Teresa Bruce's Blog, page 7
December 29, 2017
Moon valley (Drive Day 183: Dec 29th, 2003)
[image error]
My stomach isn’t quite ready for cobblestones, but streets of pale yellow stone are the only way to get to the Valle de Luna. If you poke at the tips of the spindly mounds of earth the dirt crumbles in your fingers. Only cactus seems to take grip and prosper. But the spirits are okay with subdivisions here. Signs in front of half-built mansions advertise prices in the $400,000s or $2,000 a month to rent. But hey, you have a view of the moon.
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 28, 2017
Chola ladies and pork sandwiches (Drive Day 182: Dec 28th, 2003)
[image error]
I am recovering enough to try the local La Paz delicacy – Chola sandwiches. The ladies who make them are also called Cholas. They need they layer, standing in outdoor market stands all day slicing freshly roasted pig, offering buyers a taste before committing. Then they pile the slices onto a cheesy bun with a spicy relish of pickled onions, carrots and peppers. The finishing touch is a dollop of mayonnaise so delicious that I tell myself “who needs refrigeration” at this altitude?
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 27, 2017
Silencio es salud(Drive day 181: Dec 27th, 2003)
I am recovering from another round of motion-sickness meets altitude-sickness meets unnamed parasite but we hire Eosebio to take us on a taxi tour of La Paz. I have to laugh at the signs warning against honking cars – silence is apparently healthy. Our native taxi driver’s presence helps shield us from some of the more tenacious street hustles and persistent beggars and he points out places tourists never go – like the Valle de las Animas or valley of the spirits. No one lives in these hauntingly beautiful foothills of the Illipimi mountains; the spirits don’t want to be overcrowded.
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 26, 2017
The Heights – of irony (Drive day 180: Dec 26th, 2003)
[image error]Even though La Paz is the highest (in altitude) of any South American capitol, it actually sits in the base of what looks like a collapsed pit. Which is why the slum town-turned-third-most-populated-city in the country is called El Atlo. It perches on the edge of the pit and is the site of the most recent rounds of riots. It’s easy to see why – people here have nothing left to lose. And yet one of them, a taxi driver named Eosebio, guides us down into the city so that we arrive safely at the only hotel he knows of with a parking lot big enough for our camper. A Christmas gift indeed.
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 25, 2017
On a one-horse-power open ferry (Drive day 179: Dec 25th, 2003)
If there’s one piece of advice I’d give future road trippers it would be to avoid driving in Bolivia on Christmas Day. The roads are lined with children begging for food and the custom is apparently to slow down and toss out bags of bread. The worst part is they don’t tear into the treats like kids should – they save it for later and keep flagging down vehicles. When we arrive at the ferry terminal to cross Lake Titicaca I am numb with sadness. Which I have to snap out of to process the fact that we are going to entrust our home-on-wheels to perhaps the least seaworthy vessel I have ever seen. Even my father didn’t try this route, but we’re here and there’s only one way across. We can’t sink on Christmas, right?
[image error]
[image error]
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 24, 2017
Copacabana, Bolivia (Drive Day 178: Dec 24th, 2003)
[image error]
The town’s name conjures up images of tropical drinks and beach umbrellas, but we have crossed into Bolivia and the most exotic part of it is a poncho museum. It’s Sunday so we could have the priests bless our truck for good luck. But it is punishingly cold and dismally depressing. Kids without shoes peeing in the gutters, stoned Rastafarians selling hemp bracelets outside a cathedral lined with ill-gotten gold. Not where we plan to spend Christmas on the road.
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 23, 2017
On the shores of Lake Titicaca (Drive day 177: Dec 23rd, 2003)
It is clear we have long ago left the Sacred Valley. Even the names of the Peruvian towns we drive through are losing their loveliness. In one called Sicuani kids steal a little flag from the camper’s grill, we pay more in tolls to get through Puno than it costs in diesel, and crazed bicyclists in Juliaca try their best to induce heart attacks as they cut in front of us. We’re bone tired by the time we stop for the night in the lakeside town of Pomata – just in time for a quick round of photographs before we collapse.
[image error]
[image error]
[image error]Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 22, 2017
Hard sell and harder roads (Drive Day 176: Dec 22nd, 2003)
[image error] [image error]
We wake up in our camp spot outside another Incan site called Racqhi. A teenager has been waiting for us to open the door so he can guide us on a tour along the Inca trail. Which happens to pass through his uncle’s pottery studio, so we end up buying a vessel that the road ahead will surely bounce into bits. The best part? He agrees to take home some of the bags of veggies we had to buy in Urcos.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 21, 2017
On to Urcos (Drive Day 175: Dec 21st, 2003)
[image error]
We stop at a market town to buy veggies for a curry and singlehandedly disrupt the culture and economy. The costumes worn by men and women are astounding but each time Gary lifts his lens we are met with turned backs and wagging fingers.
[image error]Got it. So we load up on purple carrots, flowering Swiss chard and autumn-colored potatoes. But not a single merchant can make change. Nothing costs enough to add up to any denomination of paper currency. More fingers wag. Ladies fill our bags with things we cannot name, more than we can possibly consume before it wilts and wastes, and eventually seem satisfied with the transaction. This is a town out of place with time.
[image error]
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
December 20, 2017
The power of Pisac (Drive Day 174: Dec 20th, 2003)
[image error]
A kid we meet hiking up to the ruins above Pisac tells us this ancient site was much more populated than Machu Picchu ever was. Almost five thousand people once lived here and the stonework is as mind-blowing as any we’ve seen. Perfect trapezoid doorways into grassy courtyards with lookouts in every direction. Columns of blocks fitted together so perfectly it looks like one giant stone etched with lines to make it look constructed. But other than market day, tourists rarely make the trek to Pisac so what stands out most is the sound. Not human. All we hear as we hike are creaks and moans of eucalyptus tree trunks rubbing up against each other in the rustling wind.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
