See all the photos from the final Argentina segment here…

In late 2007, after a year of traveling west around the globe mostly in a charitable tuxedo, I returned to the US and immediately launched back into my old, high-energy life. I organized a big social event in NYC and then headed directly to Maine to work at a high-minded conference called PopTech. One affliction that long stretches of traveling brings is that you quickly get used to the ease of living in the moment and your ability to create and follow intricate schedules greatly suffers. Not yet understanding this fact, I had given myself no time to acclimate and I quickly burned out. Actually, it was a very similar feeling to the edge that I’d found myself approaching a few months before this trip: way too over extended and way too much going on. A few of my friends who were also working at the conference noticed the shift in my energy but overall, I managed to keep it together. On the final day I quietly slipped off the grid, escaping to my sister’s wild life sanctuary in the woods of Ithaca, where I spent a few weeks working on web projects, helping Victoria care for broken animals and plotting my return to LA in a more mindful way.

In order to not repeat my error this time, I decided that the best way to return to LA, without experiencing the full effect of culture shock, was to incorporate a strategic plan:

1. DO NOT return directly to my old loft (which is always a hotbed of roommate activity). Instead my sweet friend Daphne offered to pick me up at the airport and let me use her warehouse as a halfway house until I was ready to officially emerge.
2. DO tell everyone else that I was returning on a later date so as far as my groaning coworkers were concerned, I would launch directly into meetings on the day I got back (which is actually three days later than the reality).

Daphne happens to live in downtown LA near the largely Hispanic fashion district; an unexpected but welcome twist. After dropping my bags we went for lunch and as we walked down the street it didn’t feel that much different from many parts of South America: countless Latino vendors were selling a spread of cheap clothes, trashy lingerie and all sorts of blinking, buzzing and whirring nick-nacks. A dark-skinned mustachioed man was selling ice cream from a styrofoam box on wheels; he rang his bell to get our attention while a guy missing a few teeth smiled at me, trying to entice us with his bacon wrapped hot dogs. I politely declined both. Prior to my departure I would visit this area of downtown and was always a little surprised by its chaotic street scene. Now it seems like a clean and quiet version of any street you’d find in La Paz, Bolivia.

So here I sit, in a thick armchair that rests on an unfinished wooden floor in the middle of a sparsely furnished, 4000sq/ft loft. On the desk in front of me, besides my netbook, is an old typewriter, an old and very inaccurate framed map and a small statue of a fat, naked sailor. Outside in the harsh sunlight, a fire escape looms over the busy street scene. The bell of the ice-cream vendor is still audible amid the cacophony. On the table near the rugged kitchen is a bust of a Victorian society woman and a collection of Eiffel Tower souvenirs. At the other end, Daphne’s roommate Hillary, a seamstress, is sewing some custom curtains. Daphne, a ceramist, who was cruising by earlier on roller-skates, is now giving a class in her workshop in the room next door. I’m drinking coffee from a colorful hand-made clay mug. This is the calm before the storm; in the days following, I will have a slew of meetings (probably involving emotionally charged people), speak at two events and oversee both the Mindshare event and a Syyn Labs installation at TEDx, all while finding time to fit in a show of my photography at a gallery party. But Daphne’s giant loft and it’s eclectic pieces of art offer me a refuge until I’m ready to emerge, when I will boldly walk outside into the spring sun, raise one fist in the air and shout “God damn, it’s good to be back in LA!” But I’m not quite ready yet.

OK, before I face that, lets back up a little, to twelve days earlier when I was crossing the Bolivian border into Argentina. Three things were immediately striking: the cleanliness of the streets, the almost immediate smell of parrillada (the classic Argentine BBQ meat) and the breezy comfort of the pair of girl’s socks that had somehow found their way into my clean laundry at the last hostel; they have stars on them and are very lightweight. At the long line on the Bolivian side I met Anthony, a dusty Brit with angular features and a south London accent. After making it across the border to the town of La Quiaca, we jumped on the first bus going south and began to volley the usual traveler banter. As my trip has been coming to its close I’ve found more of my thoughts turning towards the return – and how things could (and should) change. Anthony was nearing the end of his trip to so I posed him the same question. After giving it a moments thought, he began:

“My mates thought I was crazy, coming alone on a trip like this. And truthfully I didn’t know what to expect either – I’ve never done anything like it. But it’s been brilliant!” He paused and looked out at the passing desert landscape. “I used to be such an arrogant, superficial git. I’d only go to the best clubs and date the most fit girls – you know, models. And if either didn’t work out, I’d act really miffed. I’m starting to see how meaningless all that was – I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I’ve been down here.” He smiled a deeply content smile. “I hope I can maintain this feeling when I return, but I’m a bit worried I won’t be able to.” I told him that the doors had been opened and that like it or not, he’d never be the same again.

“Sure, old habit patterns, people and situations will be available again – and you may even slip back into some, but your awareness of them, and your scope of perception will be forever different.” I told him, and was simultaneously instructing myself, to try to figure out what to change before going back. As we approached a tiny desert town called Tilcara, I decided that it seemed like as good as any to get off. I bid farewell to Anthony, the friendly ‘ex-wanker’ as he’d described himself, and hopped off the bus onto the dusty road.

Tilcara’s adobe buildings and cobbled streets offered a quiet respite to catch up on writing. During the day I also got a chance to explore the quebradas (or ravines) in the surrounding hills. As I headed up the dry river bed I scrambled over rounded rocks of bright purples and reds. I passed some donkeys that were hauling goods to the next desert town via the intricate series of mountainous paths. The path I was on became more steep and began skirting the edge of craggy cliffs. A solo bearded goat stood precariously close to the edge and was yelling (or whatever goats do) over the edge. I looked down to see a slew of his goat-friends hopping between rocky out-crops on their way to the top. After moving through a large area of low desert flora, punctuated by the occasional tall and thick cactus, I came to the opening of a ravine called El Gargantua del Diablo – ‘The Devil’s Throat’. The once powerful rover, now only a trickle, had carved a steep “v” through the hills over centuries, leaving the rock smoothly curved in many places. After hopping around the stream I eventually reached a small but picturesque waterfall. It was high enough, and the cliff walls smooth enough, that it prevented me from going any further, so I turned back. For the entire hike I was considering my imminent return to LA and the numerous tasks at hand. In the last three months I hadn’t had one excessive emotional flare up or moment of harsh self-judgment, which I was often prone to. Even amid the passport hassle I’d managed to keep calm and level headed. In three decades my mind had never felt so stable, inspired and creatively fulfilled. In a moment of great clarity I realized that it wasn’t just important, but imperative that, like Anthony, I try to maintain this mindset as much as possible when I return home.

After two pleasant evenings of candlelit dinners, writing my journal while being serenaded by folk music troupes, I found the romance between me and my netbook somewhat insufficient. I was craving some human company and was looking forward to seeing Anna, the pretty Latvian who I’d met on a Bolivian train journey a few days earlier. I decided not to linger any longer around pleasant but sleepy Tilcara and decided to head to Salta earlier than planned, to find some peaceful places to write. Anna would arrive a few days later and had requested that I find a place to stay and plan an adventure for the day after her arrival. I am good at things like that so was happy to oblige.

After arriving in Salta and being rather unimpressed with the hostels near the main square, I found a place about 10 minutes away. It was an extremely friendly hostel, and even had a nice little garden equipped with Wifi. However, upon heading to bed that night I found that I wasn’t the only one in my room, and when I turned on the light I saw about ten cockroaches scuttle into the shadows. Adding to this rather revolting reality was one large insect which was flying around noisily, that is until it had a fateful and juicy encounter with a rolled up newspaper. Most insects generally want to stay as far away from you as possible, so as long as we all kept to ourselves, I figured we’d all be happy. To minimize the chance of a continuing relationship with my six-legged roommates, I balanced both my large and small backpack, and the rest of my clothes and shoes on a chair in the middle of the room. I pulled the bed out from against the wall and used my cotton ‘cocoon’ bag that I’d packed for such occasions. Oddly enough, perhaps energized by the fear of going to sleep, I did some of my most productive writing in this shabby room. Besides the more fun blog posts that I’ve been releasing publicly, I’ve been working on some more personal items throughout the trip, such as a creative ten year life outlook, a collection of some of my deeper thoughts and visions and a loose protocol for my return to the states. At about 5am, with a cramped back and my contact lenses firmly dried to my eyeballs, I finally fell asleep, leaving the lights on as a hopeful repellent to any creepy crawlies who decided they might want to get intimate.

The next morning I made my excuses to the landlord, noting that the room needed a thorough cleaning, and went on my way, back towards the center square. After passing through the doorway under a grubby sign, I found a charming and more importantly, insect-free little hostel called El Alcazar which gave me a good rate for a few days. I also booked Anna one night in her own room and planned a day trip to a winery which apparently had some stunning surrounding scenery. I was looking forward to surprising her with all of my planning, somewhat aware that I was allowing my expectation to swell, but rather sure that it was warranted.

For a few years of my adolescence, thanks to the artistic and nomadic lifestyle of my Italian-American mother, we had lived Italy where we still had a handful of cousins. We spent countless hours enjoying cappuccinos in the piazzas of Rome’s historic center where, in her relentless creativity, she was regale me with tall tales of the neighbors. The scandals of Antonio, the cavorting chicken man, and the jealousy of the butcher, his brother, who was cursing his days through the Mad Cow crisis. She would wave at the old mafioso, charmingly known around the neighborhood as ‘Papa’ and give a friendly nod to his dashingly good-looking pimp of a son, who would perch on his scooter all day, making sure his brown leather shoes remained unscuffed while directing high class call girls where they were needed. To this day I still love sitting at cafes and watching people go by. Furthermore I have to say that Salta, in fact Argentina in general, is home to some of the most stunning, tan-skinned beauties that have ever blossomed on the earth’s green surface. At times their beauty is so striking that mere words can’t capture it; instead it is best described by describing the effect it has – a sort of dreamy wave that courses through a red-blooded man’s body manifesting into a series of fragmented snap shots of raunchy imagination. I also have to completely reprimand the Catholic Church – if you’re going to make ridiculous rules than please do a better job enforcing a more strict dress code on your school girls; I feel like I’m going to burn in the bowls of your sulfurous hell just for glancing at their giggling pseudo-innocence.

Finding it difficult to avoid my lecherous thoughts, I tried to figure out just where these pangs of lust were coming from. Is their root in a man’s yearning balls or his compulsive brain? Probably it starts in the former and then reaches the head, which tries to craft a solution to the madness. It’s a fact that as the time between a man’s sexual releases gets greater, so does the erraticism of his thoughts and vividness of his imagination. Surely it differs between men, but after a few days without any release I can acutely feel the presence of a restless energy in my body. As the intensity expands, lustful thoughts begin to spring from a growing number of possible avenues. The sharp curve of this energetic growth is often indirectly proportional to your standards, which can drop precipitously, especially in times of decreased inhibition. This is where the term “She’s an Arctic 10” comes from – this refers to woman who you don’t find that sexy, but you know if you lived in the Arctic for 6 months, your standards would probably shift. Eventually it gets so bad that even inanimate objects, like a naked mannequin or a mere artistic expression such as a sexual painting, can be enough to set your mind on a path of desire. And so, surrounded by this almost debilitating multitude of beautiful women, I began to ponder why our idea of beauty exists at all. In many ways, even though I see it present in myself, I find such superficial attraction quite a nasty trait – but there must be solid reasons why it evolved. Perhaps it’s a way for us to choose healthy mates? But, that doesn’t seem to fit, especially when it comes to the current idolizing of super thin model types, whose diets of Coke Zero and cocaine leave them with frames that can barely hold the fashions that they’re modeling. Perhaps the flexibility of attraction is a reflection of the times? For example, in a world of obesity, the attraction to slender figures lies in their (perceived) ability to control themselves. But many men, especially the cliché of African men, love curvy women. Is this a contextual relic of a more tribal history where wider hips and stronger frames promised healthier children and the more likely survival of the mother? We can also see that during many times throughout history, and in many cultures to this day, more girth indicates more prosperity – which is obviously closely linked to attraction. Attraction also surely has roots in the fueling of our egoic structures. What else, apart from wanting to be seen with such a aesthetically blessed creature, is the drive – especially in situations where the women is question is a high maintenance bitch? Like an expensive or rare sports car, this ‘trophy’ might outwardly indicate an achievement of high status, and sure they may be fun to ‘drive’, but they’re often not worth the hassle of what it takes to maintain them. Conversely there’s the cruel old joke that big girls are like Vespa’s: they’re fun to ride until you friends see you on one. Personally I used to be exclusively attracted to slender women, but some months ago I experienced the joy of a ‘big girl’ and it was amazingly fun. We wrestled around and she was a gracious lover. It was a very soft experience. A wide new door had swung open in the hallways of my perception. Society puts conventionally beautiful women on pedestals to offer girls an idol of what perfection looks like, and men the ultimate object to obtain. It’s so horribly shallow but deeply entrenched and at its root, mostly a device to sell more stuff to both sexes. Either way I’ve been finding that the more you observe your blind reactions, the quicker they begin to fade and as the Sunday church bells rung my head returned to the present moment.

As the evening descended I dropped my laptop at the El Alcazar and walked around town for a few hours enjoying a pre dinner ice cream, which was fast becoming a slightly dangerous habit. Eventually I stumbled on a pedestrian street full of restaurants, bars and discos. I decided this would be the perfect place to bring Anna for her first night in town. Many of the bars in Argentina are are bit different than what we’re used to in Europe or the United States. Most of the time there’s no actual bar and people sit and drink at separate tables in their own groups. This can make meeting new people, especially if you’re on your own, more challenging – prompting the rather bold move of just sitting down and engaging an existing group. I’d actually successfully done this a few times (the foreigner angle helps) but it requires boldness not just in action, but in language too – and when your Spanish is only mediocre it can be a little tiring. When you’ve been on your own for a while you start missing the cozy company of regular friends.

The next morning while doing some hotel-room yoga (my self led classes are pretty half-assed I must say – but I was making an effort to battle the empanada bulge) I began watching Forrest Gump. I remember I’d enjoyed the movie years ago but now I saw it with different, more astute eyes. The wonderful skill that Forrest continually displayed was the ability (fair enough, in his case seemingly due to a slight mental retardation) to live completely in the present moment, with no expectation of where it was leading. All of his actions were rooted in curiosity and enthusiasm and hence most of the outcomes turned out positively.

So the moment that I was looking forward to finally came – and what a surprise: Anna arrived with all the warmth of a Latvian winter. It was bizarre and more than a little disarming. The passionate exchange that we’d shared only days earlier had been replaced by an emotional distance. After checking her in at El Alcazar we walked over to their hotel where she’d planned to meet a couple of English guys who’d been on her bus.

“Lets all go out to dinner together!” She exclaimed. No big deal, I thought to myself, and took all three to the romantic restaurant that I’d scoped out the night before. The Brits turned out to be really humorous and we all laughed well in to the night, which lightened my mood. Anyway, the next day they were heading to the Foz de Iguazu so I’d have another chance to get Anna to warm up, without them distracting us, on our day trip to Quebrada del las Conchas (AKA Ravines of the Seashells or Vaginas, depending on the context).

