In which I try to go to a movie and I break another drought

I was bored. Neither Christine nor I had been able to reach Suzy yet. Cochabamba doesn’t present the casual tourist with an abundance of possibilities and there are only so many hours a day I can spend eating.

In the town center amidst the scribes with their typewriters and the signs that pleaded “No urinating,” I found a movie theater. It was showing Casper -- not my idea of great theater, but better than Judge Dredd, the other option. I bought a ticket and went inside. The movie started -- and it had been dubbed in Spanish! (Imagine!) Most movies simply had subtitles. I hadn’t thought that Casper would be considered a children’s movie. (My mind was going with boredom.) I tried to understand the Spanish, but the sound system was old and the words emerged garbled.

I walked out and asked the ticket seller if I could have my money back. She looked concerned. “I don’t know,” she said, and beckoned the ticket taker over. “What do you think?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.” They consulted for a minute, then came to the conclusion that this decision was out of the realm of their collective authority.

“We’ll have to ask the manager,” they warned me. “He’ll probably say no. All these tickets are numbered, you know.”

I told them I’d take my chances and they led me upstairs to the manager’s office. The ticket taker knocked timidly and cracked the door open. The manager beckoned him in. “She wants her money back because she’s American and the movie is in Spanish. We told her those tickets are numbered.”

The manager rolled his eyes and said patiently, “Give her the money and close the door.”

On Sunday evening, I went to the airport to wait for Suzy, who, I was to learn, is not the most organized person in the world. She’d finally sent Christine a fax saying that she’d fly into Cochabamba from La Paz on Sunday but had neglected to give us any other information, like her flight number or arrival time. It had taken me two days and three trips to two travel agencies to find out what flights she might be on. There were two arriving from La Paz that day. I’d gone to meet the 1:00 flight and she wasn’t on it, so now I had returned for the 7:00 flight.

As I waited outside the terminal, I felt electricity in the air, then a crisp, clean smell and a sudden coolness. Odd, I thought. Feels like a thunderstorm. But it hadn’t rained in five months in Cochabamba. The wind picked up and dried leaves and bits of trash spun and swirled on the blacktop. Thick clouds billowed over the mountains toward the terminal and threw off lightning bolts. Within minutes, icy cold rain and hail began to hurl themselves to the ground. The wind blew branches off the trees. A tree tore itself from the ground and threw its naked roots to the sky. The rain started and didn’t stop for two hours. All the flights were delayed.

The flight from La Paz was delayed until 9:30. And then Suzy wasn’t even on it. I left the terminal in disgust and went to wait for the bus. No bus. I asked someone how long before the bus arrived and she told me it didn’t run that late.

I approached a cab. “How much to take me to Christine’s house?”

“Ten bolivianos,” he told me.

“Ha!” I replied. “I’ll give you four.”

He countered with eight. I told him that just because I was a foreigner didn’t mean I was stupid and that I was not paying any more than five, which was what Christine had told me was the going rate. He grinned and looked suitably chagrined. When he dropped me off, he shook my hand, wrapping both his hands around mine, and kissed me on the cheek.

I gave up on Suzy and decided to leave Cochabamba and went to the bus station to buy a ticket to Sucre. Standing in line behind me were two clean-cut, fresh-faced young American men dressed in short-sleeved white shirts and ties. On their pockets were blue badges proclaiming “Hermano Jim” and “Hermano Tim.” They were a pair of those ubiquitous Mormon missionaries who overrun South America. I asked them what they thought of the Bolivian political situation. Oh, they didn’t know -- they never read newspapers or magazines. Really? They hadn’t noticed that Bolivia was in a state of martial law? Nope, they didn’t bother with that stuff. They weren’t supposed to, you know. I asked if they really believed that their church did not want them to read the news. Yes, they said. Some missionaries did, but they went by the book.

I left the bus terminal and was walking through the market when school let out for lunch. A herd of small boys ran out form the gates, yelling and skipping. I stood next to an old pickup that was parked halfway on the sidewalk and watched them. Five of them in a row stopped next to the pickup, upzipped their pants, and peed against the front wheel of the truck. I wondered where the public restroom for the girls was.

In which Primo has to tell Isabel that the alimony is over‏

Primo is all stressed because he is pretty sure that Isabel has not been keeping track of the divorce decree, even though she graduated from college with honors (with a major of dubious academic integrity, though) (at Primo's expense). The alimony ended this month. Done. Finito. No more. No more money leaving our checking account every month to go to her.

If you get divorced, get a lawyer. Don't have a mediated divorce. A lawyer will tell you that your alimony obligation is 17% of your income. Not 35%. Plus cobra.

Ouch.

After five years, we are done. 

But Isabel probably doesn't realize that.

Primo was going to tell her earlier this month, but she was on vacation in Hawaii for two weeks.

Think about that.

Anyhow, he wants - well, feels he should - to call her to advise her that she has gotten her last check. 

And he is dreading that call.

He has already had to deal with family issues. Doris is trying to find out what I want for my birthday.

What I want most is for her not to do anything for my birthday.

So what she really wants is not what I want but what she wants.

What she wants is to give me something that she likes, not what I like. Because if she wanted to give me what I like, she would not take offense when Primo tells her that no, I probably wouldn't like another vase hand-painted with purple flowers and butterflies. Or a scarf. Because I already have 20 scarves. (Everyone gives me scarves. Well, my sister and my friend Lenore.)

I told Primo to suggest that she give us a gift certificate to the theater, as there is a Johnny Cash play we want to see this spring but is a bit out of our budget.

"She won't want to do that," he said. "She doesn't understand buying experiences rather than things."

I did some research on the two scarf options she had presented.

"Then tell her to get scarf #1 because I can return it for cash. Scarf #2 they'll only let me exchange it for something else in their catalogue."

Sigh. She's going to send something that I don't want. I will have to go to the PO to send it back. Money will be wasted. 

In which I hang out in Cochabamba

Once the terminal opened, I left the bus. I still hadn’t spoken with Suzy but had decided I would just try to meet her in Cochabamba. I pulled out my Handbook and looked for a hostel. There were several within a few blocks of the bus terminal. I strapped on my backpack and began to walk.

The sun was just beginning to come up. The streets were empty except for a few vendors who were starting to set up their stands and several policemen. I stopped to ask directions and they pointed me north.

My backpack was really heavy after a night with practically no sleep. All I wanted to do was find a bed and fall into it for a few hours. I found the first hostel in the list. I rang the doorbell but no one answered. I rang again and again but to no avail. The Bolivians were not early risers like the Paraguayans.

I gave up and walked three blocks to the next place. Someone opened the little window in the door this time but told me there was no room. Come back at noon.

“Noon!” I said with dismay. That’s over five hours from now! Don’t you have a couch or something?”

He yawned and turned away. “Nope,” he said.

I kept walking. The third place I found actually had a desk clerk who was awake and who showed me a room. When he flung open the door, the bed was unmade and the contents of a backpack were strewn on the floor.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess someone is still in here. It might be available at noon.”

I reiterated my plea for at least a sofa, but my cries fell on deaf ears. He showed me to the door and I walked out, defeated, exhausted, and unshowered.

I decided the only thing left for me to do was to throw myself at Christine’s mercy. I pulled my little notebook out to find her home phone number. Aha! She had no phone at home! All I had was a work number! But I did have her home address. I stopped in a bakery and asked directions. The woman there assured me the address was not far away. You’d think by now I would have learned not to trust such reassurances, but I was tired and not thinking clearly. I bought a roll and a box of apple juice and began to walk again.

It was half an hour, two miles -- which is a long way with a backpack, and five sets of directions later that I finally stood in front of a tall iron gate at Christine’s house. I rang the doorbell. No one answered. I rang again. My patience was gone and I didn’t care if I woke people up. I wasn’t getting to sleep, was I? Finally, a boy in his pajamas opened the gate. I explained that I was a friend of Christine’s (OK-- a small lie -- she had never even met me) and he let me in. I guess the fact that I was another gringa was good enough for him.

“She lives upstairs,” he said, and pointed to the stairwell at the back of the garage.

He ducked into the front door while I walked toward the stairs. Dog droppings dotted the floor and the new sun was releasing their pungency. A sheet of plywood blocked the foot of the stairs; a gate blocked the top. Upstairs was a large landing off which were four doors, all of which had big windows. It was only 7:45 in the morning and I didn’t want to wake Christine, so I tiptoed to the first door and looked in. It was a living room. I tried the handle, but it was locked. The second door was to the kitchen; the third to the bathroom -- which was unlocked, fortunately. My keen intuition allowed me to deduce that the fourth door was to Christine’s bedroom.

