The Road Well Traveled: Copacabana to Buenos Aires

Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca, Northwest Bolivia. I’ve been traveling three weeks through this implausible country. Humid jungle and arid desert. I’m sunburned from my hike on Isla del Sol but I’ll fight the frost tonight. Usurped by a longing to return to Buenos Aires after an absence of five weeks (two others in Northern Argentina), I close my eyes, the sun glistens on the deep blue of endless Lago Titicaca. I buy a bus ticket in Copacabana to get me to La Paz. It’s Wednesday. I’ll travel three consecutive nights on buses to get back to the city on Saturday. Nonstop traveling. Buses and bus stations. I read and write in my journal, chat up people next to me. Everyone has a story. I buy chocolate or a peanut butter Twix to pass the time. I find internet and check email. The connection moves in fits and starts and tests my patience.

We’re all on some journey. What are we searching for? Ex-pat’s and travelers, gap-year Brits, or just finished Uni, Americans volunteering, Dutch, French, Israelis, small towns, capitals. We’re all here for a reason. Even if the reason is just to be here. What is it? The lure? A line of coke in a seedy club, broken mirrors and red velvet? Snapping three pics and saying you’ve been there? Just being away from what we know? We all have a mild traveler’s Autism. We’re all sending out so many signals but there aren’t enough receptors. So much is happening and we can’t take it all in. Chronically choosing. We are given twenty-four hours each day. We have the freedom to do what we want. With every second. Everybody has this supreme liberty. Every action is a choice. Every action is conscious. Our unconscious actions, are consciously, deliberately unconscious.

I open my eyes and we’re blowing through the countryside. Below a woman in a bowler hat scampers by with a colorful sack tied to her back. There’s not a town within thirty kilometers. The bus smells of coca and ether. Dirt is kicking up into it. I open my water bottle and sip thirstily to clear the dust. When are we going to stop for the bathroom? Down below we’re passing cactus patches, we’re floating in the sky, ten thousand feet up. I close my eyes.

We’re stopping, I get out and pee. I walk up to a cart and sit down. I eat sopita, a brothy soup with potatoes and noodles and a cube of meat and parsley. I ask for another pinch of parsley. I turn my head to make sure the bus has not left me. I pay three bolivianos (forty cents). I walk up to a juice cart. Jugo mixto. Orange juice and grapefruit please. An old man peels a grapefruit with precision. Slices it in half and places it in the vice. I drink it down. How many do you make a day I ask? Depends. But how many about? Twenty, twenty-five he shrugs. I make small calculations, what does that get you here, what’s that back home? The bus is honking, all on now or forever hold your peace. I run back. I get in my seat. I’ve been traveling twenty-five hours now. We’ll be at the border in a couple more. I close my eyes. We float on.

At the border I get my pack and slip it on my back. It’s dusty but so am I. I walk through Villazon. People are offering to get me to Salta, Northern Argentina for sixty U.S. dollars. A six hour bus ride. I know the ticket costs thirty pesos, ten bucks. I’m good I say. Sin compromiso amigo. Thanks but no. They crowd around an American and an Aussie. They’re down to offering forty dollars now. The two discuss it amongst themselves. They catch me out of the corner of their eye. I shake my head no and move on. Before I cross I buy a mixed grapefruit and orange juice. I drink it down and ask for another. I walk across the way to an old woman with a candy cart. Peanut butter Twix? No? Gimme that then. I walk over to the border. I’m waiting in a line at immigrations to get my stamp so I can cross over. There are twenty Bolivians in front of me. It takes forever and I have to piss. I curse Bolivians and Argentines alike (the country and people that have just played gracious host, and my beloved that I’m about to enter).