It was a bright morning and it was going to be a relaxing day of being chauffeured around the neighboring countryside. Raul was our guide, a skinny and humorous forty year old who zoomed though the mountain roads while stuffing coca leaves into the growing wad in his cheek. We darted over red rocky passes and through verdant green valleys, stopping to take pictures:

“Lets get Raul to take a picture of us together!” I said in a playful way, hoping to see Anna’s mood improve.

“Lets just do it later, he’s sitting in the car now.” Umm, OK. And so the day went. We visited a winery where the grape-pressing machine malfunctioned and started projecting grape juice all over the floor.

“That’s never happened before.” The guide said, visibly surprised, while a worker ran for a mop. I couldn’t help think that we were dragging the dysfunctional vibes with us. Don’t get me wrong, we had some fun moments, such as debating whether goats make good pets: are you able to house-break them? Will they eat all your books and pillows? What about ramming issues? Either way, the Posada de las Cabras restaurant, where we stopped for a break, bred goats on the premises so I inquired as to their price.

“USD$250 for a male, USD$500 for a female” The girl behind the counter said, a little surprised that I was asking such a question. Upon further interrogation, she said they were trainable (although this may have just been part of the pitch to get me to buy a goat). Besides my aspirations of goat training, I also revealed to Anna two new business ideas: RetardedBigCats.com which breeds large cats, such a a leopards or jaguars, which suffer from mental problems, leaving them docile.

“We could also remove their claws and teeth.” I said seriously. “And you just need to feed them a meaty Jello and clean up their drool occasionally.”

“You call yourself an entrepreneur? You’re a monster!” She shrieked.

“When that gets shut down for any number of crimes against animals,” I continued, “and more importantly while the genetic engineering is refined, Permapuppies™ will offer the cuteness of puppies right up until their old age, when they’ll probably perish prematurely of hobbling arthritis.” For a moment I could see her expression change to a mask of horror: surely this guy is joking. OK, perhaps I wasn’t being my most romantic self but at this point I was hoping to see Anna display any sign of emotion other than cold detachment, even if it wasn’t going to be passion.

On the way home I kept smelling goat.

“Raul, did you secretly buy me a goat and put it in the truck?” Raul had only only ingested a mixture of coca leaves and coffee all day and his eyes bugged in their sockets.

“Haha! No!” He swerved in the road, avoiding an imaginary obstacle. “It’s the coca leaves. Smell!” He shoved the almost empty green baggie under my nose. Indeed, it smelled like a farm.

We made it home safely and decided to go get some dinner. As we looked at the outside menu of a restaurant near the El Alcazar, I turned around to catch a costumed folk dancer in a wide brimmed hat laughing at me and pointing at my hat, joined by an equally elaborately costumed girl. They both looked away.

“Lets not eat here.” I said and walked back onto the street. Maybe they weren’t laughing at me, I lied to myself to avoid letting my emotions rise. Just then some more laughing came from behind us. I turned around once again to find the folk dancer looking at us and laughing. Now my reactions got the better of me:

“What the hell are you laughing at buddy? My hat?” He stopped laughing and backed into the doorway. “You think I look stupid? Look at your stupid hat!” As soon as I said it I was ashamed at how quickly I had reacted. And of course Anna had been oblivious to the entire exchange and was noticeably surprised which caused a little more embarrassment. As we headed down the street these feelings graduated to a mild, but caustic anger. Unfortunately, the longer we spent together the more annoyed I was getting. In my unbalanced mental state she offered little more than a representation of failure on my part and dishonest intent on hers. After managing to get through dinner without incident we walked home, during which time she remarked multiple times at her tiredness and eagerness to read her book. Each time she said it, what I actually heard was: Don’t think anything is going to happen tonight buddy. I said goodnight to her from my doorway and basically just shut the door in her face. It was actually rather funny in retrospect. In a mere 24 hours if felt like I went through a full and doomed relationship with her, from early hopeful joy, to rocky ground, to raw aversion. I’ll even thank Anna for the great lesson in expectation: hope for the best and expect the worst. The next morning on my way to get a coffee, I saw her across the street and looked the other way as I walked by. That was the last time I saw Anna the Latvian.

After spending the day at a street-side cafe in the central square, I walked over to the bus station and booked my bus ticket south to Mendoza where I planned to spend the final days of my trip sipping local Malbec wine and gathering my thoughts. The bus would depart the following night so I decided to book a horse riding trip to a rural ranch for earlier in the day. After getting back to El Alcazar I enjoyed a Torrontes wine accompanied by a platter of goat cheese from the Posada de las Cabras and dry sausage and olives from a local delicatessen. I blazed through the rest of Ben Elton’s Blind Faith, which was not only an entertaining read but also a fantastic satire on current beliefs through the lens of a ridiculous future society. In a similar way to Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, it made me consider what it takes to really spread new ideas and beliefs through a society; while it might seem that prompting real change in such a giant system is impossible, you can easily see that its happened numerous times in history so there must be certain protocols and patterns. At the very least it’s an interesting thought experiment and prompts the profound question: if you could spread something throughout society, what would it be?

The day at the ranch, which was actually a two hundred year old, former convent, was not only entertaining but also had a dose of nice synchronicity thrown in. The small group of travelers included me, an older Dutch guy called Fred and three Dutch students that had dressed up like cowboys for the expedition – complete with check shirts, cowboy hats and Marlboro reds. We each got assigned to noble steeds and were given a quick tutorial on how to use the reins. After that we quickly launched into the lush, humid jungle surrounding the ranch. Apart from turning to bite my angle a few times, my horse was well trained and after an hour or so we emerged into an area where we could reach a gallop. The Dutch girl and I led the pack; we sped passed the others and down a path that led through the fields back towards the ranch. We passed grazing horses and a pink church that was built in the 17^th century. We galloped though fields of bright purple flowers flanked by forests full of trees covered in fuzzy ‘tree beard’. Eventually, thanks to our horse’s speed and ‘auto pilot’, we arrived back at the ranch a full five minutes before the others, both completely red-faced and exhilarated.

As Miralgo, our polite guide, grilled our lunchtime parrillada I began talking with Fred who turned out to be a really interesting and dynamic guy. Not only is he in the Dutch army reserve, routinely helping in places such as Afghanistan, but he also teaches leadership training courses to Dutch businessmen. His techniques are rooted in spirituality, without really delivering them so explicitly however.

“A lot of spirituality is nice, especially when it comes to understanding personal growth and learning how to lead others. But most people think you’re a little crazy if you get too mystical.” He explained with a wry smile. “I find it more effective to deliver the lessons in other ways. What I’m interested is in making people understand through experience” This is a core technique from Vipassana too, I told him. “Absolutely – very important. For example, I might ask for everyone to count the number of red objects in a room and then to close their eyes. Then I ask how many blue objects they saw.” He erupted into laughter. “It works! It gets them thinking differently – being more aware of the world around them.” Of course he was completely right. To get people really interested, you need to appeal to them with more than just theory – you need to trigger as many senses as possible to emote a deep reaction. We went on to discuss our personal methods for maximizing serendipity and how to keep your life dynamic – of course he liked traveling by himself for the same reasons as me, both to maintain control over your situation and as a recipe for more random interactions. He expressed his interest in the numeric cycles of Mayan time and tried to explain the complex systems to me and the Dutch kids. While interesting it quickly became hard to remember the details and made me realize why I like Vipassana’s teachings so much as they’re so easy to explain. The technique is simple enough for the layperson to learn yet the results are felt almost immediately; both of these traits are crucial if you want something to be spread widely. We parted ways and both seemed pretty sure that we’d meet again.

That night I jumped on the bus for Mendoza, arriving twenty hours later, in the mid afternoon of the next day. The situation that unfolded was somewhat unexpected but luckily my expectation reserves were already depleted so I was more amused than annoyed. I had met a very sweet Israel girl on the bus and together we took a taxi to the main street of hostels and bars. We soon found out that every single hostel on that street was full. Then one kind hostel owner called a bunch more in the surrounding areas – which were also all full. In addition to forgetting that it was Easter weekend and not having made a reservation, we had also arrived on the same day as Operacion Vida, a Christian music festival promoting ‘Amor en Accion’ with a weekend lineup of bands, was scheduled to begin. At that moment an Australian guy entered the hostel, apparently in the same situation.

“Why don’t we all try to find something together?” Netali said.

“Why not? It’ll be fun.” I said with a somewhat forced pleasantry.

That night, after gorging on steak (are you seeing a pattern here?), we crammed ourselves into a tiny, two bedded room that the helpful hostel owner had helped us track down. I was sharing a bed with Brent, the Auzzie, while Netali slept in the bed next to us. I had been imagining my final few days in a peaceful natural setting – and now, in the same bed as Brent’s smelly feet, I couldn’t help but smile at the different plan the cosmos seemed to have for my final days in Argentina.

The next day we headed to Maipu, a town about 30 minutes south of Mendoza, for a wine tasting tour. The great joy is that there are so many wineries in the area – almost 2000 in total – that you can just rent a bike and do a wine tasting bike ride! Argentina, and the Mendoza region in particular is almost unparalleled for wine-making for a variety of fortunate reasons. Besides access to increasingly more sophisticated techniques from international experts, Mendoza occupies a very low rain region area which also happens to have access to large amounts of nearby meltwater from the Andes. This means that local vineyards have almost perfect control over their irrigation. Also the diverse terrain of the surrounding areas means that without going too far, you can have vineyards at varying altitudes which are perfect for different strains of grapes. Furthermore, the climate is well suited for wine production, offering low humidity, and a good variable different in night an day temperatures, simultaneously promoting growth and richness of flavor. As a final benefit on an international level, after the Argentine economy took a dive in 2001, the diminished value of the Peso makes the wine incredibly good value and about 50% of all wine is exported. As we toured a few vineyards we were told about the process and allowed to sample an array of fantastic Malbecs, Cabernet Sauvignons and even a few superb whites. Most surprising to me, and perhaps to some of you, is that there’s only grapes in wine. I know that sounds a little stupid – but I always assumed when they talked of bouquets that contained rich plum, delicate orange zest or a sprinkle of cinnamon, I actually thought that those flavors were added. But it’s all just from the grape (and maybe a little from the barrel it ferments in)!

We ended the day at a place called Club de Olivas, run by a jolly man called Oswaldo. The Club de Olivas specializes in growing olives and sells a variety of infused olive oils and tempanades. After a brief tour of the grove we ended up in the kitchen where Oswaldo explained the full variety of things he created. All sorts of liquors, from Grappa to award winning Irish Creams to Absinthe all were concocted under his watchful eye. He also had a secret recipe for his own Dulce de Leche, mixing them with ingredients like coffee bean chips and coconut. Finally he let us sample his homemade chocolates – which were pretty richly decadent. When I left I expressed my gratitude to Oswaldo:

“I wish you lived in my town, so we could be friends! You’re awesome!” Perhaps I was a little too jolly from the wine; I think he knew I just liked him for his skills in the kitchen.

I was a little inebriated by the end of the day, but that wasn’t the reason I almost fell off my bike. The left pedal had worked loose and finally fell completely off when I put pressure on it. I tried in vain to reattach it, but a crucial nut had been lost along the road. I tried to pedal with only one pedal, which was way more difficult than I imagined, so I found myself walking the final mile back to the rental shop. I found it pretty humorous that before this trip I had imagined the freedom I was going to have with my new motorcycle license, hair blowing in the wind, only to find that it was close to impossible to find motorcycles for rent in the places I visited. The couple of leads that I did find were ridiculously expensive and wanted at least USD$100 a day and a USD$2000 cash deposit. So the closest I got to this freedom was pedaling the day away on a bike in wine country, and now, even that freedom had been stunted. I laughed again at the irony. But in many ways I know that if I had been riding a motorcycle I would have faced a large amount of challenges, from the seemingly endless, windswept expanses of Patagonia to the death threatening cities of La Paz et al. Of course I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a grand adventure – of course it would – but one for another time, when I employ better planning, probably including importing my own bike.

That night we’d moved to a room with three beds and had our own bathroom, but it had no door, which made timing your various bodily processes pretty crucial to avoid group awkwardness. The next morning, over a breakfast that consisted largely of the Dulce de Leche with coconut that I’d bought, I realized this was kind of a ridiculous situation and I had to make a move for my final two nights.

“He guys, well it’s been a super nice time with you. So it’s my last two days and I think I’m going to splash out a bit and get my own place somewhere.” And to make sure there was no hurt feelings: “I need to do some writing and work best in my own space.”

“It’s OK,” Netali said. “I think I’m leaving for Buenos Aires today.”

“Where are you going to go?” Brent asked, a trace of dejection in his tone.

“I don’t know amigo. I’m going to pack up my stuff and go make some calls. But I gotta get out of here.”

I found the local call center and proceeded to make a few phone calls. All hotels in the center were even more full than they’d been before so I turned to the Maipu map and started calling a few of the inns that were listed. At first the places I found were hugely pricey but eventually I got a stroke of luck when I found a more budget one who’d had a cancellation. La Posada Rural was at the southern end of the collection of wineries but seemed like a pleasant and affordable spot – and the kind owner even offered to pick me up from the center of town.

About an hour later I was in a car, speeding through Maipu, speaking in my butchered Spanish to the owner of La Posada Rural. Vicente was a thirty-five year old Mendoza local who’d bought a small farm house some years ago and built some cabins behind it. He ran the business and his widowed mother helped keep the place looking trim. He’d had a girlfriend but they recently broke up.

“She was a little crazy.” He said, whirling his finger next to his head. “But many girls in Argentina are crazy. Are they crazy in America also?”

“Vicente, my friend, they’re crazy all over the world. But we still love them.” We both laughed as he pulled into the gate of La Posada Rural.

Now this is the place that I was imagining for my final few days in Argentina. As we parked under some shady olive trees, a couple of black Labradors bounded up to me, tails wagging. After introducing me to his sweet mother, who insisted I tell her if I needed anything, Vicente led me down a path, under an apple tree, to a line of three two-floor cabins, opening the door of the middle one.

“This is your cabin. I hope you like it.”

“I love it Vicente, you’re awesome. Thank you.” The cabin had the perfect rustic charm combined with modern functionality. The windows were a little loose in their frames but the bathroom was immaculate. The pillows were a little lumpy but the linens were clean. I even had my own kitchen. After dropping my bags I went outside, picked an apple off the tree and went to explore the grounds. Immediately behind the cabins were about thirty rows of grape vines, completely full of juicy, dark grapes. Vicente saw me from across the lawn.

“Tomorrow they are picking all the grapes to make wine.” He shouted. “You can help! And also I can take you to a winery that my friend works at!”

Later that day I found a little bench and read the free sample of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline that I’d downloaded at the beginning of the trip. After tearing through the handful of freebie pages, I immediately wanted to read more. So I powered on the GSM wireless chip of my Kindle, which promptly accessed the Amazon store, and I downloaded the rest of the book for under $10 from the middle of this rural setting, surrounded be vineyards. In a moment of parallel, Brand’s words appeared from thin air and make the case in the first few pages that the real game changer that we have these days in order to help save our environment is technology.