I shed my bags, grabbed my toothbrush and soap, and headed into the bathroom. There was no mirror, so I pulled out my compact. No wonder there had been no room at the inn! I looked like hell. In addition to my attractive outfit of black leggings (the torn seam since repaired but the effects of a year of hand-washing against a rough board beginning to show), maroon shirt, bright red sweatshirt, jean jacket, and men’s hiking boots (in Chile, I could not find women’s shoes to fit my size-nine gringo feet), my hair was sticking up in all directions and an enormous pimple had chosen to emerge on my chin. I looked like I’d spent all night in an uncomfortable bus. Normally, I disdain the grunge look, but I right now I looked like their poster child.

I brushed my teeth, washed my face, combed my hair and did the best I could with my magic Cover Girl concealer wand. Christine still wasn’t up, so I pulled my book out of my pack and sat on the floor to wait.

At about nine, she finally emerged from her bedroom. I was worried she would be startled at the sight of a total stranger sitting in her hall, but she handled the surprise with aplomb, opening the living room for me and pulling a set of clean sheets out of the big chest in the corner. She gave me a key, pointed to the couch, and left me to my own devices. I made up the couch, stripped and sank into the cool sheets and blissful sleep.

Christine returned at lunchtime and offered to eat with me. We went to a vegetarian restaurant that had a lunch special for about $1.50. I could have stayed in Cochabamba just for the food. It was wonderful. For that small amount, I got salad and soup and entree -- and lots of each. The salad bar had beans and artichokes and tomatoes and olives. One of the soups was a Bolivian peanut soup, smooth and rich. The entrees usually included a big serving of rice. I developed the habit of eating a big cheap lunch and not eating supper. I saved money and lost weight -- what a deal!

I wanted to mail a letter I’d sealed with scotch tape. I laid it on the counter in front of the stamp seller. She looked at it and told me that she couldn’t accept a letter with tape on it.

“Why not?” I wanted to know.

“Because the recipient might think that the Bolivian Postal Service opened it,” she explained with impatience. I wanted to ask if it was customary for the Bolivian PO to do so. I had never thought of anyone opening my mail before. But I didn’t. Instead, I asked if I could just sign across the seal. Nope, that wouldn’t work.

“Fine,” I replied, and ripped the tape off. The seal held. “There.”

She pursed her lips and said, “I can’t take a letter that’s been ripped.”

I went to the phone office. If you don’t have a phone in Latin America, you go to a phone office, which will have from one to 20 phone booths. You give the number to a clerk and wait. When the call goes through, you hear a garbled announcement over the loudspeaker: “Anita, cabin nine.” You go into the booth, pick up the phone, and talk. When you’re through, you pay another clerk.
I was trying to reach a friend of mine who was supposed to be teaching at one of the American schools in Cochabamba. I did not have the phone number of the school.

I asked the clerk behind the cash register where I could find the number. “Try the Information desk,” she suggested.

I walked over to the Information desk. “I need the number for the American school,” I said.

“You need to call the international operator,” the clerk told me.

“No, this school is in Cochabamba,” I insisted.

“Oh. Then look in the phone book!” she said brightly.

“It’s not in the phone book! That’s why I’m asking you!” I said with exasperation.

She gave me a look of annoyed confusion. “Well, if it’s not in the phone book, how am I supposed to know?” she demanded.

I surrendered and returned to clerk number one. “Is there directory assistance?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said.

“Great. Place a call for me to them.”

“Oh, you can’t call them from our phones. You need to go outside the building. There’s an old lady who sells candy and rents her phone.”

I looked at her. “Why can’t I call from here?”

“Our phones won’t call directory assistance.” She shrugged and went back to filing her nails.

I gave up and went outside. I found the little old lady and gave her ten cents to use her old rotary phone to call the Bolivian phone company’s directory assistance. The racket from the vendors and beggars gathered around the phone building made it almost impossible to hear the operator. I memorized the number, went back inside, gave the number to the clerk, waited for the call to be placed, talked to the school secretary -- and found out my friend had left Bolivia the past June.

In which I back down in the face of a bossy man - I hope that today, I would not be such a wimp

On the ride back to Santa Cruz, I was the first person on the collectivo. I jumped into the front seat. We waited for more passengers. A Bolivian man appeared. “I have to have the front seat,” he told me.

“But I was here first!” I protested.

“Yes, but I have longer legs,” he said with authority, and opened the door for me to get out. [Me now - I CANNOT believe I did that! What was wrong with me?]

Then he was even more presumptuous. He and I and a third person were the only passengers. The driver was waiting in hopes that a fourth might apear. But after waiting a few minutes, no one showed up. Front seat hog man said, “Let’s not wait. Let’s just split the third fare amongst ourselves. Instead of ten bolivianos a person, it will cost us each fifteen. Big deal!” (Yes, I noticed his math wasn’t very good.)

The other passenger said through a mouthful of popcorn, “That’s fine with me.” They both looked at me. What was I supposed to say? “No, it’s not fine with me! I’m so broke after two years in the Peace Corps and two years in grad school that five bolivianos is a lot to me!” I should have, but I chickened out. [I hope I only paid 3 B extra.]

“Fine,” I muttered. I was not going to be happy about it. I spent the entire trip fuming in the back seat and conjuring up obscure Norwiegan curses in my mind. Some day he would rue the day he’d crossed the blond lady. Just not now.

Santa Cruz was as hot and muggy as it had been when I’d left two days before. It was about four p.m. when we got back and I thought about just finding a place to stay for the night and going to Cochabamba in the morning. But then I realized I had exhausted the mulititude of pleasures Santa Cruz had to offer. I decided I’d rather not spend the next six hours sitting in a hostel room when I could be on a nice uncomfortable Bolivian bus.

I walked over to the bus terminal. The bays were on the street level and the ticket offices were a flight down along a concourse. There were about two dozen bus companies offering service to Cochabamba and points west. Ticket vendors jumped in front of me as I tried to dodge men pushing dollies piled high with luggage and stout Bolivian women with colorful blankets stuffed with what looked like chickens and televisions tied across their backs.

“TV!” the vendors shouted. Little did they know that’s the last thing I wanted on a bus.

I brushed them off and looked at the scheduled departure times, which I later realized were works of complete fiction. There were three lines leaving within the next hour and a half. I shuttled between them, comparing bus data. Was there a toilet on the bus? No from all three. TV? Yes from one. Strike it from the list. Air conditioning? Nope. The two finalists were next to each other. One clerk finally said, “I’ll cut the price!”

The other one countered, “Me too!”

I let them fight it out -- it’s nice to have men fight over you, although I would rather it have been for my beauty, charm and with than for my money. Finally, I picked the one that left earlier. The clerk asked for my backpack.

“I’ll just hold onto it and take it to the bus before we leave,” I reassured him.

“No,” he said. “We have to load the luggage soon so we can be sure to leave on time.”

I looked at him and he stared back. Maybe he was telling the truth. I handed over the pack and took the receipt he offered.

“Be at the bus at 5:15,” he said. “We leave at 5:30.” I realized later that he’d dealt with gringos before and knew just the right things to say.

I should have realized he was pulling my leg. The signs were bad. Lettering on a banner stretched across the exterior of the bus terminal proclaimed “Be on time!” As if.

I walked to the back of the terminal, where there food vendors and tables and chairs. Women picked through their children’s hair, looking for lice. I found an empty table and sat. A fat woman waddled up to me and asked what I wanted.

“Do you have any bottled water?” I asked.

“No.”

“What about diet Coke?”

“What’s that?” was her answer.

“OK,” I said. “How about a coke? Ice-cold, please.

“We have coke, but we have no ice.”

A warm coke just didn’t have the appeal it otherwise would on a hot day, but I ordered one anyhow. All I really wanted to do was sit at the table while I waited for my bus. I toyed with the coke, taking a few sips of the sticky sweet liquid. Yuck. It was enough to put me off soft drinks forever.

I made a last trip to the toilet. The ladies’ room at the bus station was barely civilized: toilets without seats (where do all those spare seats go, anyhow?), the only lighting provided by candles set in sand in plastic Coke bottles with the tops cut off and do-it-yourself plumbing where you scoop water from a large barrel and throw it in the toilet to flush it. There are times when I’m glad I’m nearsighted.

It was 5:15, time to board the bus. I pushed my way through the crowds and found my bus. A few placid women sat next to their stuffed blankets. Most of them had extra blankets in their arms. I thought nothing of it. After all, we were here in the Amazon basin, melting away. Those blankets were probably their extra luggage. Short, dark men stood beside them. The men carried nothing. I climbed up and found my seat. No one else seemed to be anxious to board. But we had only ten minutes before we were supposed to leave! Then I noticed that they were just now loading the luggage. At 5:37, the other passengers started to board. The driver showed up at 5:45. At 5:55, we pulled out of the terminal and cruised through rush-hour Santa Cruz, stopping every few blocks to pick up people who’d seen our destination sign and decided that they, too, wished to go to Cochabamba.

