast spaces beyond when I was in the midst of a battle for extreme focus on my music. I worried that to branch out in new directions was further evidence of my inability to meet the demands of my chosen field, that to turn my eyes up to the sky instead of keeping them concentrated on my prize would be to realize there was more to the world than my tiny basement practice room and that there was more to me, too, that was as undiscovered as the universe. After all these travels, I find I no longer have that fear. Life feels full of opportunity and possibility—and maybe even adventure.

Crossing the border back into Argentina is a welcome return. We take another overnight bus to save cash, pausing in hazy Santiago, Chile, for a few hours before arriving in Mendoza, a city on the Argentinean side of the Andes. It's a relaxing spot, wide tree-lined streets filled with cafés offering outdoor seating under broad umbrellas. The main square, Plaza Independencia, provides a home for an artisans market during the afternoons. We stroll around the shaded walkways, checking out the various leather goods and handmade jewelry. At night various performers take the artists' places.

In Argentina, we're back in the world of hostels. The one in Mendoza costs us twelve pesos a night, about four U.S. dollars. In the evenings, a group of us pitch in a few pesos each so someone can run off and buy
asado
supplies. We pile up to the rooftop terrace and dish out salad and potatoes and meat. Massive amounts
of wine and beer circulate, and so does the dense, rich ice cream that has become a staple of our diet since arriving in Mendoza. In the wee hours of the morning, anyone still awake squeezes into the tiny common room to smoke thin cigarettes and watch nineties movies starring Keanu Reeves.

Our plans were to head farther south in a day or two, to Bariloche on another dreaded overnight bus, but we're indecisive. Mendoza is such a peaceful little spot, and there are enough wineries and trekking in the area to keep us occupied. I'm inclined not to seek something better than the good life we're already experiencing, and for once Carly seems to feel the same way. We're quite pleased with ourselves, with all we have accomplished, and spending a week in Mendoza relaxing and recounting our adventures is an appealing idea.

The only thing that interrupts my tranquil state of mind is the fact that in two weeks I will be back in the U.S. A familiar anticipatory depression starts to cloud my vision, though Carly does her best to pull me out of it.

“If you keep thinking along those lines, you're not going to enjoy these last few weeks at all,” she says matter-of-factly, and of course she is right. Still, I cannot entirely extract the excitement of our last weeks together—plus seeing Martyn again in another week, and Muriel, who is coming a few days after that to travel with Carly for three weeks—from the inevitable set of goodbyes that awaits me.

Now that the Internet connections are better, we've been checking email once a day, and mine is awash with questions from parents and friends. I have run out of money and have to suffer the humiliation of asking my mother to borrow four hundred dollars. That's all I have to my name, and the pressure to remedy this situation upon my return weighs on me. I don't feel any closer to being ready to start a career or even some random job.

“Did you see the sign at that shop?” I ask Carly one day when we're walking back to our hostel. “They're hiring an English teacher here.”

Although Carly and I have known each other only a few years, I am totally transparent to her. We've lived and traveled together for months, and there is no place to hide any part of myself. By now our innermost thoughts are completely available to each other so she knows me well enough to realize that I'm imagining what it would be like to live in South America. “You could stay,” she tells me.

It sounds easy when she says it, like it really is possible. Back home, my parents are waiting for me to start my “real life,” which, now that I have a college degree, I'm pretty sure does not include wearing the same T-shirt every day. My friends are a year into their Manhattan careers; they live in tiny studios, dress in tailored suits, and charge their BlackBerries. I look down my jeans to my dirty flip-flops. Suddenly, I cannot think of anything more depressing than heels.

I could stay, I tell myself. People do it all the time. They just forget their old life and get a new one.

But going home is about more than starting a real life. I have to return and face all the questions I've left unanswered. To stay would be running away from the expectations awaiting me, not confronting them, like I need to. In travel, I have found a passion, and I know I will keep on seeing the world. But I have to go home and make some conscious choices about my perhaps less-traditional-than-my-parents-hoped-for place in the world.

Carly has begun considering her circumstances as well. She is extending her South America ticket instead of returning to Australia with Muriel. She feels like she fits in here with the people and the culture. The Wild Thornberrys' stories (minus Kevin's nasty puma incident) have worked on her these last few weeks, and she's toying with the idea of volunteering. She's going to settle in South America for a while, learn the language, and see
what she can make happen. We have heard murmurings especially of Colombia from other backpackers, and the idea has been creeping into Carly's brain that that country might just be the next to conquer.

Travel is a complicated animal for both of us. We're running away from home on some level, and at the same time, we're sprinting toward what we want most—the fulfilling, unpredictable lives we've carved out for ourselves on the road—our versions of the real world that we love so much.

The wineries in Mendoza are flourishing, and there are no two more eager to witness their tremendous beauty and growth than Carly and me now that we've dropped to an altitude where the smallest sip of alcohol doesn't leave us with throbbing hangovers. The hostel books us a day tour of several different wineries, and when the van arrives to collect us, we are the youngest of the group by a good three decades. At the first stop, we stare down into a massive barrel holding millions of tiny handpicked red grapes ready for destemming and crushing. After the fermentation process, the concoction will descend into the bowels of the building to enormous wooden casks, protected from the elements by thick stone walls. Here it waits, sometimes for years. I think back to Jenny from Buenos Aires. I picture her gathering up her peasant skirt to step inside, her feet sinking down into the grapes like quicksand. I wonder whether she has made her way to this same winery, and where she is now.

At the end of each tour, we get free wine samples with olives and sun-dried tomatoes. We drink heavily from the glasses, getting tipsy enough to scandalize a few of the older members of our tour who are swirling and sniffing the wine, taking a swig, then spitting it back out as delicately as one can expectorate. Carly and I take no notice of their disapproval. We're in our own little happy world of sneaking more free samples and taking increasingly
silly photos of ourselves in the cellar, where we pretend to glug straight from the casks. Our exchanges are full of in-jokes and completing each other's sentences. We're proud of ourselves and our experiences and determined to enjoy ourselves now that we have survived them more or less gracefully. We buy a few of the cheapest bottles. Back in Mendoza, we gather together some massive hunks of cheese and proceed to gorge ourselves on the combination for many blissful hours.

We leave our hostel to ascend into the Andes for a few days. Our first activity is a four-hour horseback ride meandering through the mountains to get a glimpse of the enormous black condors swooping through the cloudy skies. They come close enough to let us see their priestlike ensemble, black bodies with white tufts of feathers ringing their necks. My horse, Marcello, is chocolate brown with a cream strip between his eyes. He's fond of being the leader of our pack, but we're not allowed to overtake the guide, a constant point of contention for Carly, who wants to race ahead of us all. I amble along with a chatty Frenchman, Aurelian, who wishes please to know if I am related to the very famous French Dr. Friedman who was the first in the country to develop test-tube babies. When I say I am not, he pats me on the back. “Okay, okay,” he says, as though comforting me.