After a quiet evening and deep sleep I awoke on Easter day to my last full day in Argentina. The vineyard was teeming with grape pickers, who were collecting the grapes into baskets and dumping them in to a large truck that was already about half full. Later that morning I visited the Alta Vista winery thanks to Vicente’s connection and was blown away; it was far more impressive than anything we’d seen on our touristy bike tour. Our guide led the small group of tasters, all who’d had to call to reserve a spot, on a tour through the renovated facility. It had been established in 1899 but back then the wine it produced was not of the best quality. Then one hundred years later a French family bought it and began making some radical changes to improve the quality. Now they produce 2 million bottles of wine a year which I thought was huge, until the guide said that some wineries in the area produce 15 million! . Alta Vista’s range of about ten wines, some of which have won multiple medals, all come from about 300 hectares around the region. All of the grapes are brought to this facility for fermenting in large concrete or steel tanks, and when ready, a stint in the oak barrels in the cellar. Then at the end of the process they are bottled up in the next building and either shipped out, in the case of white wines, or aged further, in the case of their reds.

That afternoon, while I was sitting in the garden, making some notes and plotting of my Returning to the States Protocol, Vicente approached me with a small white object in his hand. He held it up as he got near, it was a USB modem.

“My friend, I bring you Internet!” He exclaimed without realizing how dramatic he sounded. And sure enough, from a small garden, surrounded by olive trees and vineyards I went online to send some final, pre-departure emails and find out my flight information. I know I’ve mentioned technology a lot in my writing, but I can’t express deeply enough with how amazed I am with just how online the world actually is. Besides just enabling more ubiquitous Facebookin’ or providing more places you can access pornography (I’m three months clean by the way), the impact that this will have on the future of knowledge dissemination and cross border communication is actually impossible to over-state.

As I collected my thoughts a few things became obviously clear to me. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I decided that I would not be returning to live in LA full time; the city is just too distracting for me. I remember that when I lived in LA often a week would go by and I’d look back on it, feeling like a lot my time was spent keeping busy, but not actually creating anything. Of course I was continuously working hard to put on the monthly Mindshare events and to keep Syyn Labs moving along, but in terms of my own creative fulfillment, I had felt frustrated and unproductive. Of course I am aware of some my compulsive tendencies so this needs to be carefully considered, but in contrast I can now say, after the last three months, that I feel so amazingly fulfilled though my writing that it’s crucial that I maintain it when I return. And to do that effectively I know I can’t be in LA full time.

On that note, I realized that the last three months of short and cyclic spurts of a city-nature dichotomy was perhaps a perfect balance for me. In truth, most of my work can be done online, which gives me the privileged opportunity to choose where my office is. While taking advantage of this fact I would like to continue to take my meditation practice further, which would simultaneously benefit greatly from a more peaceful setting. I’d actually already begun to set this plan in motion some weeks ago when I’d talked with my LA landlord and he’d offered to let me use the guest room for a part time rental price. With the money that I save each month I can probably find a cabin in the woods, perhaps near the Vipassana center, and still have some money left over!

Time not spent in LA or in a more natural setting, will be spent in San Francisco or otherwise traveling around, crashing from time to time and friends places (at least until they get sick of me). I’m striving to continue a backpacker style existence in my won country – lightweight, agile and dynamic. Meanwhile, I want to continue to write small articles, maybe even finding a large blog or magazine column in which I could regularly document interesting and inspiring experiences. Furthermore I intend to edit all of these South America chapters into a cohesive novel.

In a recent but inspiring moment, I had the idea to sell my sports car (which admittedly has been fun to drive) and get something more suited for the upcoming 2010 road trips. Maybe something that doesn’t require so much maintenance. Maybe something that I could sleep in and not be too uncomfortable. Maybe something that I can strap a surfboard to the top of

As I sat in the garden, nursing a glass of Cabernet, the dog next door started whining and barking. Eventually I got up and after storming across the grass, shot it the meanest look I could muster over the fence that separated us. It immediately shut up and crawled into his dog house. In a moment of insight, I saw a deep metaphor in this complaining mutt: if you’re going to make a lot of noise to attract attention when you finally get it you better have something to say! A lot of my life I feel like I’ve been whining and barking, but not really known why, or what for. Throughout the last three months, starting with a vision that I had at the Vipassana center before leaving, and carrying on through Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, I’ve been thinking deeply on precisely this matter. What is my larger goal on this planet? If anyone finally pays attention to me, then what do I have to say? Improving on my rather nebulous, previously stated goal of helping people engage themselves, each other, and the planet in a more intentional and mindful way – I’ve now begun to see how the various avenues of my life are converging to help achieve this end goal. I’m beginning to refine these thoughts into an interesting insight into human behavior: what makes us tick? What the current overarching problems in the system? How can these deeply ingrained patterns be tuned? I’m exploring the ongoing convergence of science, ethics and spirituality and envisioning what the path forward could look like and how new tools, like technology, will play a unprecedented role. Such progressive ideas are sure to win me support as well as harsh criticism (as early conversations on my travels confirmed) – and I have to be ready for that as I proceed. Together with the input from a few close advisors, I’m working on the first draft for public release in order to begin the conversation and develop the idea further.

My final morning in Argentina was cold and a thin layer of frost adorned the newly naked vines. After a breakfast of eggs (it seems like some a mouse got into the bread during the night, which now lay scattered on the counter) I packed up my things and loaded them in to Vicente’s car; the generous host had even been kind enough to offer me a ride to the airport. As we sped down the country lane, past endless rows of grape vines, small irrigation canals and gently swaying weeping willows Vicente exclaimed:

“Baby Jesus! It’s cold this morning!” He rubbed his hands together, while keeping the wheel steady with his knee. “It is the end of Summer. Now it is Autumn.” He was right. By coming down to Argentina I’d exchanged our winter for their summer and now it was beginning to get colder. Whereas Autumn would soon descend on the southern hemisphere, I was returning to the beginning of our Spring. Suitably, this prompted the realization that now was a moment to define, embrace and actuate the changes needed in my life. An imminent vector shift.

Ghandi once said that “we must be the change we wish to see in the world”. We don’t need a special occasion or date to make a change, just an awareness of the power of the present moment. After all, the present moment is the only thing that we truly possess.

See all the Isla del Sol pictures here…

Back in La Paz and on second thoughts not much has changed: it’s truly an insane place. There’s no stop signs or round-a-bouts. There’s some street lights but no one seems to really pay attention. Instead there’s a system of honking: if you’re about to speed through an intersection, you honk and hope. If anyone gets too close, you don’t slow down, you just jab a series of short honks. Dogs chase the wheels. Indigenous women and children fly out of the way. It’s chaos, but it seems to work. At some of the busiest intersections you might see an odd sight; various characters trying to protect the pedestrian public. Individuals in zebra suits or the rather elaborately costumed ‘seven dwarfs’ (Snow White apparently had the day off) who run into the intersection during red lights and prevent pedestrians, and themselves, from being hit.

As you walk around, one of the weirder aspects you might notice is the attire of the swarms of shoeshine boys. Ashamed of their role in society, they mask their faces almost completely to prevent identification. At times I faced five different masked youths, only their eye sockets visible, and always had to apologize for the fact that my worn out sneakers really didn’t need a shine. They look vicious, but they just want to shine your shoes. Booths sell blackmarket items and any DVD you could can imagine. At times, especially around the plethora of food stalls in the center, a wonderful smell will reach your nostrils – perhaps the ‘broaster’ chicken (which is neither broiled nor roasted but fried), only seconds later for it to be replaced by a stench of fetid water or the decay of raw meat.

Don’t get me wrong, as the highest capital city in the world and pleasantly surrounded by mountains, La Paz has it’s charm. It’s a somewhat elusive charm, but if you observe it without recoiling, you might find it amid the chaos. Life bursts from every crevice. Multitudes of people hustle in every direction. There’s a stunning amount of photocopy shops and lawyer offices, both which probably fuel each other and in turn the huge amount of governmental bureaucracy that the whole system feeds upon. Modernly dressed business types swarm next to out-of-place looking indigenous women, known as cholitas, who wear an absurd amount of pleated petticoats. On their backs, on top of ornately woven shawls, they carry colorful sacks stuffed full of goods and even the occasional kid. Their whole amorphous caricature is crowned by a precariously placed bowler hat, or summery bonnet, that covers dark hair twisted into long, twin braids. Many of the park benches are occupied with young (and less visually appealing, even occasionally quite old) lovers who are happy to put on quite a show – usually led by the extremely assertive males. And how could I ever forget the value meals? No, not MacDonalds, which graciously has yet to permeate Bolivia, but the incredibly cheap lunches offered by hole-in-the-wall restaurants. As you negotiate the streets, scampering for safety when sidewalks often just disappear, you will see many chalk boards outside small doorways advertising meals that are currently being cooked. There’s usually just one set menu which is comprised of a little appetizer, a salad, a main course and a dessert – often for just 10 Bolivianas. That’s less than $1.50 for a damn decent meal! In truth most Bolivian is fairly bland for my taste, but that’s nothing to sneeze at – well, hopefully. I didn’t see the kitchen conditions.

After surviving Death Road I retired early to the Hotel Milton with a bottle of Pacena – the local brew – and a hand-packed sack of home made potato chips. I watched the Spanish version of Law and Order and finally passed out.

When I woke up it was still dark outside and Law and Order had been replaced by an infomercial for Cellufree, promising to finally remove that cellulite if you just plastered these miracle strips to your body before bed time. I was in a cold sweat and had wrestled all the sheets into a ball so I was now lying directly on a stained mattress. Waves of nausea seemed to emanate from my very bones themselves, shuddering to my intestinal area. For a while, as I always find with food poisoning, I writhe around in bed for a while until I realize it’s not going away and I summon the courage to go purge myself. I worshipped the porcelain deity until the sun rose while Cellufree’s spokeswoman unsympathetically observed my misery.

After what seemed to be the 5^th run through of Cellufree, I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. I had to call the US Embassy to check the status of my passport as today was meant to be the day that I could pick it up. After that the place was to head to the Bolivian immigration office to get a new departure ticket. Oh let me tell you about the dire importance of departure tickets: a piece of paper so incredibly important that if you want to leave the country without huge hassles and paperwork, you better not lose it when they hand it to you upon entering the country. I crossed the street trying not to wretch at the smell of the neighboring butcher and entered the centro de llamadas, where those without cell phones go to make calls. As I stepped into the booth I could hear the cholita in the booth next to me screaming into the phone how someone owed her 4 Bolivianas. Ater working out the cryptic system of dialing the US Embassy put me on hold for 15 minutes. The cholita was now close to tears and for a moment and as I looked at her, I felt like I was going to vomit all over the glass that separated us. I sat down and tried to breathe in a calm, slow pattern. Finally I was taken off hold:

“Sorry sir, it’s waiting to be approved by the consulate – can you call back later?” I didn’t tell her that made me want to vomit. Instead, I gratefully made it back to my room without public embarrassment and spent the rest of the day in bed, trying to eat some bread that I’d nicked from the dining room. On my third visit to the centro de llamadas the Embassy told me to come in the following day to pick up my new passport. That night as I lay there I suddenly realized that 1000s of miles away, the Mindshare crew was preparing for tonight’s event. And I was nauseous and alone in this crappy hotel room with sickening, green wavy wallpaper. I watched the clock. In LA, the doors of the 740 Club had just opened. Flipper the English door man was no doubt there, flanked by one of our sexy female volunteers, handing out badges. The two Adams were probably looking sharp and welcoming the first arrivals with wide smiles. The Syyn Labs posse was probably gathered around clinking beers and talking about new developments. As I fell asleep I realized that over in LA, the presentations had begun, and people were probably having a blast. When I was eight years old, I got sent to boarding school in England – I don’t get lonely or homesick much as a result – but this was surely the loneliest and most pathetic moment of my trip. Just sleep it off big guy.

The next morning came and things initially seemed rosier, no doubt helped by a strong course of the antibiotic Cipro, which I’d picked up the day before. I was hungry and so after a refreshing shower – the one perk of Hotel Milton, besides the friendly staff, was the shower. As I ate my Americano breakfast (which is just like the Bolivian breakfast of bread and coffee, except you get a scrambled egg too) I considered my situation: Team Bolivia had now given me a double whammy, scoring against Team Doug with a out-of-left-field passport theft and a food-poisoning goalie error. I actively try to not be superstitious at all, the logic being that as soon as you let a couple of superstitions into your life it’s a slippery slope of blame and expectation. However as my mother always cried:

“Bad things come in threes!”

I know it was stupid to think but I couldn’t help it, I had to finish this game before Team Bolivia scored a third time! As I washed down the dry bread with an incredibly sour, freshly squeezed orange juice (it might have been lemon juice) I continued playing games in my head. I pondered the decision I’d made to stay in Sucre an extra day. Besides missing the company of the lovely Kim who’d I made tentative plans to meet with in La Paz, the decision had seemed to set me on a path of unfavorable occurrences. I couldn’t help think that if I’d come a day earlier, I would have not been on the same bus as the passport thief and probably would have avoided food poisoning. Eventually after an audible “You can go screw yourself”, directed at th voice in my head, which seemed to get the attention of a French couple at the table next to me, I downed my cafe con leche and left the dining room and caught a taxi to the US Embassy.

After clearing the assault course of searches and detectors at the entrance I found myself at the passport window. I had been happy with the picture but out of respect they had stretched my face into a long, cartoonish version of me. “you can go screw yourself too” I thought to myself this time; it was only good for three months anyway.

“If you lose this one, then you’ve got problems. We can’t do a third so easily.” The clerk warned.

“Sure thing, gracias amigo.” I pocketed the passport and pushed through the series of bomb proof doors back into the chaos of La Paz.

The next stop was the Bolivian Immigration so I could get my visa renewed and a duplicate departure card. After reeming me for $80 and sending me on to the third line and disgruntled characters, I ended up next to a fellow American called Khaled. Khaled was in the process of trying to sort his life out after his entire bag had been stolen in an elaborate charade at a local restaurant. Some guys in suits had caused a distraction in one direction while his bag was lifted off the seat next to him. Before he knew it the men, and his bag, were gone. Besides all his money, cards and passport, it had contained his professional USD$1200 camera and worst of all, all of his photos from the last few months.

“I’m slowly making peace with it.” he said, although I could sense a deep underlying remorse, “All it took was a second! The worst thing is I was going to use those pictures to make some money. So they even robbed that from me!”

At this moment in my self-pitiful day, I finally had a moment of clarity and Khaled’s story got my mind back into a positive trajectory. Sure, a few annoying things had happened, but it wasn’t so bad. Khaled was certainly worse off than me. More importantly, to distract myself from negative thoughts I was determined to find a something serendipitous in the coming days so I could say to myself: “If I hadn’t come to La Paz a day late than BLANK wouldn’t have happened!” A far more positive task for your brain to be assigned. After a few early goals against Team Bolivia (the salt flats and the mines), the score was now neck and neck. This was turning out to be quite a close match. Stay on your toes boys, it’s not over yet!

By the time that we got to the front of the line they utterly disinterested looking clerk said that the head honcho who okays new visas wasn’t coming in today, so we’d have to come back on Monday.

“How can what takes one minute at the border take so long at the head office?” Khaled asked her. She just look at him, shook her head, and said:

“Monday.”