Despite our maddeningly slow start, the beginning of the trip was fine. My seatmate was, as usual, a man. (Women almost never sat next to me.) He was chatty and kept me distracted from my hunger, which was immense. When I’d boarded the bus at 5:00 p.m., I hadn’t been worried because standard bus practice is to stop for a snack break every hour. Even when the buses wouldn’t make long stops, there were always food vendors throwing stuff up through the windows. But this driver didn’t stop for food, only passengers. They were stuffed in the aisles and I was hungry.

We didn’t stop for supper until eight and I practically dove out my window in search of food. We were at the Bolivian version of a truck stop, which is almost as appealing as its American counterpart. There were the official restaurants and then the do-it-yourself vendors selling meat of unspecified origin but I will note that I don’t remember seeing many cats during my trip.
Contrary to what you might think, Bolivian food isn’t a gourmet cuisine. I scoured the dozens of vendors, seeking something that might be meatless and not fried. (This was my usual strategy, which explains why I ate a lot of tangerines and crackers.) All I found were stacks of sandwiches filled with unidentifiable substances, fried cakes, and more of those half-peeled oranges. I wanted real food that had been heated to a point that the germs would at least be lethargic, if not dead.

I noticed “Vegetable soup” written on the blackboard menu at the official restaurant and sat to wait for a waitress. No one came. I looked around: everyone else had food and I did not, even though I was hungrier and more deserving. Then I noticed a few foodless others giving poker chips to the food bearers. Upon interrogation, they admitted that you placed your order at the counter and were given a chip that in turn you gave to the waitress. I ambled up to the counter and ordered my soup.

I didn’t even bother verifying the non-meat status because there it was written plain as day “Vegetable soup.” I should have known better. My soup arrived and there it was, lurking in the middle of a watery broth: a big chunk of gristle with a little fat thrown in for flavor. I picked around it and ate the droopy cabbage leaf and the two carrots.

The restaurant toilet was the Bolivian fancy desert toilet. (I found out what the no-frills version was like later.) The toilet doesn’t actually flush. Such technology requires sophisticated plumbing methods -- the kind where water is piped in from an outside source. To flush this toilet, I had to fetch water from a barrel 20 yards away from the toilet and carry it back to the toilet. A lot of people skipped this step, I noticed.

I decided I didn’t care to pass an entire night with unbrushed teeth. I looked around the bathroom for a sink, but then realized I didn’t really want to brush my teeth where it smelled so bad. And when you use bottled water to wet your toothbrush, it doesn’t really matter if you have a sink or not. I wanted to get past the clusters of stolid, dark-haired women in their full satin skirts and bowler hats, but they spread out past where the light ended into the shadows. I poured a little of my precious water on my brush and squeezed some toothpaste onto it while they watched me silently. It’s hard to look cool when you’re brushing your teeth and foam is welling up around your mouth. It’s even harder to look cool when you’re trying to spit toothpaste out. I thought I saw the mothers pulling their children close to keep them from the gringa with rabies.

I finished my ablutions and went in search of the bus. It was gone. I looked around and saw my seatmate. “Where’s the bus?” I asked.

“It’s gone,” he explained patiently.

“Is it customary for Bolivian bus drivers to abandon their passengers?” I asked in panic.

“He’ll be back,” he assured me. I wasn’t so sure. After all, the guy did have my valuable backpack in his luggage hold. I sat gingerly on the only bit of cement ledge I could find in the dust and refuse and put my lovely Paraguayan leather daypack between my knees. No one better snatch it from me: it held my toilet paper. Men eyed me curiously but no one said anything to me. I wondered what I would do if the bus didn’t come back. What a miserable fate -- to be stuck somewhere without enough water to flush toilets.

After an hour, the bus returned. They’d had to change a tire that looked as if it were going bad. Prevention is not a Latin concept. It has never crossed the minds of the people who run the bus companies to inspect the buses and do any necessary maintenance before the buses leave the stations. (Leaving the station with a full tank of gas is not a priority either, I discovered.)

With relief, I climbed back up and tried to sleep. I was unsuccessful. Every half hour, we stopped to take on or discharge passengers. This is not a complicated process in normal places, but on this bus, the aisles happened to be filled with sleeping children, so the moving passengers had to step over them. In the aisle next to me was a group of three kids. To step over them was a maneuver that carried a difficulty rating of fourteen. But no one ever said anything -- just climbed all over the people sitting in the seats next to the kids to avoid disturbing sleeping children. As if it were hard for children to sleep.

We had to stop for two drug inspections. All passengers had to get off the bus while Bolivian soldiers clutching submachine guns poked every cranny and inspected all the luggage. If you are caught with the smallest amount of drugs in Bolivia, you are thrown in jail and are not released until the trial, appellate, and supreme courts have found you innocent. You stay in jail the whole time. Bail is not an option. The proceedings can take years. (This law was written under pressure from the U.S. There is a Spanish woman who has been prison in Cochabamba for drug possession for two years already. She’s been found innocent twice and is waiting for the Supreme Court to hear her case. Had she been found guilty, she would have already been deported to Spain.)

We arrived in Cochabamba at 4:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m., the bus station is not open and the public transportation isn’t running. Unless you already have a place to stay in Cochabamba, you’re stuck. You can’t take a bus to find a hostel and you can’t sit in the station to wait until six, when the local buses start. We weren’t the only bus sitting in the parking lot waiting for the station to open. This situation is not unique to Cochabamba -- I found it in every Bolivian city. I still haven’t figured out the logic behind this strategy. I even interrogated several ticket agents, asking why the buses didn’t leave a little later in the day so they’d arrive after dawn. Or, barring that, why not open the bus station when the buses arrive? No one could give me a satisfactory answer.

The bus driver was kind enough to let me stay on the bus until the terminal opened. I huddled in the corner of the seat, trying to reduce my surface area. I was freezing and finally realized why everyone else had brought blankets with them (they weren’t just fashion accessories, apparently). Cochabamba is in the mountains, and although it has a lovely dry warm climate during the day, at night the temperature plummets.

In which I go to the mountains and discover that habanero peppers are not small bell peppers

Two hours from Santa Cruz is a village in the mountains called Samaipata. I took a collectivo there through the low tropical mountains. In our frequent stops at tollhouses, I noticed the driver got no receipts from the toll collector. I also noticed he gave the toll collector only half the posted amounts.

When we stopped, little girls rushed up to the bus to sell bags of half-peeled oranges. I saw this all over Latin America -- vendors selling oranges with half the rind gone. They would use apple-peeling machines to scrape the orange part off. No one I asked knew why -- you still have to peel the orange -- and no one knew if the peeled rind was put to any use.

My destination was an organic ranch called La Víspera, owned and run by a retired Dutch piano tuner and his wife. Claire and John had told me about it, saying it was great place to relax. We got to the center of Samaipata, inching slowly through deep mud. Apparently, Samaipata had not been suffering from the drought.

When we arrived at the collectivo stop, I asked the driver if he knew where La Víspera was. He didn’t but stopped to ask. The first man he asked didn’t know. Nor did the second.

Try asking a woman, I suggested. I was right. The next woman we saw knew. She pointed us to the north of town up the hill. I looked at my backpack and then at the four-inch deep mud that passed for a road. The driver saw my look.

“I’ll drive you up there!” he said gallantly.

I was no fool. “That would be wonderful,” I said gratefully.

The wheels spun in the mud, trying to find purchase. He backed up a little, then charged forward again. Mud sprayed from the wheels onto the sidewalk. When we got to the hill, I was afraid that the car would slip down, but we made it to the gate of La Víspera.

I stepped gingerly out into the mud while the driver jumped out and ran to the back to get me my backpack. He insisted on waiting for me to get through the gate before handing me the pack. I decided he was deserving of a nice tip.

I started to walk up the driveway, trying to step from one relatively dry spot to another. Across the lawn I saw a tall, thin white-haired man wearing shorts and a pair of knee-high rubber boots. He ambled down toward me and took my backpack.

“I’m Peter,” he said. “I know the mud better than you.” He began to chat and told me about the farm. He and his wife had moved here from Holland years ago, fed up with the first world. They had built the house and the guesthouses themselves and had terraced the side of the hill to create the gardens in which they grow herbs and vegetables and some fruits. They sell the produce and also potpourri and herbal soaps and essential oils made from their herbs.

In addition to their herb, jam, and egg business, they take guests. Each of the six guest rooms is furnished with a camp stove, dishes, hand-woven cotton sheets, thick wool blankets and old National Geographics. Guests may help themselves to any produce from the garden and pay for it when they leave. Regular guests pay sixty dollars a night to stay, but backpackers -- like me -- pay only six.

I spoke to Juana, the maid. “How do you like working for Peter?” I asked.

“He is wonderful! He pays me twenty-four bolivianos a day!”

I asked if there were any Peace Corps volunteers in Samaipata.

