360 Degrees Longitude (44 page)

Patrick explained the recent history. “San Cristóbal started out as a small village seventeen kilometers from this place. The 350 villagers made a living from growing quinoa and raising llamas, and the village was identical to every other in this region, except for one distinguishing feature: It was the location of a small, historic stone church, built in the late 1600s.” Patrick gestured toward the church.

San Cristóbal may have once been seventeen kilometers away, but it was certainly right there at the moment. Patrick continued. “The church contains intricate carvings in its interior and elaborate frescoes painted on its plastered walls, and is much beloved by the people of the region roundabout.”

A few years ago a Canadian mining company had been doing some exploration in the area, and discovered some astoundingly large deposits of silver. The company was delighted and wanted to start mining the silver, but the problem was, the silver was underneath the village of San Cristóbal. So the Canadian company met with the village leaders. Would the residents mind moving the village?

The end result was an entirely new village seventeen kilometers away, complete with a school, a small hospital, and a sports center. The company built modern houses for the villagers, and then deeded the land and houses to them so that they would have full ownership of the new property. Most significantly, the company hired Italian art experts to move the historic church stone for stone to its new home. Even the frescoes that were painted on the plaster walls were preserved.

The mining company's investment in San Cristóbal gives the village a strong contrast to other communities of the Altiplano, as it has paved roads, electricity, modern communications, and an actual sewer system. Yet, as we walked through town, I noted that behind many of the new, modern homes, there were traditional adobe mud dwellings in the backyard. “Patrick,” I asked, “what gives with the in-laws' quarters?”

“Most people don't like the modern homes as they are too cold. They like the convenience of living in one room, where the cook-stove or open fire warms the entire house.”

Aha. Residents were eschewing their brand-new company-supplied homes in droves. This was an epiphany—not everyone wants to live like we do! From our brief experience in Doña Lupe's kitchen, we knew that a wood-burning stove warms an adobe house smartly. The thick mud walls hold the heat in, ensuring a nice environment, even through the cold nights. I had naïvely thought that everyone was envious of the North American lifestyle and would jump at the chance to trade places with me. Surprise!

• • •

The roads had much improved since we crossed the Salar, but they were still dirt. I could tell September was thinking about the town of San Cristóbal, which we had just left. “Interesting place,” I commented. “All nice and shiny.”

“I can't help but wonder what it will look like in 20 years,” September replied. “Who ‘owns' the infrastructure? Patrick said that the citizens own the houses. But what about the sewer, or the power lines, or the roads? Does the mining company own them? If so, what happens when they eventually leave? If not, who maintains the infrastructure?”

I had been wondering about similar issues. Some of the social problems we had witnessed in our travels and how they varied from country to country kept me awake at night. Something clicked in my head, but I was uneasy saying it, because once said, I couldn't take it back.

“I can't help but wonder if that's one of the problems we saw in Tanzania. As long as the colonists were there, the infrastructure was in fair shape. When they left, the roads and rail lines and power grid disintegrated. Perhaps because the outgoing government didn't set up a system of maintenance and the incoming government didn't know how to act until it was too late.”

September looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “I don't know. Sounds too simple. Complex social problems are never so simple that they can be wrapped up in a nice little packaged description.”

“True enough.”

• • •

We had been climbing slowly ever since we had left La Paz five days earlier. As we reached the continental divide we peaked at 4,980 meters (16,340 feet). The high Andes were dry, barren, and bitter cold—nothing to break up the monotony of dirt and rocks as far as the eye could reach—no trees, no vegetation. Zip.

After crossing the continental divide and performing the border ritual into Chile, we found that the roads became paved and descended sharply. Within an hour we arrived at our destination of San Pedro de Atacama. We had moved from dry and bitter cold to dry and unbearable heat in less than an hour.

We had successfully made it over the Andes mountains. It was Ciprián, by his sheer grit, who had gotten us there, and September's paranoia that had kept us fed. The groceries Patrick had purchased lay virtually untouched because when we really needed them, there was no way to cook them.

However, the vision that had inspired the trek to begin with was pure Patrick. If he were my investment banker, I would give him my life savings. In spite of his unorthodox methods, or perhaps because of them, with Patrick as our guide we had seen some of the planet's most fantastic scenery and made it out of one or two rather harrowing situations. Nothing compares to the Salar when it is covered with a few inches of water. It is desolate and beautiful and there isn't any other place on earth quite like it. And I wouldn't have had the events unfold any other way.

• • •

We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, on the eve of our 15th wedding anniversary, sharing the four bunk beds in the room of our hostel with our two children. San Pedro is a backpacker's paradise on the edge of the Atacama desert with lots of attractions and activities, most of which were similar to what we had already seen and done with Patrick in Bolivia. We spent our time in San Pedro making arrangements to travel south and debating if it was hotter here or in Dubai.

The following day, Katrina asked, “You guys aren't going to do anything for your anniversary?!”

“We can't just get a babysitter,” I answered.

“We don't
need
a babysitter!” Jordan said defensively.

“No, I suppose you don't. But Mom and I couldn't just leave you and Katrina alone while we celebrated.”

“You're only allowed to leave us alone when doing boring stuff like laundry. You aren't allowed to leave us alone to celebrate,” Katrina said with a tone that reminded me that the teenage years would soon be upon us. “We do everything together!”