After saying goodbye to Khaled and planning a celebratory drink for Monday evening at a local bar, I booked a side trip to Isla del Sol where I would pass a few days while my visa was finalized (I made sure to make some photocopies before leaving the immigration office). After pushing passed shoeshine boys and cholitas I had finally found a somewhat civilized cafe where I was able to recover from the day’s bureaucracy with a cappuccino and a slice of apple tart. I checked my email and saw a message with an alluring subject: “Are you in La Paz?”. The last time I’d seen Ted Reilly had been over two years ago in the delightfully decadent town of Vang Vieng in Laos. I’d spent the day with his merry throng of traveling buddies floating down a river in inflated inner tubes and getting increasingly imbibed as we swung off rickety structures into the cool water. The next day we’d gone our separate ways – he’d continued south and I headed to Hong Kong to begin the first leg of the www.tuxedotravels.com. The email read:

“What´s the game bro? Are you coming to La Paz? if so come visit me at the Adventure Brew Hostel – I’m the bar manager here…”

I left the cafe and decided to track him down. As I entered the Adventure Brew – which proudly makes it’s own beer, I recognized Ted’s delightful face coming down the stairs.

“Look at that good looking chap!” Ted blurted loudly in his thick English brogue.

“Well hello gorgeous!” I said, instantly remembering why we’d enjoyed each other’s company. Ted showed me around the place and took special pride in the theme nights that he’d arranged for this weeks bar schedule. Poker night, quiz night and costume night were among the offerings.

“It’s the easiest job in the world – but don’t tell them I said that! I’ve already been here six months and just renewed for another six!”

“Are you serious?” I asked. ”Honestly Ted, I have to ask, just what the hell is keeping you in this place?” Ted stood up and walked to the bar window, which offered a great view of the city.

“Look at this place!” He exclaimed, “It’s like we’re in India!” Haha, it was true, La Paz certainly felts like it had been sprinkled with the Delhi mayhem.

“But we’re not in India, Ted.”

“I know, that’s what makes it so crazy!” His smile told me more than his words. He was happy here – and who can argue with that?

Before leaving the Adventure Brew Hostel I decided to book my final night in La Paz there after I returned from Isla del Sol. On the wall was a flier for ‘Cholita Wrestling’ that promised a unique experience – portrayed by a drawing of two cholitas grinding teeth and pulling each other’s braids. This flier seemed to underscore one of the main things that was depressing me so much about La Paz. As I walked back to the Hotel Milton, I couldn’t help but look at the colorful indigenous women and feel sympathy for them. It reminded me of that trick that fancy waiters can do with table cloths; the entire natural setting had been whipped from underneath them and replaced by a loud and filthy city. While most of them are selling goods, many of them are begging, hunched into a right angle and in the worst cases uttering barely audible whimpers. It’s just so incredibly wrong that this many old women are begging – but people speed by, no time to notice them. And lets be fair, of course it’s not just here; all over the world tragedy is on display every day – in many cases far worse than the lives of these cholitas. The vast populous of this planet is so occupied with inane and completely inconsequential distractions that there’s no bandwidth to notice or to care. One day we will understand that when any of us is suffering, we are all suffering. As I reached my hotel I found an old cholita sitting on my steps.

“Hola Senora.”

“Hola gringito.” She smiled, proudly displaying her gold rimmed teeth.

My bus left La Paz early the next morning and I found myself sitting next to a lively and colorful English girl.

“What did you think of La Paz?” She asked.

“The only thing I really enjoyed about La Paz has been leaving it.” I said rather bluntly.

“Oooh, crikey… but me too!” She giggled, “I didn’t want to say anything, you know, so not to offend anyone, but I bloody hated it!” We both laughed and shared our war stories. As we ascended to the heights of the city the downtown apartment blocks gave way to shoddily constructed brick shacks that seemed to be literally stacked on top of each other. The town’s poorer folk live in these areas, overlooking the prosperous lower sections. Soon, after skirting the hillside and weaving over crests, we reached the countryside. I felt like I could finally breath freely again.

It turns out that Jen was a surfer and made me promise that when I returned to California that I would take it up:

“It’s bloody heresy that you live in California and don’t surf.” She playfully, but harder than expected, punched me in the shoulder. “Just get a board and strap it on top of your ride. Or put it in the car with you. Once I slept with three other surfers and two boards in a rental car our Route 1 for a month – that’s how brilliant California is!” I promised her I would give it a shot.

Eventually the talkative Brit tired herself out and fell asleep, partially on me. After having to get off the bus and boat across a small stretch of water (while the bus precariously went on a separate raft) we got back on the bus and finished the trek to Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is not the only name that schoolkids, (and even sometimes immature adults) can get a kick out of in Bolivia. How about the charming town of Poopo. I’m serious. If the butchering of Inca words wasn’t so well documented than I would have been certain that a 7 year old had made these names up.

Eventually we hit the town of Copacabana. Hardly comparable with Brazil’s town of the same name, but Bolivia’s Copacabana still maintains it’s own quaint appeal, sandwiched between two hills and a pleasant waterfront. As I waited for the boat that would take me to the island, I had a coffee at a waterfront cafe. As I was looking out at the crystal waters, a shoeshine boy came up to me and gave the regular pitch, which was met with my regular excuse. However Javier was so sad that my shoes didn’t really require shining that my heart finally melted when he pulled out a grimy USD$1 coin:

“You can change me?”

I gave him a couple of dollars in exchange for his grubby coin. His intense depression lifted only mildly as he thanked me and shuffled on his way. Then two familiar faces approached, Cam and Adelaide from the Uyuni Expedition. I love how you run repeatedly into travelers on the same circuit. We exchanged stories and they gave me some Isla del Sol tips, where they were just returning from. Their next stop was Peru, and they might even make it to LA by the end – I humbly offered my tour guide services if they did. My boat had arrived and so I left the cafe and said goodbye to the sweet Australian couple. After walking down the most wobbly and hammered together pier I’ve ever been on, a group of tourists boarded the boat for Isla del Sol.

The name aside, Lake Titicaca is no joke friends. The Inca’s believed that the lake itself was the birthplace of both the sun and moon, as well as many of the first Inca rulers. It’s incredibly deep in parts and throughout the ages the water level has risen, submerging an Inca settlement that has only recently been discovered. As we approached the rocky hills of Isla del Sol, a stepped texture that cut into much of the exposed hillside became apparent. These are the remains of the original terraced irrigation system that the Inca had built by 1500AD, some of them still being used to this day. Only a few thousand people live on the island, most of whom live by means of a subsistence lifestyle, augmented by a handful of tourism bucks. As we pulled into Challa, the main town on the southern tip of the island, I caught a glimpse of the Inca staircase that ran from the shore to a series of paths that spread out towards the top of the hill. Each side of the stone staircase was areas carpeted in lush grasses and foliage. The source of water required to maintain this is a gushing spring that shoots out of the hillside into a series of mini canals near the top of the stairs. As I hopped off the boat I was already more relaxed and thoroughly looking forward to the weekend on this beautiful island.

“Hi, I am David and I will show you to your hostel!” A little local kid wearing a baseball cap and a power rangers t-shirt was facing me off on the pier. Normally I would have made an excuse and continued on my own esteem, but I instantly liked this kid. He was honest looking, sweet and I decided to entertain the whims of my new tour guide. We began to ascend the stairs and due to the steepness combined with the altitude (Lake Titcaca is one of the world’s highest navigable lakes) I was quickly gasping for breath.

“The Inca have a saying,” David said, also breathing heavily, “Ama sua, ama llulla, ama khella! Don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t be lazy!” He grinned. “Come on, just 10 more minutes, gringo.”

After reaching a pleasant hotel near the summit, I tipped David a couple of bucks and checked in to my $6, lake-view room. Not too shabby! I wondered how I was going to return to my pricey LA loft, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it didn’t necessarily have to. I put the future out of my mind, for in the present I realized, having only having eaten a little of Jen’s Toblerone hours earlier, I was damn hungry. The hostel restaurant wasn’t open so I found a nearby spot and feasted on some quinoa soup and llama steak. Feeling revived, I continued the rest of the climb to the top of the hill, to a town called Yumani. After exploring the various indigenous stores that were selling all sorts of soft alpaca woven goods, I found a little cafe on the cliffs edge. As I stared out on one of the most beautiful scenes I’d ever witnessed I felt almost overwhelmed. The splendor of the island, the deep blue of the lake flanked by the mountains of Bolivia and Peru in the distance filled me with intense emotion. I found myself wanting to say things to far away people. To express to my family and close friends the gratitude and love that I had for them. I wanted to write a poem to all the lovers who I still care for. During this trip, which has provided so many close iterations of city life juxtaposed to more rural journeys, I’ve realized that being in nature always brings out my humanity – it literally makes me feel more human. Isla del Sol is such a blaring contrast to La Paz, a place where the locals, while still having to work hard, actually seemed happy.

After the sunset, I headed back to the hotel and passed a similarly awestruck tourist couple.

“Is this place for real?” I asked.

“It’s beautiful!” One girl exclaimed.

“I know, but seriously, is it for real?” I said.

“What do you mean?” Her manfriend asked.

“I mean, it is so perfect that it seems fake. I’m wondering if after the tourists leave if they all go somewhere else and live in shitty shacks like La Paz?”

“Oh, I see. I’m not sure.” He replied.

“Haha! Me either, if it is real, it makes me wonder why more places couldn’t be this awesome!” My initial oddness evaporated and we all agreed how nice that would be and went on our separate ways. As I descended the rest of the cobbled path to my hotel an old thought was rekindling in my mind. For some time my group of Burning Man friends have been talking about starting a permaculture style village. A place where we could have fun, learn survival skills and in a semi-joking way then have a place to go live if the world’s social order has a melt down. When I see places that are actually doing it, I realize it’s not that out there of an idea. If the NIKKEI and DJIA and the rest of the world markets collapse, I guarantee that life on Isla del Sol wouldn’t change too drastically. Of course, I always have a habit of over romanticizing things; much of these people’s daily work is incredibly hard, back-breaking work. But ideally this will happen enough in the future that robots will do the hard stuff and we can spend our free time playing strange instruments, making art and designing fun outfits to wear while we dance and sing around a fire and consume home brewed mead. As I said, I have a habit of romanticizing stuff.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of a nearby donkey, which means a few raspy gasps followed by a couple of loud, complaining honks. I decided, rather thank joining any tour, that I would go explore the island myself and do a round trip hike to some ruins on the northern tip of the island, 8km away. Over breakfast I approached a group of tourists who were pouring over a Lonely Planet guide book.

“What are you guys up to today?” I asked.

“We’re going to visit the floating islands.” One girl said.

“Oh, I heard that’s cool!” Actually I’d heard it was a bit of a tourist mecca, perched on top of floating reeds in the lake. However, I also heard that it was pretty interesting in that the inhabitants use the reeds for food, clothing and other things besides just floating on. I also heard that recently a large area of the island had been sawed off and let loose, because that family had become Mormons. Apparently when neighbors had disputes on the floating islands, they could just saw each other free – how convenient!

“Can I take a picture of that book’s map?” I asked.

“What?”

“Well I’m going on a hike and I figure at least having it on my camera is better than nothing!” They laughed.

“That’s a good idea actually!” I didn’t bother telling them that I was a Technomad, and this is just one of our many meat-space hacks.

There is no motor vehicles on Isla del Sol, just a series of paths and the occasional staircase. I decided on a counter-clockwise route that would take me through a small town near the north of the island, where I planned to get some lunch before continuing to the ruins. Then I would head back to Yumani, over the Inca path that followed the crests of the island’s hilly terrain. At first I followed a path but I soon veered off into the terraced hills, surprised by how large the were up close. At times I had to climb on all fours and find zig zagging routes through them while being careful to not step on the crops of any that were still functional. I passed numerous grazing llamas, donkeys and a large pig, sitting in a muddy hole that it had dug. It watched me suspiciously as I passed. After getting lost numerous times I eventually found the path that led me to Challapampa. In this tiny town that sat on a beach lined isthmus I ate some more soup (Bolivia loves their soups) and fantastic Titicaca trout. A friendly chicken joined me for lunch so, not having any grain readily available, I gave him a french fry. It seemed to welcome this and pushed it around in the dirt for a bit before gobbling it down. It eyed my up with a beady orange eye until I gave it another. It seemed satisfied and clucked its way back onto the dirt road, on its way to do whatever chickens do in their spare time.

After lunch, on my way to the ruins, I came upon a local family doing their washing by the lake side. The wife was holding a large blanket on the surface of the water while the man was beating the hell of it with a stick. A couple of kids were playing in the pile of dirty laundry and I seem to remember a llama was keeping them company too. After getting lost some more (the Lonely Planet map was hopelessly inaccurate) I eventually got to the Chincana ruins, a series of corridors and roofless rooms with tiny doors. Within the labyrinth is a sacred well that the Inca would use for purification purposes. There were other things to see like a sacred table and sacrifice slab but I didn’t linger too long, evening was approaching and I still had a few hour walk back to Yumani. The return trip was way more direct and blazed over the crests of hills, led by the trail that was still paved in many parts. The sun ended its day in a glorious blaze of reds as I neared Yumani, arriving just after dark.

I had planned to finally do some gift shopping (first time in 2 months) and bought some presents for my family at a store that was still open. I dropped about USD$50 on such a large bundle of woven items that the ecstatic store owner estimated that it had collectively taken her close to 300 hours of work. Luckily I was able to get rid of some big bills on her, although how she’ll change them, I have no idea. The change situation in Bolivia is absolutely ridiculous. No one can break any notes larger than 20 Bolivianas but the ATMs only spit out 100s and 200s. Even at the end of the day at my hotel in the capital they would look at me and apologize for not having change. Where are all the small bills people? What the hell is going on?

Completely exhausted I entered a tiny pizzeria that had only two tables. The whole place was lit by a kerosene lamp and a couple of candles on the tables. Against the rough stone wall next to the door sat a pizza oven. A jolly looking man in an apron emerged from the kitchen, strutted over to me and shook my hand.

“Buenvenidos amigo!” I instantly thought he was awesome. He sat me down and fussed over the table, arranging the napkin and candle a couple of times before asking me what I’d like.

“Una pizza por favor. Que me recomienda?” He proceeded to ask me if I liked a long list of ingredients. Before he was able to finish, I just replied:

“Que tu piense!” Saying that whatever he thought was good, I would enjoy. He smiled and shuffled off to the kitchen, humming a little song as he gathered the necessary items. After some moments a women came in:

“Aaah, buenos noche senor!” She was obviously his wife and proceeded to ask me the basic travel questions while she rearranged the candles and napkins again.

Eventually the most amazingly delicious pizza emerged from the oven in the corner. The pizzeria owner and his wife brought it to me and placed it before me, both staring at it with pride as he served me a slice. I took a bite. They watched. I took a bite; it was really damn good pizza.

“Senor,” I began quietly, slowly rising to a crescendo: “Este es una pizza SIN comparicion!” They were both delighted at my exuberant confirmation that this was the best pizza I’d ever eaten.