“Once, there were two young women here. They were nice and worked hard. They taught at the school. But late one night, someone caught them so drunk they couldn’t stand! They had to leave.” She spoke of their departure with approval, but then added, “But now, we have no good teachers.”

That evening, I grabbed a handful of cherry tomatoes from the garden and made myself a pot of orange tea. I pulled a deck chair into the middle of the flagstone patio, wrapped myself in a blanket, and drank tea and watched the stars emerge from the twilight. There were no sounds except the occasional owl and the wind in the trees. Without dust in the air like in Santa Cruz, the sky was clear and the stars hovered low. It was another one of those absolutely gorgeous perfect moments that made me feel immensely lonely and totally insignificant in the universe. I don't know if you still have that feeling when you see something like that with another person, but I’d like to try it sometime.

The next day was sunny and balmy. I walked into town, went into the one open tourist shop and promptly broke a piece of pottery I didn’t even like. After paying the clerk, I decided I’d better go to where the goods weren’t so fragile and found the only produce store in town. It had not much more than some shriveled potatoes, a few bags of dried beans, some brown bananas, and some peppers. I decided I could cook the peppers with some tomatoes from the garden and eat them with rice. I picked through the peppers, which were small and ranged in color from green to red. I thought they were small for bell peppers, but noticed that the potatoes and bananas looked puny too. Maybe it was just something in the soil here. I bought about six peppers and some rice and walked back to La Víspera.

That evening, I gathered some tomatoes. Then I cut and seeded the peppers and the tomatoes and threw them in a pot with a little bit of salt and some fresh basil. Food with tomatoes always tastes better if it simmers for a while, so I waited several minutes before tasting. In my first bite, I got a piece of pepper. It seared my lips and I dropped the spoon in shock.

I’m a slow learner. I decided I needed to verify that all the peppers were hot. The one I’d tried had been red, so I fished out a green one. Surprise! It, too, burned my tongue. Frantically, I tried to fish out all the peppers. I didn’t know what cruel hoax had been played upon me, but I knew this was my only chance to save my dinner. But it was too late. Even though I pulled out all the peppers, they’d been steeped in the tomatoes long enough for the tomatoes to draw out their heat. I had to throw everything away (although it may have served as an organic pesticide).
I thought about making some plain rice, but then realized that my lips hurt too much to eat. I sat watching the stars again, feeling sorry for myself because I was really hungry but had burning lips and was physically incapable of eating.

In which I go to Bolivia and discover I can make rain

I flew to Santa Cruz from Asunción. There is no land route (well, paved land route) from Paraguay to Bolivia, although they have a border in common. You can take a bus from Asunción to Santa Cruz through the Chaco, but the trip can take up to 45 hours. On dirt road. (I read that this is a popular route for smugglers and that you have to take all your own water and food as there are no settlements and hence no stores.)

You can go up through Brazil by highway for a while, then switch to a train that takes at least 24 hours and has been dubbed “The Death Train.” Or you can go back through northern Argentina and then up to southern Bolivia. This option would have required I repeat my 27-hour Veloz del Norte experience. I decided my comfort was more important than my money and bought a plane ticket.

I arrived in Santa Cruz to find it enveloped in a haze. Farmers were burning off sugarcane fields. From the air, I could hardly see the lights of the city, but I could see the moon, which hung full and low and orange-red over the horizon. I went outside the airport to find a bus to town. No bus, but several taxi drivers approached me.

“How much?” I asked.

“Ten dollars,” one told me.

“You’re kidding!” I laughed. “I’ll wait for the bus.”

“The bus won’t be here for a half hour yet!” he warned me.

“Well, I have a lot more time than money,” I answered. “I can wait.”

It was in Santa Cruz that I learned of my special ability to bring rain -- and lots of it -- to dry places. By the end of my trip, I had broken droughts in three cities and brought unseasonable rains to two others. There was talk of dedicating statues in my honor.

Santa Cruz was hot and muggy despite a five-month long drought. The wind blew dust that filtered through the tall palm trees and stuck to my sweaty, sunblocked body. During the day, I walked slowly through town, stopping frequently at cafés for drinks. In the evening, I stood fully-clothed under the cold-water-only shower and let the water flow over me until my clothes and I were soaked and my body temperature dropped. When the water first hit my head, it was cold, but by the time it rolled off my body, it was warm. It took a good few minutes for me to cool off.

My room was slightly larger than the cell where Jeff and I had stayed in Salta but without the great ventilation. Only one little window led outside. No wind blew and not a breath stirred. For two days, I sweltered in the oppressive stillness, ate crackers, and plotted my escape. The second night, I lay sweating in my bed when I heard a rustling outside. A few minutes later, shots cracked in the night. Great, I thought, the Bolivian peasants are finally revolting and I’m going to be stuck in the middle. But the bullets came faster and faster and then the air started to cool and I realized it was raining. It poured all night.

I couldn’t find that much to do in Santa Cruz during the day. My main activity was trying to reach my friend Suzy in Chile. We were planning to meet in Cochabamba and travel together for a few weeks. She had given me the phone number of her friend Christine in Cochabamba. When I couldn’t reach Suzy -- who did not have a phone -- I called Christine. She had no idea who I was. Suzy had not told her when she would be arriving nor that I would be staying with Suzy at Christine’s house. But she was gracious and told me she had plenty of room and to call her when I arrived.

According to our plan, Suzy wasn’t due to arrive in Cochabamba for several more days yet. I didn’t want to impose on Christine without Suzy, so decided I would make Santa Cruz a tourist-friendly place. I went to the zoo and almost died from the heat, then I spent an hour wandering blissfully through the giant air-conditioned supermarket that stocked almost anything you could find in a grocery store in the U.S. That left me the rest of the afternoon. I returned downtown and traded some books at the U.S. consulate, where the consul maintained a paperback library. Then I sat at a café and drank a bottle of water that was ice-cold when the waiter brought it but was warm and beaded with sweat within three minutes.

The cathedral across the street looked promising, so I killed a half an hour in there, but had to dodge beggars as I walked out. I decided to investigate a store run by a women’s cooperative called Artecampo. I’d been hesitant to go because it was a good eight blocks from downtown and I just didn’t want to walk that far in the heat, but the thought of returning to my hostel was even more off-putting.

I was interested in seeing the store because I had been working with a women’s artisan cooperative in Chile. We’d never quite reached that enviable stage of profitability, mostly, I suspect, because the organization was funded by a grant and my co-workers got paid whether we made money or not. We also had problems with oversupply, poor quality, and resistance to innovation. I has assumed that these problems were not unique to my organization and wasn’t expecting much of Artecampo.

I was wrong. The products -- appliqué wall hangings of typical Bolivia Oriente scenes, pottery, hats, and mobiles of brightly-colored cloth tropical birds -- were beautifully displayed against clean white walls. Each item had a tag with the name and a brief description of the artisan and on the walls were photographs and signs of the craft processes. I walked into the back and found a young woman poring over a set of ledger books. I explained that I had been working at a similar organization in Chile and asked her if they had problems with artisans not wanting to make the products to certain quality standards.

“At Casa de la Mujer Mapuche,” I told her, “when I tried to tell a woman once that the rug she’d woven wasn’t good enough and we couldn’t put it into the store, she started to cry. My counterpart decided to take the rug anyhow because the woman was so upset, even though I tried to explain that putting items of poor quality in our store would only hurt our reputation and eat up capital.”

“Oh, no, we don’t have that problem,” she said. “Every item has the woman’s name on it. We will only take them if they are good. Our members are very proud of this store and they criticize each other’s work.”

She went on to tell that they also made money. Basically, she had accomplished everything I had wanted to do in Chile: improve quality, set up an attractive, informative, interesting retail center, instill pride and team spirit in the artisans, and be profitable. I bought a wall hanging and left, feeling like a failure. She’d been able to with almost nothing what I’d been unable to do with an MBA from a top twenty school. I decided I’d ask the University of Texas for a refund.

In which I go to San Ignacio Guazú, where I meet a Jesuit priest from New York

I took the bus to San Ignacio Guazú, a cute, tranquil town without a single other tourist. The bus ride was atypical in that the driver blared the radio. I couldn’t nap because I was too busy being disgusted hearing songs like “This Magic Moment” sung in Spanish. Also, every time we went through a town, we’d hit a series of speed bumps. Theory was, I suppose, that the bumps would slow highway traffic, but most bus drivers considered them a challenge and maintained their speed.

I found a lovely pensión in what appeared to be an old mission building. The rooms faced a courtyard filled with flowers and orange trees dropping fruit. The walls were thick white adobe that kept my room cool even in the heat of the afternoon. I ate lunch in the pensión bar along with six men who were watching a dubbed rerun of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

In search of potable water, I went to the little grocery store next to the pensión. I was surprised to find paté, good olive oil, several varieties of hot sauce -- but no bread. I inspected a bar of Brazilian chocolate. We were three years past the expiration date stamped on the label.

