Ever one for a dramatic gesture, I fled Argentina in the wake of a complicated romance. Sometimes even a seven thousand acre estate can sometimes feel as claustrophobic as a fishbowl. A voice, which sounded at lot like the ghost of Butch Cassidy, whispered in my ear: "Pack your bags Kid, Bolivia beckons. " A few days later I found myself at the border at La Quiaca, backpack on my back, and small (yet surprisingly heavy) Bolivian child in my arms. Arriving as we did at the height of Carnaval, we were forced to run a gauntlet of water jets, foam and firecrackers, as brightly costumed devils pranced all around, all of which the child found far more amusing than me.
I had met Angelie and her mother just a few hours earlier on the bus from Jujuy and our new friendship was immediately put to the test. Sticking together as lone female travelers will do in a dodgy border town at dusk, Carla and Angelie’s problems had become my problems. And our main problem was that despite being a native Bolivian, Carla was suffering from the effects of altitude and could carry neither Angelie or her pile of fast-disintegrating suitcases. We paid a man with a cart to take the bags across the border and tried balancing the baby on top, but she wobbled precariously. So I carried her, hoping that at least she might provide some form of shield from the water cannons. She didn’t. That night we all camped out in a five dollar room, and then parted company at the bus station the next morning. Much as I enjoyed the company of Carla and Angelie, they were seriously slowing my progress, and I had places to be.
I was heading north to Uyuni meet my friends Stephanie and Kamila, I was on the road again, and it felt good. Flat tires and bone-shaking buses did not bother me. Hours and miles passed as I stared out at the arid and luridly coloured landscapes strewn with cacti and llamas adorned with pink tassels. On one frigid night bus I awoke snuggled under a blanket with an overweight Bolivian miner. I had not seen a bed for days but I didn’t care. I had missed the sense of anonymity of traveling alone, no one judges you, and if they do, you don’t care. At this particular moment I found comfort confiding in complete strangers. Taxi drivers, waiters and random strangers in bus terminals all lent me their ears and kind facial expressions, as I wove my tale of woe, explaining how I had fallen in love with an Argentine gaucho but that he didn’t love me back and was probably a bit of a rat. Shaking their heads, they would always say the same thing: that Argentine men are scoundrels and dirty dogs, everyone knew it, had no one warned me? And was this man Cordobese? Those are the absolute worst, as they are the best looking. What I really ought to do was find myself a nice Bolivian. In fact, did I want to meet their brother /colleague/neighbour? At which point I could politely decline and continue with my journey.
At long last, the bus spluttered into the outskirts of Uyuni, my illustrious destination. To call it a foul dump of a town would be a generous description. But no matter, Stephanie and Kamila are girls who like their creature comforts and would surely have found a nice room where we could all rest our weary bones. They hadn’t. But they had saved me a space in the queue for tickets for the 01.45 train to Oruro, and so the journey north continued. They had also hooked up with a few more backpackers, so we all boarded the train, bedded down, and eventually it lurched forwards into the night.
Oruro is Bolivia’s Carnaval capital. If you arrive on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday you can expect to see a spectacular procession, with thousands of costumed dancers prancing through the streets in the Diablada: a lavish visualization of the epic battle between good and evil. If you arrive on the following Tuesday, as we did, you can expect to get pelted with dirty water. Especially if you are five squealing foreign girls with oversized backpacks. At first this was all good fun. It didn’t bother us that the pavements were completely devoid of pedestrians and the roads full of pickups full of mean-looking thugs armed to the teeth with super-soakers and foam canisters. Heck, we even bought a few water bombs to chuck back at them. This was Carnaval, and we were going to enjoy ourselves. However, we were soon forced to admit that the atmosphere was far from fun, it was downright menacing. One well aimed water bomb to the earhole left us a man down and had us scurrying back to the hotel with our fallen and teary comrade in our arms, all of us vowing never again to grace the streets of this godforsaken town. Holed up in our room, we fancied ourselves as foreign correspondents in a warzone. We watched some TV and listened to the melé outside. Eventually hunger forced us to don every bit of goretex and plastic we could find and to jump in a taxi to go in search of an open pizzeria.
From Oruro the girls headed north to La Paz, but I returned south, hoping that a few days spent contemplating the desolate salt flats and desert badlands around Uyuni would be good for the soul. I couldn’t procure a horse with no name, but I did find a Landcruiser packed with four young fun-seeking aussies, and one dutch weirdo. Together we sped over the salt flats, took trick photos of each other balancing on top of beer bottles, scaled great heights, chewed coca, marveled at the Dali-esque desert dreamscapes and bathed in thermal pools at dawn. Sharing a room with the dutch weirdo was less fun, but like a good gaucha I slept with my knife close to hand.
At the end of our tour we crossed the Chilean border where San Pedro de Atacama waited for me like an old friend. I had passed through seven years ago and was pleased to see its friendly sandy streets and adobe buildings again, to step over the stray dogs who nap haphazardly in the sun, oblivious to the throngs of backpackers around them. But by now my thoughts had turned to the estancia, and I was glad that my route back involved only paved roads and modern and roadworthy buses to speed me home. And soon enough I was back in a pickup on the ranch track. The sun was shining, foals were frolicking in the long grass, and there were two weeks of estancia gossip to catch up on. With great relief I dropped my bags and ran up the hill behind our casita, and stopped to look out over a world of gentle hills bathed in golden light and devoid of people. Our little empire. Sometimes it seems you have to go away to want to come back home.
