The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost (29 page)

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 nontraditional 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.

Carly and I spend much of our time juice-stall-hopping in the crowded markets. We start to forgo meals altogether in favor of the thick, fresh, pulpy drinks with muesli and seeds mixed in. Women in white lab coats and chef hats serve us while we perch
on bar stools among the papayas, mangoes, watermelons, and pineapple. One day we pop into a store selling musical instruments, and the blind owner shows me how to play the
zampoña
(the panpipes). Carly snaps a picture of us, him in a thick red jacket with black stripes and me in my gray poncho, a row of guitars and
charangos
(similar to a ukulele) hanging from the ceiling above us. Next door a girl no older than eight bargains with us for a pair of alpaca gloves.

Gone are the friendly, easygoing locals of Bolivia's countryside. As in any major city, they have been replaced by greater extremes of humanity: the poor, crazy, and ambitious all crowd in together, vying for space and clean air. We shuffle along with them, trying to keep out of the way. One afternoon when we are leaving the markets, something wet smacks my neck. Instinctively, I touch it. The crowd around me seems to get tighter, and I am sucked into the vortex.
“Arriba, arriba!”
people are shouting at me. Hands dig into my back and shoulders, shoving me forward.

I lose sight of Carly, who is up ahead and has not yet noticed I am no longer a step behind. When the crowd parts, I am somehow next to her again, disoriented, until I notice the zipper of my money belt is open. My wallet and camera have been stolen. I realize the locals shouting at me were trying to help. They understood what was happening and were trying to get me to run away. But it happened too fast; it was over in seconds. The most frustrating part of getting robbed is that I read about this exact scam in the Bolivia section of my guidebook. Someone spits on you or—and I don't know if this second option is more or less appealing—dumps liquid down your back. Distracted, you stop to examine yourself. While you're wondering what the hell kind of bird poops orange soda, the thief swoops in and nicks your stuff. Easy.

Reading about something doesn't mean you're prepared for it, though. Luckily, I had stuffed the five hundred bolivianos I had just gotten from an ATM inside my bra and left two of my three
credit cards in the hostel. I lost my driver's license but not my passport, a roll of film, a little bit of American cash, plus a few traveler's checks I'll have to cancel and have no idea how to replace while in Bolivia.

Back in the hostel, Carly and I lie side by side on my bed, me wallowing in self-pity and berating myself for not having synapses that fire quick enough.

“Don't worry, it happens,” Carly says.

What I want her to say is “It could have happened to either of us.” But we both know this isn't true. And Carly is nothing if not honest. Sure, she might fib to me about something trivial to lift my spirits, like when I came across a picture of myself taken my last week in Sydney, my stomach spilling in rolls over my struggling bikini. “Uggh, I'm huge,” I grumbled.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said, laughing. Then, to make me forget about my chubbiness, she pointed at the photo and said, “Look how tan you are, mate!”

But something that matters, something like being the kind of person who gets robbed versus the kind of person who doesn't, is something she would never gloss over. Carly always looks like she belongs, like she's in control. I'm jealous of the way nothing ever seems to faze her. I haven't yet realized that this is a misperception on my part—just because she reacts differently does not mean she is wholly unaffected—or that it would be much better to accept who I am, different as it is from Carly, and give myself credit for doing the best I can.

I call American Express. “Have you filed a police report?” the woman asks.

“Lady,” I reply, world-weary all of a sudden and running low in the optimism department, “have you ever been to Bolivia?”

I pull out of my funk by the afternoon, in time to walk out into the streets of La Paz and get groped. As a tall, angry-looking man and his companion pass us, he reaches between my legs and grabs me hard. Then he just keeps walking. I'm filled with such
intense anger and shock that my body feels like it's on fire. I scream at him, something in unintelligible half-Spanish, and he turns around to face me. His face tightens. I do not look away. But then, fingers curling into fists, he begins to walk toward us again. On his face is the expression of someone who wishes to do real harm, someone who feels it is his right to touch women in the street, or maybe just foreign women. There are others nearby but no one comes to our rescue. No one seems to notice or care. What can we do? We run. We sprint two blocks to the hostel, where I collapse on my bed in tears, robbed, violated, and angry at the whole city of La Paz, angry at Carly for making me come here, angry at myself for agreeing.