Later, I walked to the mission museum. It was a gentle introduction to South American religious art, which I was to discover was bloody and torturous. Here, the Jesuses were skinny, no more, as opposed to the bloody, excoriated, flagellated Christs I was to find in Bolivia and Peru. I signed the register and the woman looked at it. “You’re Peace Corps?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

She pulled a postcard out of her desk. A photo of Denver was on the front. “This is from Susan. She was here six years ago and started a school for disabled children. The school is still running. Do you know her?”

“No,” I said. “She’s from Colorado. I’m from Texas.”

“Our priest is from Texas! Come and meet him!”

I protested, but she grabbed my arm and dragged me to the garden. A middle-aged man with deep acne scars and a brightly-colored striped shirt was watering the flowers.

“Father, this woman is a Peace Corps volunteer from Texas. Maybe you know each other!”

We didn’t. I asked how he’d ended up in Paraguay. “I was a parish priest in Dallas --although I’m from New York originally -- and I got sick of all the high school kids driving BMWs. So I came here.”

In which I go to Encarnacion and the Jesuit ruins

From Ciudad del Este, I took the bus to Encarnación in the south. For the first fifteen minutes of the trip, a pitchman tried to sell his wonder drug, which, as far as I could tell, was nothing more than aloe. He praised its many virtues and told us that it could cure kidney problems, liver problems, acne, blood problems, female problems, heart problems, feet problems, and any other problem that a human being could have.

I ignored him and looked out the window. The Paraguayan countryside is green and gentle. Hills roll softly and lines of poplars divide one farm from the next. Red barns and silos dotted the countryside and occasionally, bearded farmers in round black hats and overalls riding in horse-drawn carriages appeared on the highway. They were Mennonites, wearing clothes totally inappropriate to the climate. I was sweltering in my sundress, but the Mennonite women I saw displayed no discomfort despite their long calico dresses, aprons, and head kerchiefs. The Mennonite children looked like miniature adults -- the girls in the same long dresses and aprons with their hair up in buns and the boys in overalls and straw hats, but they got to go barefoot.

Encarnación is a nondescript town. I checked into a hostel and ate lunch, then walked through town. I was looking for the movie theater so I’d had something to do that evening after I’d seen the Jesuit ruins. I asked the dueño where I could find the movies.

Downtown, he told me.

I traipsed down the block and found the main street. No sign of a movie theater, but the street was several blocks long. After three blocks, I stopped in a store to ask. Oh, the clerk told me cheerfully, it’s just two or three blocks that way. She gestured languidly in the direction I’d been heading and I optimistically set out again.

Six blocks later, I reached the end of the road, Still no theater. I stopped in another store. Oh! You’ve already passed it! I was told. I turned around and walked back. A few blocks later, I did find the remains of a theater. It had been boarded up quite some time ago, it appeared. I guess no one had thought to tell me that yes, the theater existed but it no longer showed movies.

The Handbook claimed there were nice Jesuit ruins to be found at Trinidad, twenty minutes from Encarnación. I found the local bus to Trinidad and asked the driver to let me off by the ruins.

A girl sitting behind the driver spoke. “You are going to see the Jesuit ruins?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“My cousin Aldo works there. Tell him I said to let you in free!”

The driver let me off on the side of the road and pointed to the top of the hill. “Up there are the ruins.”

I walked up the dirt path past small wooded homes. Children shouted and played in the yards. In front of one house three naked children waited their turns to wash under the handpump.
At the top of the hill, I found the ruins. Three acres of emerald-green grass dotted with clover spread in front of me and large trees lined the perimeter. The setting sun cast a golden glow on the stonework of the ruins. The sound of crickets was all I heard.

I found the entrance booth. “I’m supposed to ask for Aldo,” I said to a young man sitting there.

“I am Aldo,” he said.

“I met your cousin on the bus.”

“Which cousin?”

“A girl with long dark hair.” As if that distinguished her from the rest of the Latin women I saw.

“Oh!” he said. “Claudia!”

I decided not to tell him she’d said to let me in for free. The entrance fee was only two dollars.

“You are American?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“But you speak Spanish so well!”

“I’ve been living in Chile for two years.”

“Oh! Are you a Peace Corps volunteer?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Hardly any Americans come here. The ones who do are from the Peace Corps. Do you know Cindy? She was a volunteer here three years ago.”

I had to confess I didn’t, but asked if he knew Stacey, who had been in Trinidad two years ago. “Of course!” he said. “Everyone knows Stacey!”

He looked around, then whispered, “I won’t charge you an entrance fee. Cindy told me about Peace Corps and how you work for no money. You come in for free here.”

I was not above accepting his offer and thanked him. The ruins were serene. Here, the Jesuits had tried to protect the Guaraní people from the Brazilian slave traders. They’d established plantations where they’d farmed and taught various trades to the Guaraní. Under Jesuit stewardship, the plantations throve and annoyed the other farmers, not to mention the slave traders. The slave traders had manufactured stories of Jesuit malfeasance and had succeeded in having them expelled from the country. The ruins of Jesuit settlements are scattered throughout southern Paraguay and northern Argentina.

The Trinidad ruins are some of the better-preserved ones, but even there, what remains is only a quarter of the original buildings. The rest has been stolen. Paraguay does not have the funds to post guards, so anyone can haul away the stones and columns hand-carved with scrolls and human figures.

I climbed to the top of the wall and watched the sun sink until Aldo came and told me that they were closing. I climbed down reluctantly and walked back to the highway to wait for a bus back into town. There were a few houses and a small garage where I was waiting. Two men watched and laughed as a young woman cut the hair of a third man sitting on a stack of tires. A few children laughed and squealed as they chased each other. I felt very left out as I watched this everyday life happen around me. Traveling alone is great because you don’t have to worry about when someone else wants to eat or where she wants to stay or what she wants to see, but it’s very lonely as well. You find yourself wanting to say, “Look at that!” or “Can you believe?” and not having anyone to say it to. That’s why you have to write a book.

I finally got back into town. Even though I’d not been able to find a functioning movie theater to entertain me, I did not want to spend another boring evening in my room, trapped by the lack of sunlight, so I went into the café at the front of the hostel. The TV was blaring with some action movie dubbed in Spanish. No one was watching, so I asked if I could change the channel. The dueño said sure, then told me that they had a library of videos if I wanted to watch one of them. I hurried over to the shelf, hoping for a romantic comedy, but all I found were low-budget versions of Stephen Segal and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies made by actors who were just this far from breaking into the big time and who were determined to show that they could draw blood and gore as well as the next kickboxer. I decided that maybe sitting in bed and reading wasn’t such a horrible fate after all.

That night was horrible. I had an interior room with a window only to the hallway, which was brightly lit. I kept getting out of bed to turn off the hall lights, but then someone would turn them on again. Southern Paraguay is humid and my room showed it: The walls were mildewed and the room smelled dank and musty.

The bathroom was down the hall. It was tiny and the cover wouldn’t stay on the toilet, which wouldn’t have mattered except that was the only place besides the floor -- which was gross -- that I could put my soap and shampoo while I showered. The shower was not set off from the toilet and sink. The water came out a few inches to the left of the toilet and soaked everything in the room. There was no window, so it took a long time for everything to dry. I had to use the toilet in the middle of the night and sat without looking at the toilet seat. It was soaking wet. Someone had just showered.

In which I eat Korean food in Paraguay and talk politics

At 3:00 p.m., the street vendors were already packing up their wares. I hadn’t had any lunch except the leftover vegetarian sushi rolls I’d bought at the Korean grocery in Asunción. With the overwhelming heat, I didn’t have much appetite. But by three, I started to feel empty, so I set out in search of food. No open restaurants! I was too late for lunch and too early for supper. I found a Korean grocery. Good sign, I thought.

Wrong. I approached the plump Korean lady behind the counter. “What do you have to eat?” I asked.

“Only Korean food.”

“Great!” I replied. “I love Korean food.”

“Is very spicy,” she warned.

“Even better!” I exclaimed. “Give me whatever -- noodles and vegetables, kim chee, whatever.”

She stared at me. “Is very very spicy.”

“That’s fine. I’m hungry. It sounds great.”

Her reply surprised me: “We don’t have any.”

“You just said you had food -- spicy food,” I protested.

“We’re out,” she said with a note of finality and turned away.

I was still starving. I walked back through the sidewalks, which were almost deserted except for the fried pork stand on the corner. The smell of the grease in the hot afternoon was almost nauseating. I stuck my thumb in the waistband of my skirt and decided it wouldn’t be such a horrible thing to lose my appetite altogether.

But I did need to eat something. I finally found an open café that claimed to serve pizza. I walked in and approached the counter. The only other customers were a young couple giggling and sipping soda in the corner. A fan rotated slowly on the ceiling, providing just enough breeze to cool the flies that buzzed around the tables.

