Almost to Cuzco (Drive Day 169: Dec 15th, 2003)

 

[image error]In 1973 this stretch of “highway” almost broke my parents’ spirit. My little sister broke her collar bone (with some assistance from her equally undernourished older sister) and the truck suffered near fatal injuries as well.

 

[image error]The road is better now, less punishing in our new Ford F350, but the drive is still harrowing.

 

[image error]We could try to find a campsite in Cuzco but the roads are too narrow and our nerves too shattered. So we pull in next to long-haul truckers at a gas station and try to ignore the rumble of diesel engines as we fall into an exhausted sleep.

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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.