As I ate the fantastic pizza, which literally had about 10 different toppings, and drank some smooth and mellow red wine I read my Kindle by the light of the candle. It already felt like a strange juxtaposition to be reading on such a hi-tech device in such a low-tech context but even more so because I was still chomping through Kurzweil’s: The Singularity is Near. Seriously, this book mush be like 600 pages at least. What do these people know about the Singularity? I asked myself. Not much probably. I imagined that they had never even been on the Internet. In fact, they probably didn’t even have cell phones. And that very fact provoked an interesting realization that it didn’t really matter. Advancement will continue to move forward, as long as it can, at an increasingly accelerated rate. It’s unfortunate perhaps, but inevitable, that all humans will not be in the foreground of this; the digital divide is too great. However, the local people of Isla del Sol were once claimed by the Inca, then by the Spanish and today by Bolivia. So whatever forces supposedly lead them, such rural groups are somewhat expected to follow – but if it doesn’t really affect them negatively, they probably don’t really care. They just get on with living in the present.

The next day, on the boat back to the mainland, I sat on the roof of the boat with a large group of friendly tourists. I told them about the TED conference (which some of them had heard about) and about Mindshare in LA. They were excited about a more accessible version for our age group and asked a lot of questions. Throughout the trip, I’ve always seemed to be a handful of years older than most other travelers and take a bold, perhaps even overemphasized pride in the age difference. I talked about my theory of living by iteration and my determination to not just go back and repeat the same loop. It was funny, at one point they were all just looking at me for what I was going to say next. I apologized for my compulsive social behavior so I interjected some questions of my own. After a couple of minutes one girl turned to me and said:

“You know, I never looked at it like that. This time, when I go home, things are going to be different. I’m not going back to a job I hate, just so I can save up to have the next escape.” You go girl!

As the bus descended into crazy La Paz I felt so relaxed that it didn’t even phase me. After getting off, I calmly negotiated the traffic and checked in to the Adventure Brew. I walked down the main street towards the immigration office so I could pick up my freshly visa’d passport. I barely got stressed when a large parade divided the street and blocked my way (it was Bolivia’s yearly display of aggression towards Chile for stealing their coastline). I waited calmly as immigration looked for my passport among stacks of papers spread across 3 desks. I didn’t flinch when they told me I need more photocopies. I almost didn’t flinch when they stamped my passport and then told me I also needed to photocopy the stamp. Take a breath. “Gracias senor.” I calmly walked passed begging cholitas when I went to pick up my bus ticket and quietly observed the insanity unfolding in every direction. Just chillin’. Isla del Sol: Goal #3 for Team Doug.

On my final night in La Paz I met up with Khaled and a few English girls he was having drinks with. He’d since hired a private investigator – who had also offered him his services as an assassin. The shady character, who’s Khaled had engaged for a retainer of USD$20 per day, was currently scanning the black market for the camera but we both knew it was a futile affair. The rest of the night unfolded into such a display of debauchery that I can’t even write about it. However if you meet me in person, just ask what happened in Bolivia at Route 36. Either way when getting out of the taxi the following morning at 8am, just a couple of hours before I was due to leave La Paz, I handed the taxi driver a 50 Boliviana bill. I expected him to refuse it for its size, instead he tore the corner.

“Este es falsificado.” He handed it back, it was a counterfeit!

Goddamn, Bolivia! You got me! That’s the third! I paid him in small change and retreated from the morning sun into the dark hostel.

A couple of hours later after having not slept at all, I boarded the bus that would take me to an overnight train and then to another bus into Argentina, arriving 30 hours later. Traveling in such a manner is incredibly helpful for development of one’s patience. Four hours after leaving La Paz, after the bus had gotten stuck in a muddy road and we’d all had to walk for a mile, I found myself at the train station in Oruro standing next to a tall, sexy brunette. Maybe I’d stood next to her. Or vice versa. I can’t remember. She looked eastern European.

“There better be something to eat around here. I haven’t eaten all day.” She was slim and she was hungry. As a burly guy with extra fat stores you can deal with long times without eating, but when you’re quite slender and lean I suppose immediate sustenance is more of a pressing issue.

“I suggest we load our bags onto the train and then you follow me. I will bring you to where the food is – it’s a gift I have.” I smiled.

“You’re American?” Sexy accent.

“No, I’m Californian. Big difference.” She laughed.

“I haven’t met many Americans – they always seem to travel in large groups.”

“That’s not how I travel. I roll solo. Nimble and free.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Anna. I’m from Latvia.” We shook hands to make it official.

After loading our bags we had twenty minutes to find some food so we quickly walked down a few blocks until we found a market. After buying some bread and chocolate for the train (actual food was incredibly elusive) Anna stopped by a juice stand.

“We should have some smoothies.” She said. “You’ll thank me on the train.” Her accent made it sounds like I had no choice. I liked her strength. The stall lady whipped up a concoction of milk, mangoes, bananas and sugar.

We clinked the glasses and watched each other humorously as we downed the delicious drink in a few large gulps.

“OK, we gotta run!” Anna’s athletic frame moved through the streets with the grace of a gazelle while I hobbled behind her, completely filled with smoothie. We made it onto the train a few minutes before it left.

As we found our seats in separate carriages, a softcore mariachi musical soap opera was playing on the screen. The man would do a macho song. The women would do a tearful retort. The man then followed with a remorseful song. The woman dramatically sang a bold response and tossed her head around. And so it went on. After an hour or so, Anna found me:

“Do you want to know something funny?” She asked.

“Sure.” I smiled. Truthfully, it didn’t really have to be funny, because just listening to her talk was enjoyable.

“There’s a food carriage the next car down.” We both laughed. “It’s full right now, but come find me in a little bit and we can go get something to eat.” She smiled. “It will be our first date.”

Some hours later, after a dramatic farewell on the platform, Anna left for Uyuni and I continued to the border. However, by chance she was heading to Salta directly afterward and we planned to meet there in a few days for a second date. And Team Doug hits one into the back of the net in overtime! The crowd goes wild! The referee blows his whistle and announces the final score: BOLIVIA 3 : DOUG 4!

Going into Bolivia, I had known it was going to be more challenging than Argentina or Chile but it was also one of the most beautiful and diverse countries that I’ve ever visited, bringing me across salt flats, deserts, mountain passes and humid jungle. The communities I passed through ranged from small miners towns to lush farms to quaint, colonial style villages to the urban chaos of La Paz. Even as it had tossed me around like a rag doll, I had enjoyed it and rolled with the punches. However it was the last two weeks of my trip and I was feeling exhausted from all the adventures. Knowing myself well enough, I knew I needed to relax and get my head ready for my return home. The emails have already started: “So when exactly are you getting back?” Soon enough amigos.

At the border I hopped on a bus headed into Argentina and decided I’d just jump off at the first town that I liked on the way to Salta (incidentally home of the empanada AKA saltena). As we headed south my thoughts came full circle and I realized that if I’d left Sucre early I wouldn’t have been on that train and I wouldn’t now have a sexy date for Salta, where the outdoor cafes and candlelit restaurants are apparently lovely – but even more so when you can share the experience with a lovely person.

Appropriately enough, I was excited to get back to Argentina for the very reasons that I’d wanted to leave in the first place: the functional, laid back and easy way of life.

Oh and also some damn good meat.

See the rest of the Death Road pics here…

“That corner, we call that ‘Italian Corner’.” Our tour guide, the self appointed Speedy Gonzales laughed.

“Why do you call it that?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“A few years ago, an Italian – he fell down!” Speedy grinned, “And the jungle, it ate him. So be careful amigos! Let’s go!” Speedy pulled a mini-wheelie and headed down the rocky, cliff-side trail.

‘Death Road’ (AKA Yungas Road) runs from Bolivia’s lofty capital of La Paz to the town of Coroico, just on the border of the more tropical jungle region. It’s a one-lane dirt road with sharp, gravely corners and 600m drops into dense jungle. By the way, there isn’t just the Italian corner. There is a Chinese corner, a Brit corner and numerous Australian corners – in fact pretty much every stretch of road had Speedy telling us a gruesome story. During some years as many as 300 people have plunged to their death, but others only a handful. The worst accident in the road’s history is when a bus full of 100 travelers plunged off the edge in 1983.

Long, narrow and extremely steep, Death Road drops from 4600m to 1200m in around 65km. Just to clarify, that’s almost a three and a half kilometer difference (2.2 miles) in vertical height. And here were were, bouncing and sliding down it far too fast. Testosterone. It’s a real bitch. As a man, you can possess the theoretical mental strength of restraint, but when things get going, and a cocky British guy has just whizzed past you, you can’t help but push harder. Stupidity has a habit of kicking theory in the nuts. The wheels hit the rocky surface like a jackhammers. The handlebars rattle your arms so much that the vibration reverberates throughout your body, including to your head where your vision becomes a series of poor resolution snapshots.

Some years ago the Bolivian government had finally built a safer, alternate route between the highlands and the lowlands but last week’s rains created a landslide that took out a large portion of the road. This meant that all the traffic was once again using the Death Road, the same road that we were struggling to stay attached to.

“BUS! There’s a bus coming!” Speedy had pulled off to the edge and was yelling and waving. The same British guy obviously confused his breaks, pulling down hard on the front break accidentally, and in a split second he was a blur of arms and wheels as he tumbled over the handlebars. A second later he was lying less than a meter from the edge.

“RIGHT breaks amigos! Use the back break!” Speedy yelled. The more expensive tours provided guides who were also trained with ropes and climbing in case you fell off the road. There was no other way to get you other than climbing down. I had a feeling that Speedy wasn’t one of those guides. The leading group of bikers – all testosterone pumped young guys gathered in a small turnout. OK, I’m only 30 and was definitely the oldest but that’s still a ‘young guy’, right? The bus approached with horns blaring, hardly slowing as it passed us, giving us just a few feet clearance. The driver, cheek stuffed with a large ball of coca leaves, was grinning maniacally. In the back of the bus there was about twenty-five indigenous peasant folk, mostly farmers, their wives, some kids and some bundles of goods destined for the La Paz market. A little kid in a colorful hat giggled and waved as they passed. The bus was called the ‘Titanic’.

Every few kilometers someone burst a tire. I felt like a professional boxer had used my ass as a punching bag. The cool mountain heights had given way to an intense humidity, exchanging craggy spires and sparse vegetation for waterfalls accented by lush ferns and verdant palms. Mosquitoes began to attack our exposed flesh in droves; God bless DEET and it’s carcinogenic powers. As we finished a packed lunch of dry cheese sandwiches (again, this was the budget tour) another group of bikers passed us.

“OK!” Speedy said. “That is a weak tour. We must beat them to the bottom!” The Japanese tourists in our group looked nervous. The British guy’s arms was bleeding. I had mud all over my repurposed ski-goggles. I was pretty sure that guides like Speedy, not the road, might very well be the reason for the gruesome statistics. We saddled up and barreled down the final kilometers of the road, blazing past the more ‘weaker’ AKA more cautious bikers of the other tour.

Finally we closed in on our destination, a small ranch with a questionable green pool. I didn’t think twice before stripping off and jumping in. It didn’t matter that the bottom was slippery with algae, it was one of the most refreshing moments of my life and a delightful refuge from the insects. The family put together a large brunch and let us use their showers. Eventually Speedy announced that we better start heading home – it was going to take a while, because we had to take the bus back up the way we came, back up Death Road.

If the ride down was scary, the ride up was even more so. There wasn’t a lot of oncoming traffic, maybe about 10 or 15 oncoming vehicles during the 3 hours it took to return to La Paz. There’s a complex system of “right of way” that I still don’t really understand. I think whichever vehicle is going uphill at the time uses the outside ‘lane’ and has right of way. At times I could press my face to the glass of the minivan and not actually see the edge of the road, just the drop. We drove under a waterfall to wash off the bikes that were attached to the roof. I thought how smart it had been that I’d also tied my shoes to the roof to dry off.

In the lowlands, ferns clung to the cliff’s edge and roadside. Occasionally a Dr. Seuss style tree popped up from beyond the edge; long thin branches pierced the undergrowth, with just a little crop of leaves near the top. In every direction there were giant, green-bearded mountains, uniformly covered in a broccoli texture, save for the occasional naked gray of the rocky surface.

At one point a wide tour bus approached us going the opposite way. Slowly, carefully it lurched forward one inch at a time. The couple of British lads in the front row wooped. The Japanese girl in the back yelped the stereotypical-in-Japanese-porno, pre-pubescent squeal from the back. I smiled and considered my own demise.

Some months before leaving for South America I had been giving an introduction talk at Mindshare. I forget the exact topic, but the take-away was a question: if you’re final moment was imminent – would you be able to say you had given this life your best? Of course there’s lots more things that we all would want to stick around for but if it was your time, could you peacefully, and with honest surrender, say goodbye? I had said that while I might fear the method of death, I do not fear death itself. After the talks, as the event continued, I remember a few of my friends approaching me and asking: “Hey Doug, is everything alright, man?” I laughed and assured them it was more than alright. And now even more so, I feel that while I have many things I still want to experience and to achieve, I can honestly say that if my time to go is on Bolivia’s Death Road, then I am at peace with that. I’ve had damn good run.

We continued to inch back up the infamous road to the bizarre city of La Paz.

See all the pictures from La Paz and Death Road here…

La Paz, goddammit, if you weren’t so damn formless and concrete I’d want to punch you in your filthy face. And just when things were going so well in Bolivia! By chance, on my last day in Sucre I’d run into Adelaide and Susie and we’d all agreed that the Bolivian crime stories we’d heard about didn’t really seemed well founded. And then you go and kick me in the nuts. Was it really necessary?

I was in high spirits when I boarded the night bus from Sucre to La Paz. The previous few days had been productive and relaxing and the upcoming week was going to be an enjoyable exploration of some of the sights around La Paz (Spanish for ‘The Peace’); biking dangerous, cliff-hugging roads and visiting old Inca ruins on Lake Titicaca. I’d made it a habit to catch up on writing and emails on these long bus rides and had worked for about 6 hours until my netbook battery died. After that I looked out the window onto moonlit expanses of the Altiplano until I eventually drifted off into a sporadic cycle of dreams and semi-consciousness.

At 7am the bus PA system buzzed loudly and announced that we would soon be arriving in La Paz. Outside the window an ugly looking city slapped my dried out contact lenses. I poured a capful of water into each eyeball. ‘Oh well,’ I told myself, ‘give it a chance, the bus stations are never in the nicest areas’. As usual, when the doors open the locals always rush for the door, and I typically take my time – after all, they need to take the bags out of the cargo hold which takes about ten minutes. As I slid on my shoes I looked down at my backpack, which I’d stored directly under my legs – I noticed that the zipper to the pocket where I keep my passport pouch was open. I reached inside – nothing. I’ve been working hard at not blindly reacting to situations and was was impressively calm – there must be another explanation than theft, It must have fallen underneath my seat. I checked – nothing. I checked inside the backpack – nothing. Well it won’t do any good to freak out, I thought, so I patiently waited for my large bag to be unloaded on the curb.