“Do you have anything besides pizza?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” the waiter replied. “And we don’t serve that until later.”

“But I’m hungry!” I said. “And there are no open restaurants anywhere!” A note of desperation crept into my voice. “Is there any way at all that I could have a salad or something?”

He looked at me with a bit of pity. By US standards, I am not at all underfed. “Buxom” and “healthy” are adjectives that describe me amply (especially if you ignore the “big breasts” implied in buxom), but in Latin America, I am considered thin. (Which is a very strong reason for me to consider staying there the rest of my life. Chubby thighs are appreciated in some places, thank you very much.)

Anyhow. He said, “Well, we don’t have that many vegetables...”

“What about tomatoes? And onions? Don’t you use those in the pizza?”

He brightened. “Yes!”

“Well, what about a tomato and onion salad? With some peppers and lemon juice?”

“OK,” he said.

“Great!” My voice dropped. “Oh. Could I ask you to peel the tomatoes? I’m not supposed to eat unpeeled produce.” I always found this a delicate issue -- I didn’t want to insult people by implying that their food was unfit, but I didn’t want cholera, typhoid, or hepatitis either. My health concerns usually won over my always-present concerns for the feelings of others.

“Sure,” he said amiably.

I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator case and sat at a table. A few minutes later, he emerged from the kitchen. “Would you like some rice, too?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him. He smiled and ran back into the kitchen.

A minute later he came out again. “How about some beans to go with that?”

“Wonderful!”

Again, he disappeared and reappeared. “Do you like carrots? I have some that are cooked.”

“That sounds great,” I said happily.

He returned with two plates, one with the tomato salad, the other with a huge serving of black beans and rice with carrot slices arranged artistically around the edges. He beamed as I exclaimed over the esthetic appeal of the food and hovered over me as I ate. It was actually too much food and I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so asked if he could pack it for me to take and eat later. It made a great breakfast.

The dueño at the hostel gives me his political views
I took my book out to the patio. Shortly after I’d started to read, the dueño came out and started talking to me.

I asked him something that had been bothering me. “In Chile,” I said, “you cannot leave a store or restaurant without taking your receipt. Even if you tell the clerk to throw the receipt away, he’ll make you take it. If national tax auditors come into a store and find that the store isn’t giving receipts or finds them in the trash, they’ll close the place down. Here in Paraguay, it’s totally different. You can’t get a receipt even if you ask for one. How does the government collect taxes?” (Paraguay allegedly has a value-added tax.)

He pondered the question. “We’re supposed to pay taxes. But you can see that people don’t. That’s why we have bad schools and bad roads and that’s why many places don’t have electricity.” He shook his head. “But people won’t pay their taxes.”

“So you do see the connection between paying taxes and getting public services!” I said.

“Oh yes,” he answered. “But you know -- really, it’s the government’s fault. They don’t make us pay the taxes.”

In which I go to Iguassu falls

The bus to the falls was filled with tourists. Two German couples hopped on board. One girl was wearing short shorts and a bikini top. Her skin -- I could see almost all of it -- was covered with quarter-sized mosquito bite welts.

A swarthy man sat across from me and stared. He tried to start a conversation: “¿Usted es alemán?” he asked. Are you German?

I shook my head and looked steadfastly out the window, which wasn’t easy because that put the sun right in my face. He sighed heavily and tried to look soulfully into my eyes. (I learned I have a knack for attracting Latin men. Bus drivers and men without teeth, especially, seem to find me attractive. A toothless bus driver -- forget it. It’s a curse.)

I continued to avoid him and jumped off the bus with relief when we arrived at the Iguassú Falls park entrance. But I wasn’t safe. He cut in front of me in the line to pay the entrance fee. He pointed at his money, then at himself, then at me, showing -- I think -- that he would pay my admission fee. I shook my head.

“No!” I said loudly. “I pay for myself!”

He insisted, and the attendant, thinking we must be having some kind of lovers’ tiff -- the kind you have when you don’t have a language in common -- took his money and gave him two tickets. Visions of him following me forever flashed through my mind and I snatched one ticket out of his hand and threw some Brazilian coins into it in exchange. I gave him a dirty look and climbed back onto the bus. I guess he got the idea, because he moved to a different seat.

Iguassú Falls
I walked down the trail to the Falls. The big tour buses hadn’t arrived yet and I spotted hardly any other visitors. The trail was wooded and cool, marred only by the refreshment stand tucked discreetly halfway down where I was able for the first time in several days to find diet Coke. (OK. So I helped perpetuate the stand by buying something from it. But I was thirsty!)

Jewel-colored butterflies darted out of the leaves and alit gently on the wooden rail of the stairs. As I got closer, I could hear the crash of the water. The Falls are enormous. The water churns and throws up mist where it crashes into the pools and makes double rainbows. I walked onto the wooden walkway over the water. The day was burning hot, but the water sprayed over the walkway, casting a cool net of diamonds. The sound of the water blocked all other noise.

A few tourists videotaped. What a fascinating souvenir to show your friends: ten minutes of water falling. Not nearly as interesting as my dozens of photographs of the Falls.

I began talking to a couple who had been on my bus. They were Israeli and lived on a kibbutz, although they’d spent a few years in the Caribbean, where Michael had been a toothbrush salesman. His earnings, though, went to the kibbutz. They were friendly and chatty and wrote down their address for the next time I visited Israel.

I had to ditch them, though, because I’d spotted a promising-looking man (in shorts, so I knew he was a fellow traveler, although I would never wear shorts in Latin America) sitting by himself on the deck, writing in a notebook. He could be my Mr. Right! And what a great meet story that would be: “You tell it.”

“No honey, you tell it better!” he would say adoringly.

“OK, OK. I was backpacking alone through South America and had stopped just for a day at Iguassú Falls in Brazil. There, bathed in the mist of the Falls, I saw him: tall, dark and handsome. Across the walkway our eyes met...We fell at the Falls!”

I liked the way it sounded.

I wandered over and stood at the rail next to him and tried to look soulful and wistful as I gazed at the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him, waiting for some sign of interest, only I couldn’t really see because the mist of the backsplash was fogging up my sunglasses. I realized that squinting at him -- which was what I would have to do if I removed my sunglasses because I’m pretty darn nearsighted -- might not have the sexy effect I would wish. By the time I’d cleaned my glasses and moved to a drier spot, he’d left. Rats.

In which I go to Ciudad del Este

The glamour of Asunción couldn’t hold me. I boarded the city bus for the bus terminal and tried to fit myself and my backpack through the turnstile behind the driver. The Paraguayans mean it when they tell you to board in front and exit in back. With the pack on my back, I couldn’t fit. I had to take the pack off, throw it over the turnstile, then join it. The bus was crammed full of people returning home for lunch and no one was eager to give me any room, including a young girl who was hogging a seat obviously meant for paying passengers like me. I tried to convince her of the error of her ways, telling her that it is considered polite to offer one’s seat to an older person, but she was unswayed. Brat.

The long-distance bus was far more comfortable, with reclining seats and air conditioning and the added advantage that no more tickets than seats were sold. My destination was Ciudad del Este, at the Brazilian and Argentine border. It is only a few miles from Ciudad del Este to Iguassú Falls, my ultimate destination. The road was good and the scenery interesting. I saw more volleyball nets and hammocks strung up next to the houses along the highway than I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world. The Paraguayans are a very laid back people.

Two hours into the trip, we stopped at a roadside stand and picked up three young women wearing red gingham blouses, white aprons and short skirts. While the bus continued driving, the women worked their way through the aisles, selling bread. I asked if they had sopa Paraguaya, which is a delicious cornbread made with cheese, peppers, and onions. They did not, but tried to sell me some dry-looking bread twists. I declined, although I regretted my decision later when I got to Ciudad del Este and couldn’t find anywhere to eat. Fifteen minutes after they’d boarded, the women got off the bus, crossed the highway, and boarded the next bus going west. They spend the day shuttling back and forth on the same stretch of highway selling bread.

When my seatmate Sandra learned I was traveling alone and had not made reservations at a hotel in Ciudad del Este, she was horrified.

“You can’t wander around this city,” she gasped. “They’ll cut your throat!” She told me firmly that her friend who was picking her up would drop me off at a place. “He’s the chief of detectives,” she confided. “He’ll find you a good deal.”

We arrived in Ciudad del Este at 6:30 p.m. It was already dark. Simon, Sandra’s friend, drove me to the hotel that I picked out of my trusty South American Handbook. According to the book, this place cost only seven dollars. The book was wrong. They wanted twenty-five. I asked Simon if we could try somewhere else. We went to four different hotels; none were in my price range. Simon used his influence as chief of detectives and got me a room for fifteen, which I still thought was way too expensive but I wasn’t in a position to argue.