“Just about everything,” September agreed. “But we just had a big adventure in the Unimog, didn't we? That was our anniversary celebration. What we need is to get some laundry done and make arrangements for moving on.”

“How about that Unimog adventure?” I asked. “You guys didn't seem too worried, but you know if it wasn't for Ciprián, we might still be in the Salar.”

“Why worry?” Katrina responded. “We could have slept in the Unimog, and we had enough clothes to keep us warm.”

“But we didn't have much food,” I said.

“How about all those groceries Patrick had that we couldn't cook?” Katrina asked. “We could have eaten them uncooked. Something always works out.”

“We didn't need Patrick's boring old food!” Jordan exclaimed. “We had Armageddon Pills! We should be sure we take Armageddon Pills with us wherever we go.”

Months earlier when we were cycling in Europe, there was almost always a fair amount of anxiety about finding a campground every night. Now it seemed all we needed was a pack of M&M's to remind us that all we really need is something to eat, something to wear, and somewhere to sleep. We were half a world away from Europe, but it was pretty clear we had come much farther than that.

• • •

“Did you get the bus tickets?” I asked.

“Yes. It's 23 hours to get there,” September replied.

“23 hours!
Holy cow!”

“That's just to Santiago. Puerto Montt is another 17. We have reservations in business class.”

“Business class? Really?”

“Sort of,” September explained. “It's referred to as ‘Salon-Cama,' but they let me sit in one of the seats and it feels just like business class.”

With Chile being a Twiggy-shaped sort of country, the north/south distances from various points on the map are huge. The country is 2,700 miles from top to bottom, and since we wanted to make it to the southern tip of South America, we'd have to travel just about every inch in between.

We had been on long bus rides before, but nothing like this. When we first stepped on board I was impressed. The accommodations were better than business class on an international flight. The kids immediately reclined their seats all the way back and started using the seat-back as a slide. I smiled at our neighbors and pretended I didn't know who the kids were. It would be a longer ride for some than for others.

March 12–April 9
Chile/Argentina

W
e didn't know it when we arrived, but Puerto Montt, a port city in central Chile, was to be a place where Katrina would cross a big threshold from being a little girl to being, well, not so little anymore. She got her ears pierced.

Katrina claims no interest in such things; at least that's the story that she offered to her parents. By comparison, Katrina's friend back home had been begging to have her ears pierced since she was old enough to form a complete sentence. Much to the chagrin of said friend, her parents actually liked having a little girl and hoped to keep her from growing up too fast. There would be no ear piercing until her twelfth birthday, which would fall after we returned home.

In a pact of solidarity, Katrina and her friend decided that they would have their ears pierced simultaneously. I had been vaguely aware of this, in the same sort of way that I am vaguely aware that walruses mate.

That was until an e-mail showed up in my inbox from Katrina's friend, asking me to please pass along a message to Katrina that her parents would now allow her to get her ears pierced, so that meant Katrina could, too. I was confused. Had Katrina's friend had her birthday moved? I thought this ear piercing thing was on schedule for her twelfth birthday, still several months away.

As I read the words of the e-mail from Katrina's friend, an eleven-year-old girl thousands of miles away, I was getting waaaaay TMI-ed. Apparently there was a clause to the “wait until you are twelve” rule about getting her ears pierced that I was previously unaware of. Katrina's friend had crossed a certain biological threshold that is much anticipated by prepubescent females, creating a loophole in the “wait until you are twelve” rule. I would have preferred to remain clueless about all this, but the words on the computer monitor had already been seared into my retinas.

Without much fanfare September marched Katrina to the local mall in Puerto Montt to have her ears pierced.

“How do you know they have ear piercing at the mall?” Katrina asked in a mild and ineffective protest.

“You haven't been noting the accoutrements adorning the Metro Gen-Xers, have you?” I said.

“Huh?”

September translated. “What your father is trying to say is that most of the kids your age around here have more than one nose ring.”

After September and Katrina spent the necessary amount of time twittering about which shade of purple earrings would best offset Katrina's brown eyes, it was time to load the earring gun with what they had picked out. Miss Ear-Piercing Person put the gun to Katrina's ear, fired, and with a squeal of pain, it was over.

Except it wasn't.

The gun had jammed. After jabbing a metal stud through Katrina's ear lobe, the gun jammed and remained attached to her ear. Miss Ear-Piercing Person tugged and twisted and probably swore at the gun in Spanish, while discounting the fact that it was attached to a living person's ear lobe.

The thing wouldn't budge. After several minutes Miss Ear-Piercing Person went to get Mr. Ear-Piercing Person. One look at this guy and there was no question he had had a
lot
of experience with an ear piercing gun, albeit on the receiving end. There wasn't a square millimeter of his exposed body that wasn't pierced or studded—fourteen individual piercings on his face alone, Katrina reported, not counting his ears. I had always sworn that if one of these pencil-necked geeks ever got near my daughter I would disassemble him with a pair of vice grips and a serving spoon. Now, here was a mouth-breathing Neanderthal inches from Katrina's face taking apart an ear-piercing gun with a small screwdriver, and I was feeling gratitude.