After avoiding the shady taxi touts I hailed a taxi from the street and headed towards the Hotel Milton, which the Lonely Planet had described as a 70′s hotel, featuring ‘red vinyl studded walls, painted murals and funky wallpapers.’ When I arrived, they wouldn’t check me in without a passport, but being a functional Technomad, I simply logged into Gmail at the front desk and printed out a scan that I’d sent to myself before the trip. This was good enough to get access to my funky yet somewhat dingy, $15/night room. The next thing I did was call the Grand Hotel in Sucre – there was a possibility that I’d left it in the room (even though I knew I couldn’t have done that as I’m far too aware of my packing protocol!) Of course they hadn’t found it. I just couldn’t believe someone would have been so bold to go underneath my legs during the night and unzip my bag – and almost more odd to me was that they hadn’t zipped it back up! There was a chance it had gotten stolen before I boarded at the bus station, but it would have taken an amazingly observant and dexterous thief to unzip the hidden zipper and remove the snug pouch.

I mentally took inventory of what I’d lost besides the passport: USD$100 backup cash, my vaccine passport, 2 backup credit cards (luckily I still had my main card in my pocket), SIM cards for all my various cell phone plans, my international and my US driving license. The very thing I loved about the pouch (that my deceased grandfather had given me almost 20 years ago) was also it’s very weakness; it conveniently kept everything in one place. I cursed myself for streamlining the theft.

The next step was to cancel the credit cards, it was only about 8:30am by now and the companies were relieved that no erroneous charges had yet been charged. New cards would be waiting for me in LA. The next step was to get over to the US embassy – but first I lay down for a while and tried to mentally center myself by observing my various emotions. This is both a Vipassana meditation technique and the main insight in the current book I’m reading, ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle. Negative situations like this are of course regrettable, but they offer a wonderful and experiential (vs. theoretical) insight into a very primal side of your mind and your ego – so why waste the opportunity to analyze it?!

First of all, I felt really stupid. I’m meant to be an expert traveler! I lamely said to myself. Upon observing this feeling I considered what the fuel was behind it; it is purely an egoic reaction stemming from the typical mindset of ‘It won’t happen to me! I’m way too smart!’. This belief helps your ego feel superior to others. But when you get a reality check, your ego feels less super and more average, more normal. Luckily, human adaptability is such that this can be one of the quicker feelings to fade away; the sooner you can remove blame, both from yourself and others, the sooner you can get back on the path of a happy existence. Ultimately it is only your ego that has been hurt, not the deeper you (the being your ego would rather you didn’t know about), to whom this whole affair is rather meaningless and fleeting.

Then there’s the logistical hassles. Oh crap, that’s going to mean hours in embassies or at a DMV when I return home. or Great, I just paid for five year visa’s for Argentina and Bolivia and now they’re gone! Is Bolivia even going to let me out of the country without my stupid tourist receipt? True, it’s going to be a time drain, and more than likely cost some money to fix, but the experience will only be as bad as you let it be. Still, all I could think was if I’d arrived a day earlier as I’d planned, then all of this would have been avoided probably – but that’s a stupid and futile psychological game to play. Do I want to hang on to this and keep bitching, churning out more negativity, or would I rather just move on?

The next thing, and significantly harder for me to deal with, is the nostalgic loss. The passport that had carried me through the last eight years of adventures contained ornate stamps and visas that all held stories. They’re just stamps, I thought to myself, it’s impossible to rob the memories and experiences from my being. Even the pouch itself has seen me from a mere pre-pubescent kid into my adulthood. However, while hard, nostalgic losses are overcome in two simple ways. First of all, the realization that external objects do not define you, they merely give the ego something to identify itself with – thus tricking you into thinking they’re very important. While you can certainly enjoy and cherish objects, it’s important to realize that these things neither define nor add real value to the deeper you. While it’s easy to say it can be hard to really believe sometimes – but just let time unfold and the acute upset gets blunted relatively quickly, especially for such trivial matters.

The final emotion that I sensed in myself was the worst of the bunch. I’m sorry to say, I was feeling some serious pangs of anger. I couldn’t help but imagine what would have done if I had caught the thief mid act. Oh I would grab his head and kick it! I’d break the bones in his hand so he thought twice about stealing next time! I’d stab him with my fruit knife!. As I lay there looking at the horrible green, wavy design I could feel my pulse begin to get faster and my muscles twitch with some pre-ejaculate adrenaline. This was a despicable emotion; what would that accomplish, besides getting me in trouble and delivering more negative energy into the whole cycle? I didn’t know who had taken my wallet, but it was likely that the thief is already being punished, so trapped in his own miserable existence that this is how he navigates the world.

Content that I’d at least observed, if not fully overcome, my blind reactions, I had a shower, cursed my stupidity a little more, and made my way to the US embassy with the appropriate forms and rather sexy new passport photographs. Unfortunately, La Paz itself did nothing to help calm me down. What a chaotic city of honking vehicles, horrific smells and ugly buildings. I felt like I was the passenger in a game of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ as the taxi narrowly avoided old women and children who leaped out of the way as he accelerated. Loud Reggaeton, interspersed with advertisements in Spanish blared on the radio. A plastic Jesus, which hung the rearview mirror, shimmied to the music as the driver cursed a minivan that cut him off. It got me there in the end and it’s hard to complain though when a 10 minute taxi ride costs seventy-five cents.

After I had breathed in the guards face (I didn’t get a good answer for why I had to do that) and left the two metal detectors behind (I really do carry a large amount of tech at any one time) I entered the concrete and steel castle of The US Embassy. Besides the usual feeling of sterile practicality, it was actually a welcome refuge; it was spotlessly clean and the pristine bathroom had soap and paper in the dispensers. In filthy cities there’s nothing quite like the feeling of washing your hands – aah, the little luxuries that you miss! For USD$100 they hooked me up with a temporary ‘emergency’ passport, thankfully expedited by my various printed out scans of my passport, drivers license and credit cards. On the way over I’d also stopped to get a police report at the tiny, type-writer equipped tourist police station that was next to a questionable bar called ‘Love City’. The guy that helped me at the US embassy, who interestingly was not allowed to tell me his name (why not at least have a stage name like Splitsy Pacific or Muffy Paradise then?) also informed me that I would have to visit the Bolivian Immigration and Argentine Embassy too in the coming days. What an unexpected and fun adventure! Think of all the possible things that might emerge and would not have not have happened otherwise! I tried to sell myself but I saw through my shallow ploy. Truthfully though, we only see the path that unfolds and it’s impossible to be aware of all of the things that a bizarre twist of fate prevents. There’s a great story from war time Japan about a wise grandfather and a young man. While out tending to his father’s flock, a young man found a stranger who had gotten lost in the wilderness and was very weak. The young man gave him some food and water and pointed him in the right direction. Some days later the stranger visited the young man and gave him a horse as a gift. Oh what a great man, and what a lucky son we have! His parents exclaimed. We’ll see, said the old grandfather. The young man loved the horse and rode it every day. One day, after being too foolhardy he fell and broke his leg. Oh curses to that damned horse, what a terrible thing to happen! His parents lamented. We’ll see, the old grandfather replied. Meanwhile the second World War had broken out and the air force was looking for young men to enlist, in particular to become kamikaze pilots. Of course the young man was in no condition to join the army. Oh what luck! Our son must stay home with us! His parents rejoiced. We’ll see, the wide grandfather said.

After leaving the embassy, I decided to walk back to the Hotel Milton. A beer at an outdoor cafe would be a welcome treat after the last five hours of bureaucracy. I walked for an hour and didn’t find one place other than a couple of dark, dingey caves, which looked like they’d only add to my negativity. Eventually I got back to the Milton and by this point was pretty much swearing at the world, and this horrendous city, out loud. Cholitas (indigenously dressed working class women), wearing bright colors and rather silly looking little bowler hats, sat among piles of vegetables while others asked me for money. Bolivia has already robbed me! I thought to myself. I really wasn’t liking my bitchy mood so, as was customary when it occasionally surfaces, I felt it was going to be necessary to remove myself from public engagement ASAP. All I was looking for at this point was a mini-market to buy a cold beer. There was a ridiculous amount of paint stores, raw meat shops and stands selling electrical trinkets and odd things like toilet seats and spray bottle nozzles. At times smells so horrendous, like old meat and faeces, reached my nostrils that I felt like I might vomit. I felt like I was losing my fucking mind. I was quickly spiraling downward into a really nasty mix of thirst, exhaustion, stress and self pity. I finally found a place where I bought a couple of bottles of beer and a large bag of cheese puffs. I entered the Milton and just kept climbing towards the roof – I needed to be away from people and ideally not in my somewhat depressing room.

As I reached the roof level I found a door that led out onto a terrace – score! It offered a spectacular view of the city, and while the architecture is still a bunch of ugly filthy crap, the red brick shacks that clung to the sides of the surrounding craggy mountains added a spark of some visual beauty. Beyond the sprawling town, snowcapped peaks of 6000m pierced the dramatic clouds. As I drank the cold brew and piled cheese puffs into my face, I was aware that all day my feelings had been a little skewed and maybe La Paz wasn’t so bad. Either way, this was the moment to turn it around. Two bottles of Pacena deep and feeling poetic I decided to go to my room and write this story – documenting situations always helps me put them behind me.

And so here I lie on a horrendously ornate bedspread in a light blue tiled room, with edges lined in a wavy green and yellow pattern. Honestly, it looks like the pattern monster got sick and vomited all over the place. There’s a TV that won’t turn on without a remote, and there’s no remote at the desk that matches. There’s a German couple having lou sex in room 210. There’s a screaming child outside my window that is audible even among the honking traffic. You can’t change the world around you; you can either fight that fact or roll with it. I’m going to roll with it. Everything is going to be alright and tonight I’m going to get into some mischief, I feel it already, in the rate of my pulse. But first things first – and that’s to head downstairs and to book myself on tomorrow’s mountain bike tour on the 65km road to Coroico, AKA ‘The Most Dangerous Road in the World’ where multiple tourists die every year. Yes, that should take my mind off my passport – and anything else not directly related to staying on the path, and away from the 600m vertical drop.

See all the Potosi pictures here…

Diego Huallpa had searched everywhere for the lost llama but there was still no sign of him. ‘Stupid animal,’ Diego thought, ‘and he was just about ready for market! My father will kill me’. By this point he was far from home, the sun had set and so Diego decided to build a fire to keep himself warm. As the fire grew hot, Diego noticed as a shiny trickle oozing from the ground beneath the fire. ‘Holy Incan Sun God!’ He exclaimed, ‘Those strange-talking, bearded white folk are going to be SO happy with me – they love this stuff!’ It was 1544 and Diego Huallpa, a local Inca had just discovered the wealth of silver that lay beneath Cerro Rico (or Rich Hill) as it came to be known. And indeed the Spanish Conquistadors were so grateful that they called in more of their friends, enslaved the locals and began hollowing out the mountain.

For the following few centuries, the mines of Potosi bankrolled the Spanish Monarchy and were so productive that it was a popular boast that a silver bridge could have been built all the way from Potosi to Spain and still produced even more silver to carry across it. Besides 12 hour shifts, the working conditions of the mines were atrocious; many perished from accidents, silicosis (basically a seizing up of the lungs) and from working with dangerous materials, such as mercury, in the smelting mills. It’s been estimated that from 1545 to 1825 as many as eight million Africans and indigenous Bolivians died from the appalling conditions.

At it’s height, the population of Potosi swelled to almost 200,000 but as the silver dried up and the international trading price dropped, the town was dealt a blow from which it never fully recovered. These days the town has about 10,000 inhabitants and most of the remaining mines are ‘cooperative’ , meaning that they are run by the miners. Some silver is still found but most of their profits come from zinc and lead. The conditions have improved only mildly since colonial times and the same driving force pervades in the minds of the miners: ‘I might be the lucky one to discover that next vein!’; a far more optimistic view than considering the odds of your early demise by silicosis. But enough of the theoretical descriptions; when I hit Potosi I found a guide that would take me deep into the mountain, where Tio (aka the Devil), not God, was the boss.

Truthfully I felt lucky to even get to Potosi. A week earlier the nations buses had been on strike, lamenting the addition of a new law that would mean suspension of a driver’s license if they were caught driving under the influence. I’d already known that drunk driving was a problem in Bolivia since the salt flats of Uyuni where one of the drivers of the 4x4s got so drunk that a tourist had had to drive for the rest of the day. In any case, the striking bus drivers were trying to push an addendum to the new law, which meant implementing a ‘three strikes and your out’ policy. Amazing idea you idiots. But it was only 8am and as we bobbed and weaved up the mountain our driver looked passably sober.

After emerging from a nondescript shack where we were given boots, coveralls and some stylish hard hats with attached lamps, the first stop that our cheery guide-cum-miner Efra took us to was the miner’s market. Here he suggested that we purchase some gifts for the miners whom we were about to visit. Just your basic supplies: bags of coca leaves ($1 each), a few sticks of dynamite ($3 each) and some bottles of soda (the miners didn’t eat while underground). He was annoyed by the fact that the guide book suggest bringing cigarettes and alcohol as the miners already had lung problems and seemed to enjoy the 98% proof booze a little too much without our help. Instead I decided to buy an extra stick of dynamite, a detonator, fuse and a bag of fertilizer which Efra promised would make a better explosion: “This one is for the miners!” And he threw it on the ground. “But this one,” he said with a smile, “is going to be for us!” And he put it in his mouth and bit down on it.

The group of about eight tourists got back in the bus, gifts in hand and the heaving vehicle continued its laborious ascent up the thin cobbled streets. Potosi is above 4000m, and the summit of Cerro Rico significantly above that. I was beginning to get another piercing headache from the altitude so I followed the lead of the locals and pulled some coca leaves from the transparent green sack that I’d bought at the market. I pulled the thick stems off and pushed the leaves into my mouth one at a time, chewing for a bit and then gathering the bitter pulp into a ball in my cheek. It had the sort of medicinal intensity where you think ‘this must do something!’

Efra then took us to an ore processing plant, which looked like it hadn’t changed much since the 16^th century. These days the pulleys were powered by electricity instead of mules and slaves, but the rest of the mechanics were probably still the same; paddles skimmed foam off the top of sedimentary containers and little circular wheels picked up chemicals with which it doused the ore, helping it separate. One ton of ore might get you 400 Bolivianas worth of minerals these days – just over USD$50. We handed some bags of coca leaves to the workers, one of whom stared lecherously at this one French girl and said something, certainly inappropriate, in the indigenous language of Quecha, still widely used by miners. They both laughed.

Eventually we turned off the main road onto a little dirt path that led past a few mines. Amazingly, even though Cerro Rico has passed it prime, there are still around 500 functioning mines operating in the area. The previous night I’d been in the mood to watch some TV but since the screen of the TV in my room had been replaced with an old newspaper, I met up with some German friends to watch a movie at their hostel. We had watched a documentary called “The Devil’s Miner” about the Potosi mines in which a 14 year old boy was struggling to keep his family fed, after his father had died, by working in the mines with his younger brother. Bolivia does have laws against child labor but it is rarely enforced, especially when the children are there by their own volition, such as in this case; the reality is, miners make more money than shoeshine boys. It amazed me that amid the chaotic conditions the boy, Basilio Vargas, still finds time to play with his siblings – including his feisty little sister – and the ability to laugh. The adaptability of humans to their surroundings is always something that I find intriguing – especially since it goes both ways. Like the story of the amputee and the lottery winner; a year later both reach reach comparable levels of contentedness and suffering.