I went up to my room, which overlooked the noisy street. Fortunately, the street sound was drowned out by the rattle of the air conditioner, which worked, but only at icy cold level. I was hungry, but there was no restaurant in the hotel and we didn’t seem to be in the kind of neighborhood where one could walk around alone at night. Thoroughly depressed and convinced I was going to run out of money before the month was out, I washed my dress in the sink, took a sleeping pill, stuffed earplugs in my ears, and went to bed.

I was almost asleep when I heard someone knocking at my door. “Goldie!” I heard someone calling. I was confused: I knew no one in this godforsaken city. I tried to ignore the sound, figuring someone was mistaken, but the knocking persisted. I pulled the plugs out of my ears and put my ear to the door.

“Who is it?” I asked suspiciously.

“It’s Sandra!” I opened the door and there were Sandra and Simon, holding a bag exuding a tantalizing aroma.

“We thought you might be hungry so we brought you a sandwich,” they explained. I was so hungry that I broke my rule against eating meat in Latin America. While I tried to tug my nightshirt a little further down my thighs, Sandra chatted and Simon inspected my room, checking in the wardrobe and behind the drapes, for smugglers or thieves or something. Every now and then, he whispered something into his walkie-talky. Finally satisfied, he stopped searching and made me write down his phone number, where, he assured me, I could reach him day or night.

“He never sleeps!” Sandra chimed merrily.

The next morning, I awoke at the crack of dawn and set out in search of another hostel. By 7:30 a.m., I’d been to every so-called budget hostel in my Handbook and found all of them to be expensive. I finally found a place for ten dollars. (Finding places to stay consumed an enormous amount of my time until I figured out how to use the telephone and make reservations. This practice worked fine until I got to Central America, when the Handbook’s and my standards diverged widely. What the Handbook called “modest and clean” I called “a grimy, flea-ridden, mildewed hellhole.”)

Most of my energies were spent dodging vendors. Ciudad del Este is the Sam’s Wholesale of Latin America. Paraguayans told me that it was second only to Hong Kong in some kind of rating (black market, I think). Whatever it is, almost everyone goes there to sell and the rest go there to buy. By 7:00 a.m., the sidewalks are packed so thick you have to walk in the street. Some of the items to be found: clothes, shoes, tools, storage racks, toys, yogurt, barbecue, soda, beer (Labatt Blue and Iron City were particularly popular), Pringles Potato chips (go figure), Swiss Mill beauty products, watches, puppies, electronics -- whatever.

I saw more black people in two minutes in Paraguay than I did in two years in Chile. Ciudad del Este is right across the bridge from Iguassú, Brazil, so the Brazilians walk over to shop. The rumors about the way Brazilian women dress are true. (The accompanying rumors about the level of perfection of their bodies are not.) There must be a phrase to describe the state between “naked” and “scantily-clad.” Whatever it is, that’s what they were. Understandable, though -- it was 98 underwater degrees.

I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I’d been hoping to run across a bakery selling sopa Paraguaya, but hadn’t seen any. But lining the sidewalk before the bridge were vendors with big ice chests in front of them. I stopped at one and bought a big container of yogurt. I come from a country where we eat yogurt with a spoon, but I noticed everyone else sticking straws into their cartons. When in Rome. I followed suit and discovered that the yogurt was almost liquid and impossibly sweet. But it was that or starve later and I was learning I didn’t like to be hungry, so prophylactic eating was important.

I pushed through the masses -- all coming toward me (did they know something I didn’t? Why wasn’t anyone else going to Brazil?) -- across the bridge to Brazil and tried to find my way to the bus station. But I couldn’t understand anyone! How can a language that looks so much like Spanish not sound a thing like it? I would ask a question and the listener would nod thoughtfully, obviously understanding me, then rattle off a reply that would leave me mystified. I followed the directions they pointed and after consulting a dozen people and pointing at my map, got to the bus for the Falls.

In which I meet some Paraguay Peace Corps volunteers

I changed to the hostel where the Paraguay Peace Corps volunteers stay and met several volunteers there. Marcia worked in a small town where she lived in half of an old schoolhouse and shared a latrine with 50 other people. There was no electricity or running water. A volunteer in the Health Education program told me she did far more than teach hygiene. “I’m not a doctor,” she said, “but I play one in the Peace Corps.” A nurse volunteer told me she did everything medically necessary except dental work and abortions.

Les was a beekeeper. In his late thirties, he had that rugged outdoor look complete with mustache and a muscled, hairy chest over which lay a handmade leather vest. He was busy sewing on a pair of moccasins that he was making from buckskin that he’d tanned himself. I asked about beekeeping.

“In Paraguay, they’re crazy for honey. But labeling laws don’t exist, so you’re never sure what you’re getting. I’ve formed an association of women in my region and I’m teaching them about beekeeping and marketing. We’ve standardized the hives and developed a marketing plan. I designed a label for the bottles and make the ladies sterilize the bottles before they fill them with honey. I have a few customers here in Asunción. They know my honey is good and every time I come here, they beg me for as many bottles as they can get. We can’t meet demand.”

He stopped to bite off a thread, then continued. “I finish with Peace Corps in a few months, but I’m going to stay here. I calculate that we can gross fifteen to twenty thousand dollars next year selling honey and queens. I’ll spend part of the year here, then go to Alaska in the summers.

“I like it here,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m not in the States.” Then he grabbed the remote for the big-screen TV and changed to ESPN.

Drew’s giardia
My friend Drew had been a volunteer in Paraguay and had contacted giardia, an intestinal disease that gives you horrible gas that smells like sulfur and uncontrollable diarrhea. He told me the story.

“I’d had giardia for a while and was at the point where I couldn’t distinguish between farting and crapping. Either way, I couldn’t help it.”

“I was in Asunción for a meeting with my boss, the head of the Paraguayan Forest Service. Instead of my usual volunteer clothes, I was wearing my suit. We were sitting in the Forest Service office. They had those plastic chairs, thank God.”

“All of a sudden, I felt something. ‘Don Pedro,’ I said. ‘Do you have any toilet paper?’”

“Don Pedro looked at me funny and said, ‘Drew, you know we don’t have the money for toilet paper here at the Forest Service. We’ve always just had old newspapers.’”

“I said, ‘Well, that’s too bad, because I just shit in my pants.’ And I got up and left and walked the three blocks back to my pensión, my suit soaked with diarrhea. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. To this day, they tell that story at the Forest Service.”

In which I change money in Asuncion

I’d arrived in Asunción on a Saturday and wasn’t able to change money. By Sunday night, I’d used the few dollars I’d changed at the border. Monday morning, I went downtown to change money. The banks weren’t open yet, but money changers -- readily identified by the calculators and handfuls of cash they clutched -- congregated on the sidewalk. One approached me. “You want to change money?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I answered. “Just five dollars until the bank opens.”

“Fine. I’ll give you five thousand guaraní.”

“But the official rate is two thousand guaraní per dollar!” I protested.

He shrugged. “That’s the rate I’ll give you. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll leave it,” I said, and walked away. I had only an hour to kill until the bank opened.

I sat in a restaurant drinking peach juice. (“No ice cubes, please” I had to tell the waitress. God knows how the water supply was in this country.) I heard a din from across the street. A group of men in business suits were setting off firecrackers and hoisting signs. “What’s going on?” I asked the waitress.

“Oh, they’re bankers,” she explained dismissively. “They’re mad about something that Argentina has done in the Mercosur. They do this almost every Monday.”

I watched them shout and bang drums and set off firecrackers while I sipped my peach juice, the only thing I had enough money to buy. When the currency exchange opened, I went in and waited in the various lines required of one who wants to change traveler’s checks for cash. There was the fill-out-the-paperwork line, the wait-for-your-passport-to-be-photocopied line, the get-your-receipt line, and the get-your-money line.

By the time I’d been stamped and approved and gotten my money, which I had requested in 150 US dollars and 50 dollars worth of guaranís, I was too tired to notice that a mild swindle had been performed upon me: rather than give me my dollars directly, they had converted my 200 dollars of traveler’s checks into guaranís and then converted the guaranís back to dollars, causing me to lose on the conversion. (Just in case this high finance is too complicated: there is usually a difference in the buy and sell rates for US dollars. In this case, I paid one dollar per 2000 guaraní then had to pay 2250 guaraní per dollar.) There wasn’t that much difference between the street changers and the office changers.

I took the bus to the Peace Corps office. As soon as I sat, a woman in a uniform with a clipboard approached me and asked to see my ticket. She was the bus auditor, verifying that the bus driver had given me a ticket for my fare instead of just pocketing the money for himself. The bus lines in Chile had the same practice, but I didn’t see it happen anywhere else during my trip, leading me to think that either the bus drivers in other countries are more honest or that the idea of audit hasn’t occurred to the authorities there yet. In any case, I learned that it wasn’t a good idea to crumple up the ticket and stick it in my pocket, although playing stupid foreigner got me out of trouble the first time.