Three Bolivians to go and my Argentine patriotism increases each Bolivian down. When I get to the window I think of announcing rehearsed lines that I’ve been going over for minutes now in my mind. I’m so happy to be back! My heart is part Argentine! I feel like I’m back at home! But instead I just step up and say hey and hand my American passport. He flips seemingly erroneously through the pages looking at my stamps, as if to pass the time, as if to say this should at least take one minute for you, because it takes twenty for the Bolivians. My minute is up. I have a new ninety-day visa stamp on my passport. Have a good day I say. He probably wants to say Fuck-off asshole I’m working at a border post, go to some more countries why don’t you, you know how many people tell me to have a nice day? But instead he smiles warmly and thanks me. I trudge over to the green sign that announces Bienvenidos a La Quiaca, the border town I’m in, and then printed below it: Ushuaia 5,121Km. Ushuaia is the Southern most town in the world, at the tip of Argentina, last stop before Antarctica. I won’t make it there I say. It’s too cold this time of year anyway. Eighth largest country in the world, this.

I have three hours to kill before my overnight bus to Salta so I find an ATM and a diner. I eat a large meal. I’m the only customer in the place and the girls serving me are excited. They offer me all kinds of things to eat on the house. I take them up on the flan. It’s horrible but I tell them thanks it’s very good. On the bus we watch American films that would be played on cable at three a.m. What a skewed perspective they must have of America. We’re all B actors and exploding cars. We carry guns and inexplicably take our sunglasses off and put them back on, we’re all stuck in 1997. I sleep most of the way. I imagine running through a land where blades of grass are towering Aspens and Bob Dylan’s harmonica wails around every corner, droplets of dew consist of small oblong globs of peanut butter and the main transport is puffy white clouds that float above the dense grass.

At the station in Salta It’s early morning and I inquire about buses to Buenos Aires. Just another day of travel and I’ll be there. What day is it now? It’s Friday early morning. No buses for another several hours. I hop a cab to a hostel I stayed at before. I check myself in and have a nap. A real cama. I wake and go downstairs and have tea and rolls and jam. How was Bolivia? The owner asks me. I smile. Three weeks of people and experiences and sights and tastes. Good. I manage. And the weather? Cold. Very cold. At night. Pleasant days. I told you so. Did you cover up? Yes, yes I did. She laughs. I check email. I go up and have a long hot shower. A rare commodity in Bolivia, not here. I imagine using up the world’s supply of hot water and millions of people on seven continents are cursing at me in eighty languages and I smile and don’t care and say I earned it. I have a shave. I floss and brush my teeth, change my undershirt and underwear. I feel amazing. Get back to the station. I’ll be in Buenos Aires tomorrow morning. I hop in a cab to the terminal, don’t feel much like talking, I close my eyes.

The bus ride goes well enough. The chairs are large and comfy, the movies as irrelevant as ever but the bus is filled with pleasant people. I meet two gap-year English girls. A fisherman from Salta going to Mar Del Plata to work the boats. I meet a girl who’s going to see her girlfriend of two and a half-months. I ask her how the family is reacting. Do they know? My mother supports me, my dad doesn’t talk about it but knows, but my brother is a machista who says he’ll cut her throat if he ever sees her. We barely talk anymore. Just to say the phone is for you or dinner’s ready. Everyone has a story and I’m as interested as ever. I drink endless cups of pre-sweetened black coffee. When we finally arrive excitement spills over me.

I’ve been hurrying for three days to get here and now arrived I take my time getting off the bus. I say goodbye to the fisherman, to the English girls, a couple of us wait to get our packs out from the cargo. Three woman crowd around me. They’re flailing their arms, pointing to cargo, one is sneezing, they’re not from our bus. Common scheme. I flip my backpack around and the zipper is open. I check my stuff. All there. I see another woman opening the lesbian’s backpack zipper. I alert her to check her stuff. She flips it around. All there. The gypsies seemingly vanish into thin air. I get my pack and walk away. Later in line for a cab I see the gypsies being shoved out of the terminal by a security guard. They’re thieves! I tell him. Bored, he nods. Walks off. I look at the gypsies. Fuck off! They yell at me. Nothing will happen to them. I hop in the cab. Welcome back to the city.

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