As we approached the entrance of the Candeleria mine (which was one of the first established in 1545) I could make out dark stains around the entrance where llama blood had been splattered. This was an offering to Pachamama, the Earth mother who they hoped would protect them and lead them to the most profitable veins. Once inside the mines however, Tio (or ‘uncle’ in English) was who the miners had to respect and depend on. Each mine has a large statue of a demonic being, including horns and a giant phallus – after all, you don’t want to insult the Dark Lord by giving him a tiny penis.

As we entered the mines we turned on our headlamps. A thin track ran along the ground and after a few minutes of hustling through the thin tunnels Efra yelled at us:

“A wagon is coming. Soon! Get against the wall!”

We scattered like nervous chinchillas, finding small nooks against the cold, damp tunnel walls. A few seconds later a 1 ton wagon bullishly groaned by, pushed by two miners who barely acknowledged us. Soon after that we came to a fork and turned left, into Tio’s shrine. The smiling demon sat before us, his head almost at our height. Covering his arms and laying at his feet were the daily offerings of coca leaves, 98% proof alcohol and cigarettes. The miners have a fearful respect of the Devil, and unfortunate accidents and bad luck are usually blamed on miners who provided shabby offerings. In ‘The Devil’s Miner’ a Catholic priest had expressed the difficulty he had in trying to convince the miners that they could find Jesus everywhere.

“Not in the mines, they say. Down there is the domain of Tio.” He shook his head. “But at least they come to church and embrace Jesus on Sunday.” In such an intense situation it’s probably bet to hedge your bets. The reality is that the mines are a dangerous place, and in the case of accidents, the police rarely get involved. So if you discover a thick vein of silver, be careful who you tell – jealousy could leave you buried even before your lungs fail. For this reason many miners work in small groups, preferably with their family members.

At first the tunnels were cool and the air wasn’t too bad. In some places parts of the arches from 1545 were still in place, an somber connection to the times of the horrendous conditions and enslavement. These rocks had surely heard the cries and screams as the slaves had been beaten and abused. As we got deeper the air became clammy and warm. There were air tubes that pumped air from the surface, but they were of questionable effect. Efra led us passed working miners, upon whom we bestowed our various gifts, and eventually he led us down to level two, which involved the descent through a low ceilinged array of tunnels and rickety ladders. There we met two men who were shoveling large piles of ore into rubber buckets which, once full, were being winched up through a small hole near the ceiling. The pile was endless, with still others bringing in more ore constantly in wheelbarrows and dumping it at their feet. They looked like the kind of guys who could use some high calorie lemon soda, so Efra pulled a bottle from his bag.

Eventually we reached the fourth level down, after having to move through a tight series of passages on our hands and knees. As I lay on my belly in the dim light, waiting for the Dutch guy in front of me to more his jolly ass, the sound of a distant dynamite explosion pulsed through the surrounding rock.

“Don’t worry,” Efra smiled, “it’s from another mine.”

There was a moment there where I started feeling a little nervous, a little trapped and a little unhappy. By this point the air twas thick with an alkaline dust and I’d wrapped a damp bandanna across my face (another Burning Man trick!). At times like these I find it useful to incorporate a useful technique from Vipassana meditation; I close my eyes and observe my breath until my mind calms down. Find your center and realize that this moment, like all moments, are fleeting. Why be averse to something so transient?

At the deepest part of the mines we met a solitary, 13 year old boy named Nelson. Nelson was at the dead end of a deep tunnel, hand drilling a slim hole into which he was soon going to stuff some dynamite. After he lit the fuse he would only have a few minutes to run down the tracks and scramble through the tunnels before the shock-wave ripped through the entire mine. A wagon rumbled above our heads, dislodging a fine rain of dust from the rotting beams that kept it, and us, happily separate. It was time to head towards the entrance.

As we retraced our steps up narrow crawlspaces and avoided hurtling wagons full of ore the groups pace subconsciously quickened; it was apparent that everyone was looking forward to seeing sunlight. We’d only been in the mine for a couple of hours but a lot of these guys worked six days a week, eight hours a day – and that’s when they didn’t pull double shifts. Before leaving for the mines in the morning and upon returning their wives would serve them multiple bowls of llama stew to give them some long lasting energy for the days work. But no matter how much llama stew, coca leaves and lemon soda, this was a rough existence.

As if the tour hadn’t already been wild enough, Efra pulled a stick of dynamite from his bag:

“Look, now I’m a terrorist!” He laughed as he lit the fuse and then pushed it into the hands of the tourists so they could take pictures holding a lit stick of dynamite. Just as the smiles were fading and people began to back away he handed it to a miner who ran out into a field with it and through it in a hole and dove behind a rock. The explosion shot earth 50ft in the air and vibrated the ground beneath our feet. You have to love the lack of rules in developing countries.

As we trundled down the mountain in the bus, which now seemed somehow more luxurious, I thought about the life of the miners and their belief in Tio. Like any humans that face extreme harshness in their day to day lives, faith gives them hope and something to believe in. Surely when your day to day life is hell, then it feels good to be told that it’s all for a purpose, a distant heaven where all your dead friends and family would be and your pain would be taken away for eternity. That might just be enough to keep you going.

I absolutely understand the need for this yet simultaneously have a deep disdain for blind faith; so this posed an interesting debate in my head. How could you ever ask these miners to abandon their faith? You couldn’t. In fact there was a strange moment in ‘The Devil’s Miner’ where Basilio admits that Tio was probably just created to keep the miners working, however even in his moment of logic, he still finds it easier to live with this faith. I continued to ponder this and realized that there are levels of faith, some more socially benign than others. In truth it seems like the real blind faith that needs to be targeted isn’t in situations such as Basilio, it’s at the higher level; the corrupt government who bleeds its people dry while attending Mass on Sunday. On a global scale it’s the radical right wing Christians and militant Islamists who want to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world while not tolerating any other path. These groups and individuals are surely more malignant than simple laborers who put faith in the Devil and Pachamam for protection. Faith is beautiful when it connects people, and tragic when it segregates. Sadly the latter is faith’s typical trajectory, proven time and time again, for millenia.

In a somewhat depressing moment I asked myself how much has really changed since 1545 when powerful tyrants, morally empowered by a twisted dogma laid claim to a distant land, exploited its resources while enslaving and converting its indigenous population? These days the powerful tyrants work in more subtle ways, which is even more threatening because it makes it hard, especially for the misinformed and ignorant masses, to tell who the enemy is. Ultimately if the higher levels can be reached, if they can be shown the misery that their actions are propagating on themselves and the world around them AND that there’s a happier way to exist, then the trickle down affect would reach everyone, even those deep underground, working in the world of Tio.

See all the pictures from the Uyuni Expedition here…

God damn borders. Ever since I was about nine, they’ve triggered an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. The reason? From a young age, I had collected a large array of knives. It started as the standard going-away-to-camp-for-the-first-time Swiss Army knife but soon evolved to more unique additions including a kuhkri that my sister Victoria had bought me in Nepal and a goat-skin sheathed machete from her time in Africa. Even my parents had given me knives – it wasn’t a weird fetish, just an honest, affection for the shape and design of the instrument.

So there I was, in Heathrow Airport, surrounded by 3 security guards, one of whom was gripping a semi-automatic weapon. I had just walked through the metal detector and had apparently triggered the ‘this guy has a large piece of metal on him’ alarm. My mother approached the metal detector:

“Madam, please wait right there!” The guard with the gun blurted. I instinctively put my hands up.

“What are you carrying?” One of the guards asked me.

“I don’t know. Honestly!” I honestly didn’t. I got patted down and, from a hidden pocket inside my jacket, the third guard fished out a rather large and intimidating butterfly knife. This style of blade is illegal in pretty much every developed country, including the UK, due to its favorability among criminals. As was customary when authorities got involved in my childhood, my mother always came to my questionable rescue:
“I’m his mother, I’ll take care of his punishment!” I smiled awkwardly. I heard this line many times and it usually meant a fate worse than what any uniformed authorities could legally bestow; she had a tough disciplinary streak which would have my pants down and any reachable, spank-worthy object in her hand almost instantaneously.
“You’re a terrible mother!” The more superior looking guard exclaimed. “What kind of mother would allow her son to possess such an item?” At this point I was relieved to see her matriarchal terror turned on the unsuspecting guard:

“How dare you question my maternal ability, you rude little man! Now we have a plane to catch to Italy! Let us through!” The guard was obviously taken aback, but before the situation progressed any further a British Airways representative emerged from behind in the line.

“Excuse me sirs,” He calmly spoke in the Queen’s English. “I believe I’m the pilot of their plane. He’s just a boy, so why not just confiscate the weapon and we’ll all be on our way.” In a concession that would probably never occur in 2010, the head guard relented and we past into the gate area – but not before my mother simultaneously thanked the pilot and flashed the guard her meanest of Italian vendetta glances. For now it seemed I was spared. I never got my prized butterfly knife back but ever since then I’ve had a deep apprehension of borders and metal detectors. Occasionally it’s totally unreasonable; for example, when I see drug dogs, I can’t help but think, what if I am smuggling condoms full of cocaine in my ass and I don’t even know it!? Either way, these days I always double check my pockets and refuse to be anyone’s mule.

The border into Bolivia was hardly frightening but it was impressively in the middle of nowhere. In every direction the only other sign of human existence was a dismantled school bus, otherwise it was just open desert and mountains. A group of about 20 tourists were in line, all having been dropped off by the same bus and getting ready to split off into Jeep-sized groups of 5 or 6. When I reached the front, the burly and bulletproofed guard took my passport and grimaced:

“Estados Unidos!” He threw the passport down, stood up and assumed a boxer’s stance. His face then lightened up and he laughed. “No is OK, but you must pay.” He pointed at a poster explaining the fees, but I was already expecting this. Like many countries in South America, Bolivia now imposes a reciprocal fee, mirroring the charge that we impose on Bolivians visiting the US. My passport got put into a paper envelope, further sealed by an absurd amount of staples and was then handed to Herman. Herman was the driver of our 4×4 and didn’t speak a word of English. By this point though, thanks to my iPhone’s dictionary and verb conjugating tutelage, I was now able to carry basic discourse and understood that he’d be keeping my passport until I paid the fee at the immigration offices in Uyuni.

Herman and I emerged from the small building into the bright desert sunlight and approached the rest of our posse, who had gathered their bags by our red and rugged Toyota Landcruiser. There were 6 of us, not including our quietly smug driver; it was me, Alessandro, Susie from Scarborough, England and the sweet Australian couple, Cameron and Adelaide. The sixth addition to our posse was Marianne, an older Canadian writer and photographer, who immediately seemed happy to fill the maternal role and offered us sunblock and cookies. Herman strapped our bags to the top of the truck along with some gasoline, a canister of propane and a bunch of other supplies. It would be about 3 days until we reached dependable services so we had to carry all of our necessities.

I happen to be very fond of games of chance when the odds of winning are statistically in my favor. For example, while the girls took the back seat and Marianne assumed the front, it meant that the boys would ride in the middle row and one of us was going to have to ride ‘bitch’. So, if you play a game of chance for such an outcome, your odds of winning are 2:3 – a decent bet, and way better than anything you’d find in Vegas. However, I especially like playing games of chance when I have the upper-hand from a psychological standpoint and ever since my favorite scholarly-hippie Dustin Boyer taught me to some psychological trickery, I always suggest the game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’. I don’t always use the trick, and I promised Dustin I wouldn’t publicly share it, but needless to say, Cam lost and was riding in the middle. The group of 4x4s loaded up and one by one shot off into the vast desert.

Day 1 took us to 4600m (x 3 1/3 = ~15,200ft) via a few spectacular lagoons. Laguna Blanca is a sodium rich lake, dotted with pink flamingos and black ducks that feast on the plentiful microorganisms. The 4×4 kicked up grit as we zoomed across great expanses, flanked by multicolor hills rich with mineral deposits of copper, iron and sulfur. At Laguna Verde, a small shift in the wind can dramatically alter the green tint that the dissolved copper creates. While we took photos I also took some time for stretching, push-ups and even used some matching rocks as makeshift weights. It’s inevitable that some people think this is funny, but I could care less; too many empanadas and fancy cakes in Chile had left me feeling a little soft, and the intense heat of the desert always prompts some body tuning.

We passed the hours driving in stints of conversation, quiet thinking and games such as ‘What is your porn name?’. If you’ve never played this game, it’s surprisingly easy and hilariously effective. All you have to do is take the name of one of your pets and combine it wit a street that you’ve lived on, resulting in your porn name. We laughed at our concoctions:
Mariann: Frisky Sherwood
Me: Muffy Paradise (definitely not in the heterosexual market)
Adelaide: Spiltsy Pacific
Susie: Peanut Byward
Cameron: Goldie Soldiers
Alessandro; Billo Retta. OK, Alessandro’s didn’t really work so we changed the rules for him, substituting his favorite pasta instead of street name. So watch out if a tanned Billo Macaroni shows up to fix your plumbing!

That afternoon we passed through the desert of Salvador Dali, where the rocks are reminiscent of his psychedelic paintings. Oddly shaped formations jutted unexpectedly out of the otherwise featureless sand – it just needed some large ants, elongated figures and melting clocks to complete the effect. At the Laguna Rojo the others relaxed in the thermal baths while I went off to snap some macro photography. Brightly colored mineral deposits sat in clumps around the edge of the lake while still more encrusted the sides and beds of the warm spring streams. Greens, whites, browns and the odd tufts of sturdy grasses created rich textures around the blood-red lake.

Leaving Laguna Roja I was promoted to DJ in the front seat and got to share some of my favorite Burning Man style, deeply reverberating bass sounds with the others which I thought were completely relevant for the sulfurous and bubbling geysers we came upon. As usual they trippy electronic music wasn’t received with too much enthusiasm so I resorted to a mix of more poppy tunes; in a stylistically regrettable pinch, there’s no better cross cultural bond than Abba’s Dancing Queen.

So I have a little bit of an impulse purchase problem, especially when it comes to new technology. Just before leaving had paid about USD$80 for a slim solar charger that can recharge anything that is powered via a USB. So far, in the last two months I hadn’t needed it yet but I was sure this desert trip would finally allow me to tell Tammy Lee, an incomparably sweet friend of mine who’d playfully mocked my impulsiveness, that it had been hugely invaluable. However as my iPod battery drained I noticed, not without a little annoyance, that a car-charging iPod cable hung from Herman’s cigarette lighter. God dammit, I’m never going to use this thing! I thought. My self judgment was shaken into oblivion as a herd of brown and white vicuñas vaulted from the side of the road. Herman blasted a rather comical sounding horn, the kind of thing a child’s firetruck might sound like, only at an ear piercing decibel. The vicuñas scattered in terror.