The Asunción Peace Corps office was nice, with a huge paperback library. After talking to the nurse there, who told me I didn’t need to take chloroquine at all for where I was traveling, I loaded up with about a dozen books, having decided after the bus trip in Argentina that it was worth the extra weight to have something to entertain me. I was pleased to see that someone shared my tastes: I found a Sue Grafton, a Nelson DeMille, and a Sara Paretsky that I hadn’t read yet. I was saved from having to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I had found at the pensión in Argentina. It looked good to have it along, but wasn’t exactly light bus reading. My strategy was to lay it carelessly on the seat next to me (on the rare occasions when that seat was unoccupied) to spark conversation with any intellectual English-speaking man who might come my way. In the meantime, I would be buried in another murder mystery, trying to outguess Kinsey Millhone.

In which I arrive in Asuncion

Asunción is hot and humid and dirty and on Sunday, everything, including places where one might buy food, is closed. This is the place where I started -- involuntarily -- my Latin American diet. It’s too hard to find food and too hot to eat it even when it can be found. (One Peace Corps volunteer here lost 70 pounds in her two years. She hated the food.) It’s so muggy that everyone, from schoolgirls to blue-suited businessmen, carries thermoses full of iced maté -- a South American tea -- with them. Even the bus drivers have their Igloos set next to the gear shifts. Every time they stop, they sip maté through silver straws.

I found a pensión near downtown. It was owned and run by some wayward Mennonites whose four tow-headed children spent the day shouting in German, kicking soccer balls against the walls, and watching television. My room was on the second of the five floors, all connected by a Byzantine system of rooftops and stairs emerging from strange places. To get to my room, I had to go through the Mennonite’s living room, climb the stairs past one of the bathrooms, cross the rooftop where they sat in the evening, then go up another flight of stairs that ascended precariously from the patio with no railings at the sides. The first time I climbed the stairs, I realized if I tried to keep my backpack on, I would fall if I leaned just a little out of balance.

I wanted to sleep late but couldn’t. The sun was up by 5:30 and children were playing in the courtyard beneath my window by six. I thought I would have hours to kill before I could do any of my errands downtown, but realized quickly that everyone is up at that hour of the day. Stores are open by seven, although the majority of business seems to take place in the streets and on the buses. In just one bus ride (signs on the bus implore “Please no smoking or spitting”), I saw vendors hawking candy, cough drops, lottery tickets, apples, bananas, razor blades, soda, juice, newspapers, gym bags, bread, toothbrushes, ice cream, and cookies.

Paraguayan Spanish is clear and easy to understand (as opposed to, say -- Chilean Spanish, widely regarded as being the worst in the world). The Paraguayans don’t even bother with those verb stem changes that other countries regard as an essential part of Spanish grammar. “Prueba 7-Up” became “Proba 7-Up.” My only problem was that most Paraguayans also speak Guaraní and would slip into it without warning, leaving me stranded.

I couldn’t find much to like about Asunción except that it has a big Korean neighborhood, which I found it by accident walking around. Koreans had settled in Paraguay after the U.S. had changed the immigration laws. It was easier to get into the U.S. as a Paraguayan than as a Korean for a while. But then the law was changed again and the Koreans were stuck in Paraguay. The little grocery on the corner sold wonderful homemade vegetarian sushi.

I was bored bored bored my first day in town. I spent Sunday wandering through the tourist market and reading my book. I did find a great bargain at the market: a fabulous leather daypack -- lined! - for only $30. A saleslady from whom I did not buy anything told me jealously, “That’s horse leather. It’ll go black within three months. Horse leather does that. Just you wait.” (I spent the month of November watching the pack anxiously, but her threats were idle. It stayed its beautiful tan.)

The streets were deserted: Latins spend Sunday afternoons with their families and no stores are open. I finally found a little grocery store where I bought some yogurt, crackers and a big bottle of water. I took them to the rooftop of the pensión, where there was a breeze, and watched the sun set over the smog of the city. I was in bed by eight. No wonder I was able to get up by six every morning when I was in Paraguay.

In which I have another bus ride from hell

The next morning I was well enough to leave Salta. Jeff had left the day before for Bolivia. I was now on my own.

I traipsed down to the bus station and bought a ticket on the ironically-named Veloz del Norte. I hadn’t recovered enough to realize that the ticket agent was lying when he assured me that yes, the bus did have air conditioning. I thought I was being so savvy to know to ask that question. Ha. I was no match for nefarious ticket agents working on commission. My guidebook said that the trip to Formosa (on the border with Paraguay) took twelve hours. The ticket agent told me it took twenty-one. I was not thrilled but decided that the guidebook must have a typo. I bought a newspaper, a bottle of water and a bag of crackers and climbed on the bus.

At 8:00 a.m., it didn’t matter much that the air conditioning wasn’t turned on (I assumed that’s why it wasn’t working) but the day got hot quickly. I tried to open my window and discovered it was jammed shut. Opening it wouldn’t have made much difference, considering we were puttering along at 15 mph, with a passenger pickup thrown in every 20 minutes. Once we left the paved road, we slowed further. On a road made of sand and full of potholes, you can’t go very fast.

By now it was really hot -- around 95 degrees -- and the seat next to me had been filled by a middle-aged, pot-bellied, toothless man who bought a beer at every stop. At first I was amazed at the apparent size of his bladder, but then realized that despite the two liters of water I had consumed in the past three hours, I had no bathroom needs. I was sweating everything out. (Good thing, too. The toilet on the bus could not be locked from the inside. With all the jolting the bus was doing, the door flew open at will.)

When we stopped for driver breaks, everyone climbed slowly out of the bus. We jostled listlessly for the few shady spots to be found and stood still, hoping for a stray breeze. But the air never moved. The sun blazed and dried the flat, empty terrain even more. There were no signs of vegetable life. Everything was brown and dusty.

Eight hours into the trip, I mustered the energy to confront the bus driver. “Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you turn on the air conditioning?”

“There is no air conditioning on this bus,” he sniffed.

“Yes, there is,” I insisted. “I asked the ticket seller.”

The driver looked at me as if I were crazy. “Why would he tell you that?” he asked. “This is servicio común. Everyone knows there is no air conditioning on servicio común.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” I argued. “And I asked specifically.”

“There is no air conditioning,” he told me flatly, then turned away. Highly annoyed but lethargic, I dragged myself back to my seat and dug out my ticket. On the ticket was printed “aire condicionado.” Triumphantly, I returned to the driver and waved the ticket in his face. Unfortunately, we still didn’t get any air conditioning.

The trip dragged on. My seat partner continued to drink and I envied him his inebriation. A slow drunk might not be such a bad way to suffer through this trip.

At hour 12, the boy two seats ahead of me started to play with a squealing toy gun, waving it around and making horrible noises with it. I looked around in disbelief at the other passengers as they failed to exhibit the appropriate amount (that is, any) of annoyance with the child. His parents did nothing to stop him. Desperation forced me to take matters into my own hands. I stood, leaned forward, and waited for him to turn my way. When he did, I snatched the gun away and sat. “HEY!” he protested. I was unmoved. I’m sure that the other passengers must have been applauding me, the Savior of the Peace, in their minds.

I heard English behind me. I turned and saw a couple who were obviously American. They were talking about Chile and I could bear to eavesdrop no longer; I had to throw in my two cents.

“Are you a Peace Corps volunteer?” they asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “How did you know?” I was really surprised.

“Because we’ve been traveling in South America for two months and the only Americans we’ve seen -- and there have been hardly any -- have been Peace Corps volunteers.”

I was relieved it wasn’t something about my clothes that had given me away. Don’t all South American women wear khaki skirts and tennis shoes? (I found what they said to be true as I traveled. Europeans, Israelis, Japanese and Australians come to South America, but Americans don’t. I didn’t start to see American tourists until I got to Costa Rica.)

At hour 14, after someone had thrown up two seats behind me and the attendant refused to clean it up, I met Lars, a Danish nurse who was on his way to Brazil. He regaled me with his tales of Brazil: he’d been robbed at knife point there by a gang of small boys who’d left him nothing but his underwear.

Then he gave me the depressing news. “Did you know,” he confided, “that there is a tourist class bus with air conditioning and videos that makes this trip in only 12 hours?” Just what I wanted to hear.

All I want to do is sleep,” I told him.

"I have some good sleeping pills!” he volunteered. I took the pills, which didn’t help me to sleep (I was distracted when a rod cracked loose from the ceiling and fell onto my seatmate) but did help me not to care so much about my sweaty, dusty discomfort.

Twenty-three and a half hours after we left Salta, we arrived in Formosa. I immediately boarded a bus to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, and arrived at the border three hours later. The Argentine authorities inspected my passport, then handed it to some Paraguayans.

“Do I have to show my passport on the Paraguay side now?” I asked.

“No,” the Paraguayan soldier answered me. “We check them over here because we don’t have any computers. Argentina lets us use theirs.”