“Why does it have to be like this?”

“It's harder,” Carly agrees. “But that's how it is.”

“Do you ever wish you were a man?”

“No,” she says, which is of course the truth. Carly never wishes to be anyone but herself, whereas I am constantly imagining my life as a different person. I think of the women in
On the Road.
What is their role? They're around to be screwed, to be divorced, to be punched in the ribs, to fall flat on their face in the mud. These women aren't the travelers. They're the pit stops.

The idea that something bad has happened to me, coupled with the certainty that nothing will be done about it, shakes my very core. Even with Carly here, I know the two of us represent little more threat together than we do separately. We're at the mercy of this place. I have the overwhelming urge to flee, but I know that if I do, I will wrap up the whole country of Bolivia in this one bad day and tuck it away forever in some forgetting drawer of my mind.

I didn't realize how difficult backpacking could be. In Bolivia, especially, my romantic notion of traveling the world was constantly getting shipwrecked against the day-to-day reality of it. I had witnessed beauty and kindness here, but I was often overwhelmed, totally out of my element. Carly had prior experience
traveling in South America. She was a born adventurer who determined early on that she had no use for fear, whereas I was scared a lot of the time. But I didn't want to let that emotion stop me anymore, not in my travels or in my life. No, I determined, tomorrow I would put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.

The next day we are off bright and early to bike the Death Road, both of us happy to leave La Paz behind. Although Carly does not display every emotion on her face, as I do, it turns out my misfortunes in La Paz have made her uneasy as well.

“Why didn't you say anything?” I'll ask her, surprised, when we discuss the incident some weeks later.

“I thought it was obvious. You'd had such a terrible time of it. Of course I didn't want to be there, either.”

I probably would have felt a little less isolated if she had voiced this concern in La Paz, but it's not her style to spell things out. I was beginning to realize that Carly's stoicism is the way she copes, like mine is letting my thoughts and feelings all hang out like a beer belly.

We find ourselves in a van with a German pair, a French couple, and a Spanish girl. It is a quiet group. We stare sleepily out the windows, no one making a move to purchase anything when
we pull up to a stretch of open stalls where apple-cheeked women hawk bottled water, fresh bread, and wool sweaters. The wind whips around them, pinning wisps of their long black hair to their foreheads.

By the time we stop to unload the gear, we are at nearly five thousand meters (15,000 feet), and it is absolutely freezing. It's also raining. We're given bright orange rain jackets and matching pants and paired with bikes. Mine is huge; the seat is so high that I have to hop up to get on. I take a little practice ride and quickly realize my brakes don't work.

“Ayuda!”
I screech.

The guide looks at me as though I'm rather clever for figuring out this minor malfunction before we started downhill. I grit my teeth as he pulls one of the chains over some spokes and pronounces the problem fixed.

I make Carly promise to wait for me if I get too far behind, but once the wind is at her back, her word is swept away with it, mocking me from behind. Though her brakes are fine, Carly's gears don't work properly, so she's stuck at one speed: the fastest. The road is wet and windy and paved only for the first hour of our journey. The rain heaves itself at us, and within minutes we are drenched from head to foot. Heavy fog clings to the Andes. I grasp the handlebars with numb fingers and ride my brakes down the spiraling mountains. I want to close my eyes and let go, let someone else take over. But it's just me, and the terrifying death trap seems to go on forever. All I hear is blood pulsing in my ears. After twenty minutes, we stop to collect ourselves and detach our clenched blue fingers from the frozen handlebars. They're curled like an arthritic woman's around a walker. Everyone is smiling and laughing. I intend to throw a hearty chuckle into the mix, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, it transforms into a heavy sigh, giving away my unhappiness.

It's clear immediately that I am the slowest rider in our group. As I approach the others at one of the many places where they
stop to let me catch up, I hear one of the Germans who brought his own bike say in English loud enough for me to hear: “She is very, very slow, ja?”