After a long day’s driving we finally reached a couple of narrow, one storey buildings that abruptly appeared on a rocky expanse between Laguna Colorada and an up-crop of tree-less mountains; this would be our home for the night. We unloaded our things and had a nap, before being woken up by a grinning Herman who insisted that we go for sunset at the Laguna. As we descended the steep hill towards the colorful lake, we came upon a bunch of grazing llamas who were enjoying the tough lakeside grasses too much to be bothered by us. The lake had streaks of red, white and green from the dissolved borax and sodium and algae that bloomed on the surface. A distant storm over the Bolvian altiplano (the high, flat section of the country, surrounded by mountains) punctuated the sunset with electrical flashes. I came upon a dessicated llama; only tufts of hair remained on its leathered, taut skin. It’s empty eye-sockets stared intensely ahead while it’s mouth had stretched into a thirsty grimace. It probably died of exposure and surprisingly didn’t have a single scavenger’s bite, a sign that indicated how little life actually survived here.

It was only inevitable that one of us was going to get altitude sickness. You never know who it’s going to be. In fact it’s so hard to predict that you might be fine on one excursion and deeply effected on the next. Whatever the case, the thin air and lack of oxygen can really mess with your head. The symptoms include nausea, severe headache, dizziness, severe fatigue, lack of appetite and slow brain function. In fact, a Bolivian high altitude expression is ‘Walk slow, eat light and sleep by your poor, lonely self!’ indicating that any large expenditure of energy can be rough on your system. Cam was the worst affected and had been in a daze for most of the day – Herman suggested that we all get dosed up on coca leaf tea. In fact I got so hyped up that after a simple dinner, when almost everyone else went to bed, I decided to remove my babbling self from the remaining group and go for a solitary desert walk. I looked up at the bright stars and tried to remember the things that Stella had told me at the Las Campanas observatory. The Southern cross and Orion. The Magellan galaxies. Saturn and Mars. I saw numerous shooting stars and, still in a coca infused state, was well on the way to plotting the next 10 years of my existence when I realized that somewhere in the featureless darkness, the inn had turned off it’s generator and things now seemed extremely cold and reference-less. Luckily as I retraced my steps my eyes detected a pinpoint of light in the distance – it turned out it was coming from a battery powered lamp in the kitchen and it led me all the way back. I went to bed, still too amped from the coca tea to sleep so I read the Bolivian Lonely Planet book with a reading light (yes, on my Kindle) until I got tired: do you know that the Andean condor has a 3m wingspan and can drag 20kg cadaver with ease?

On Day 2 everyone felt shitty. I distinctly felt, even though not a drop of alcohol had been consumed, like I’d drunk a bottle of tequila the night before and was now having an aneurysm in the rear left of my skull. At around 8am (the lack of decent sleep was certainly not helping) we met at the breakfast table in sunglasses, resembling a group of drug addicts in the depths of cold turkey. While the fancy-pants tour on the table next to ours feasted on more pancakes than they could consume, we ate dry bread and sugary spreads. More importantly though, we all forced down a cup or two of bitter, coca leaf tea and amazingly after packing were all feeling much more normal, even Cam, who now didn’t look like he was so close to death.

We had a large distance to drive and Herman blazed along, through open expanses of sand, in shallow river valleys and over rocky hills. The first stop was the Stone Forest, which was yet another sudden appearance of strangely shaped rocks, formed by the erosion of long vanished waters. The harsh winds and flying grit had further smoothed the rocks and provided the backdrop for some fun pictures before we moved on. By this point, Susie and Adelaide were becoming experts at jumping out of the cramped back seats and reinserting themselves amid the bags with surprising agility. We all traded snacks, lip balm and sunblock. However, it was looking good that we weren’t going to sing any group songs.

We passed more lagoons, smoking volcanoes and a little town where we stopped for a few basic supplies and where I played with a little kid and a stray puppy. We stopped at a lake for a picnic and Herman prepared a delicious fried chicken and pasta salad – mayonnaise of course was abundantly provided. (Argentina, Chile and Bolivia all have a little problem with mayo-addiction, and every supermarket has an entire aisle dedicated to it). We drove through salty mud flats where we found a remote cemetery in which the crosses where fashioned out of railway iron. We went through a pseudo military post where Herman gave ‘gifts’ of wine and eggs, passed ancient cliff dwellings and finally into the small town of San Martin where we’d be staying that night.

As we pulled up to the inn it was already getting dark. There was no electricity yet and the flowing hot water that we’d been promised was a pathetic, cold trickle. A Swedish couple from another 4×4 was freaking out. Amid the chaos I decided to dip out and explore the little, mud-brick town. I found a pleasant central square (most towns have one) where I read my guide book and tried to figure out my next move upon hitting Uyuni the next day. While it was nice to travel with the group I was feeling two things: I was filled to the brim with adventures and needed some time to reflect and write, and I was missing the solitude where I found this more possible As if to underscore the latter, Susie and the Australians appeared and coerced me to return to the inn and join them for wine; I didn’t put up much of a fight. On the way back we found an odd couple: a sheep and a llama that appeared to be great buddies. Any place one would go the other would follow – for some reason this made us all very happy and I added it to my growing mental bank of metaphorically-thick children stories.

After returning to the inn and peeking inside the kitchen, Allesandro and I made a pact that we weren’t going to eat any meat that came out of that dank room. I used to think I was invincible until I visited Nepal in 2007 and got a case of giardia so bad that it stuck with me for weeks – talk about a socially awkward condition; it was like Satan had made a new home in my intestines and was having a party with his favorite, gaseous bacteria. Anyway, these days when in doubt, I stick to being vegetarian. Luckily, as if to anticipate our concerns, the dinner was a simple pasta with tomato sauce which we enjoyed on rickety chairs in the austere glow of a single, unshaded fluorescent bulb.

When I got to bed I was grateful for possessing earplugs – besides rather potent feet, Alessandro had a serious snore on him – and I barely remember sinking into my squeaky trench of a bed before falling into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The final day began at 4:40am and as I tried to blink some moisture into my contact lenses I began to muse that I was really going to need a vacation from this vacation; I’d never worked so hard at recreation! I woke up to an mini-argument between Susie and Alessandro. She apparently been awake for hours because of his snoring and had been constantly beating him with her pillow. He was annoyed that he’d been disturbed and was of the mindset that if you can’t sleep it was your problem. Either way he threw a sock at her which took things to the next level. I went to the bathroom and decided to give the cold trickle of a shower a pass, instead performing a quick handy wipe cleanse (a fantastic skill learned from my time in the desert of Burning Man).

We had woken up at the crack of dawn so we could hustle to the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s most expansive salt flats, for sunrise. After packing the cars, we bounced and weaved through the difficult roads until we abruptly hit a smooth surface that crunched like ice under the tires of the 4×4. We had reached the edge of the salt flats. The darkness was slowly lifting as a deep red gradient on the horizon met the receding midnight blue of the night sky. As we came to the edge of the shallow water that covered parts of the Salar, this gradient was perfectly reflected in reverse on the smooth surface. I’ve never seen anything like it; at times it was impossible for even your eye to perceive any discrepancy in the reflection. The Salar is so flat that even a half inch of water can cover large swaths of it uniformly, and the shallow ripples created from the 4×4 don’t have the chance to propagate far enough to disturb the illusion.

Just before sunrise we reached another dry patch and got out to take pictures. I was in my own world and walked off to explore a distant fleck of black on the horizon. I was listening to an unbelievable musical mix that my good buddy Dr. Tristan Ursell had sent me which was fantastically appropriate for sunrise on this flat, white planet; “A Minimally Distorting Lens” pulsed and fizzed through my dome-piece as I ventured on my own path. The other day Cam had walked off and Adelaide had said:

“I don’t know why he does that sometimes!”

“Guys need to do that occasionally.” I had assured her, but I had kept thinking about that moment. It’s true; at times I have a compulsively active brain which often nesessitates the need to achieve mental stillness; I can do this most effectively in solitude. Only when this stability has been reached can I then propagate a content and peaceful mindset to others. So girls, that’s why some guys have to walk off occasionally. ‘It’s not you, it’s me!’ Seriously.

By now the sun had risen and I’d reached the distant black fleck, which only turned out to be a seemingly misplaced pile of rocks. Realizing that I’d been lost in my head for some time I turned to look at the 4×4 and noticed that Alessandro had also gone off on his own but was now walking back. I decided to head towards him and we met about 50m out onto the reflected surface, yet still in only about ½ an inch of water. We took some fun pictures, agreed that this was the most strange place we’d ever seen and returned to the 4×4 where people were hungry and needed to pee. I was mildly annoyed that we had to leave this dreamy landscape so soon but such is the reality when traveling by committee.

For the next hour we drove at about 50mph across the salt flats towards the other side – but it felt like no matter how fast we went we didn’t get any closer. In fact the Salar de Uyuni is spread over 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi), which is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States. It was slightly unnerving to think that we were cruising on a thin crust of solid salt (only a handful of inches in some places) and below that was cold, briny water. On the other hand we had calculated that in the last 5 years Herman had completed this trip about 180 times so the odds were good that he knew what he was doing. We asked Herman if he’d ever lost a tourist; he just laughed. It’s interesting to note that the Salar is so flat and large and has such clear skies that it makes an ideal location to calibrate the altimeters of orbiting satellites.

Just before reaching the other side we came upon single level structure; the first hotel made entirely of salt. Real glass windows and wooden doors were sandwiched between bricks that had been excavated from the Salar’s crust; you could easily see the layers of salt and fine sediment. The hotel was in a state of disrepair and many of the walls were sagging. Almost comically, the walls had signs posted requesting that visitors ‘please don’t pee’ on the hotel. In the front of the hotel sat a few tables and broken benches made of the same salt bricks. Herman busied himself making breakfast while we explored. Inside the building was a pseudo-museum with salt sculptures and a few, still functional rooms which seemed to be occupied exclusively by Japanese tourists. We’d had been offered the chance to stay at a salt hotel but had politely declined; while quite a unique experience, they pump your excrement right into the water below, which is not only kind of revolting but not so great for the environment.

After a delicious pancake breakfast we were on our way again, passing salt harvesting operations that scraped layers of the salt into piles and then transferred them to trucks. We finally reached a small town at the other edge of the Salar. While Herman found a kitchen in which to cook the lunch and the others did a little shopping at a series of handicraft booths I set off around town to explore. It was a very strange place. First of all, like San Pedro, all the buildings were made of baked mud bricks. Many were falling a part but some new ones were being built in what seemed to be a continual process. There was barely a soul around, probably because this was a salt mining town and they were all off mining salt on the Salar. As I walked through the empty, decomposing town, a hauntingly romantic Spanish song emanated from somewhere amid the buildings. A nice local lady broke the eeriness when she walked by and engaged me in conversation. She said the place used to be a lot more pretty when the trains worked, now everything was falling apart and no one cared. She said that I would enjoy the thermal baths to the north more. I didn’t tell her that I was the kind of tourist that preferred roaming around abandoned buildings than lazing about in thermal baths. I thanked her for the information and she disappeared into a thin alley.

On the way back to the 4×4 I walked past a fence made of train track cross-ties, the perpendicular part that supports the rails. Inside the fence was a Catholic shrine. As I continued walking I noticed that next to it was another fenced off area, which had a large TV satellite inside it. I couldn’t help but find some amusement in this: two side-by-side, and hugely different forms of extra-terrestrial communication. I wondered which would prompt more complaints from the locals if vandalized.

The final stop before Uyuni was the train cemetery. This is an unbelievable collection of turn of the 20^th century steam powered trains that had been left to rust after their useful period elapsed and funding dried up. What seemed like hundreds of salty and eroding machines stood on a few decaying tracks, in a stark reminder of our earthly impermanence. Much of the sheet metal had been oxy-acetylene’d off for scrap but what remained was still wonderfully ornate in its complexity. A ridiculous amount of pipes, nuts and knobs adorned the old steam engines and we had a lot of fun climbing on them and taking pictures, while carefully avoiding scrapes among the tetanus glazed death-traps. Herman fixed lunch which I politely declined; the sheer amount of flies and the questionable source of the meat after 3 days had me sticking to my $5 imported Pringles. That’s right, perfectly decadent.

By the time we hit Uyuni it was a double whammy culture shock. First of all, we’d just been in the wilderness for 3 days and suddenly Herman was basically like: ‘OK, here is the bus terminal so you can plan the next portion of your travel. Adios amigos!’ and secondly Bolivia was far more rugged than anything I’d experienced in Chile or Argentina. I knew this was going to be the case and was in fact looking forward to the challenge, but I just hadn’t acclimated yet. So as the others, including Alessandro who had a tight schedule to keep, plotted their way immediately to La Paz ,I decided to stay in Uyuni for the night to relax and gather my thoughts. After I checked into a semi-completed hotel (my floor was completed but the two above me were not) I met up with the group at a pizza spot in the main square. We traded pictures and talked about how fun the trip had been. I don’t know it was fatigue or over analysis but there was a weird vibe at the table, in particular directed at me from Susie. For the last couple of days her playful jabs at everyone had become increasingly directed towards me, and increasingly less playful. She constantly laughed at my Americanisms and my choice of writer’s vocabulary. Others were even noticing it and it was more a comment of her, than of me. It takes a lot to aggravate me so I played it off, but as a final oddity, it seemed as she felt that I was abandoning the group. “Oh, you have big plans for Uyuni, do you?” Rather than let anything come to a head I simply enjoyed an ego-snack by telling myself that she was attracted to me and like many people who don’t leave behind this relic of adolescence, this was how she was dealing with it.

After lunch, rather than dragging the goodbye out further, we parted ways outside the pizza place and since I hadn’t finished my beer I turned to a table with a cute blonde girl who I thought I recognized – such meetings and re-meetings are typical when traveling on the same route as others. “Hey!” I said more confidently than I might with a stranger, “Can I chill with you while I finish this?” She had an unbelievably large smile and when she removed her glasses I noticed her blue eyes and also realized that I’d actually never met her. Nevertheless, I sat down and returned a large smile, at this point mostly due to the fact that I was once again going solo. Kim offered a welcome change of positive energy; a bright and gregarious American girl, taking a trip before starting her PA medical degree in South Carolina. We immediately hit it off and spent the rest of the day together.

The next morning she was heading to the salt flats and I was heading to the old mining town of Potosi. I gave her the rest of my handy wipes, she gave me some Q-tips and a course of the antibiotic Cipro just in case Bolivia had any intestinal surprises in mind. We made plans to meet again the following weekend in La Paz if our schedules worked out as planned.

Either way, as I headed to Potosi, I felt inspired and once again independent. When you travel you meet people and you visit places. Some you like, some you don’t. You move on. You begin again in a new place with a new group and a similar set of questions. Where are you from? How long are you traveling for? What do you do back home? What are you going to do differently when you return? That last one is always the least asked but most important in my opinion, so I always ask it of others. When turned introspectively, I’m happy to say that this trip has already provided the objectivity and clarity that I was hoping it would – and a glimpse of what needs to change when I return. I’ve had a surprisingly deep vision of where my being is headed, identifying the emergence of a very real, and deeply-needed social shift, the foundation of which I have been subconsciously building for years.

In these final few weeks of my trip I intend to clarify these thoughts and to plot the course for the next iteration. I still intend to get back into Argentina and find that much fabled motorcycle in Bariloche, but for now, this bright and plant-filled courtyard of the Grand Hotel in the charming town of Sucre seems like the perfect place to be. And for $18/night for a private room and bathroom, functional wifi and a gourmet meals for $5 on a plant-filled patio, why should I rush to anywhere else?