I thought about the hundred dollars my mom had given me. I could spend it on him. Or I could spend it on myself, because I wanted to punish him. For what? Sometimes pettiness feels good.
In frustration, I took to my journal. Writing it out helped me loosen the coils. I wrote, I wonder if my friendship with Weston is like a marriage. We’re in this together, headed somewhere. Our finances are bound together. I get annoyed at him. He gets annoyed at me. But we have somewhere to go. And I want to kill him. But I think I’d be helpless and sad without him. When the honeymoon phase is over, what’s left is the continuous choosing of the other person. If I had done this trip with a boyfriend, we’d certainly have broken up by now.
I looked up from my writing at Weston. We had Peru ahead of us. And then Chile. Another horrible desert. Ugh. And finally Patagonia.
Getting there together struck me as impossible.
Chapter 15
THE COLDEST NIGHT
(Quito to Cusco)
6,661 miles to go
After Quito, we biked through high country for three hundred miles, approximately paralleling the ranges of the Andes, camping along the way. Cuenca, a small city with its own beautiful cathedral, rolled out another full-day parade, I still don’t know what for. We blissed in its postcard-quality streets and drank craft beer. From there, we descended out of the Andes on splendid, winding long downhill rides toward the coast. As we lost altitude, vegetation thinned and temperatures climbed. As we crossed into Peru, the vegetation dwindled to almost nothing, and the desert began.
Along the coast, the twisted, burnt bushes spreading between sand dunes reminded us of Baja. We rode by rusted trucks and wild dogs and clay houses cracking in the heat. Still, the sun felt less oppressive here because mists from the ocean hung over the coastal road in the mornings.
Days passed. We slept under the sky and saved money and ate simply. Stray dogs chased us and teenage boys gathered around to ask the usual questions. “Where are you from?” “How much does your bicycle cost?” “Are you married?”
I was proud of my bicycle, my Surly Long Haul Trucker. It was scratched up now, but the chain hadn’t broken. I’d changed a lot of tubes but never had a tire mishap. The leather straps on my handles had turned darker—from the color of cappuccino foam to roasted coffee bean. My bike had become a part of me, and I’d hardly noticed. Weston’s $300 “experiment” was still here, too. It was rickety and made weird noises, but it had made it to Peru.
We aimed for Trujillo, a touristy coastal town with nice beaches and hostels that promised young people and creature comforts. After a week of riding from Cuenca, we made it there dusty and gross.
Weston suggested we stop at a café and see if we could find free hosts on Warm Showers or Couch Surfer. But I didn’t want the hassle. I needed the comfort of a place without the need to be sociable. When we found rooms at a hostel for fourteen bucks per person, I offered to pay for both of us.
The hostel was swarming with Israelis, tan and muscular guys with aviator sunglasses and cocktails in hand all around the pool. Attractive girls with dark hair and big laughs. They spoke English. Weston bought some weed off of one of the Israelis in our bunk room. While they smoked in the courtyard by the hammocks, I sat in the room and boiled. I had paid for the room, and he paid for weed.
“Oh, I see you found some weed? Did you buy it?” I said with an attempted softening laugh.
“I told you I wanted to camp. If you want to stay in places like this, I’m happy to, but you’ll need to pay for it.”
“Weston, I thought you were out of money.”
“I am out of hostel money. I budgeted enough to smoke, because I want to, but I don’t need a bunk bed and a shower, I can swim in the ocean and sleep on the beach for free. These are my priorities.”
I dropped it. You don’t have much bargaining power when you’re all alone on a foreign continent and your travel partner is driving you crazy. I didn’t want to bike up the Andes alone. I didn’t want a blowout. And to be honest, I didn’t want to damage the perception among those following our progress that Weston and I were on this perfect fantasy trip through South America. I didn’t want to explain to my friends and our friends and his friends that we were at each other’s throats. Which we weren’t. It was just accrued tension and frustration making the air thick and every conversation feel like a negotiation.
We spent two nights in Trujillo, lying by the pool and chatting up loud Israelis. Weston wore his short shorts and walked around the pool barefoot and shirtless, attracting the eyes of girls and guys. His body, supernaturally fit, was always a spectacle. His tiny waist and abs and shoulders were perfectly constructed, as if made on a computer by some horny teen. He hardly worked out. He ate whatever he wanted. He looked like that for no good reason. Most days I didn’t think about it. Normally I didn’t compare his particular gifts to mine.
But watching him walk around that pool, attracting attention, I burned. Not with lust, but with jealousy. I thought about my vastly celibate life. How asexual I had always been. How late I bloomed. I wished in that moment that my body, my beauty, had made decisions for me. That someone had tried to seduce me years ago, and the chemicals of attraction had overtaken my prudent good-boy life. If I had been beautiful, would I have thrown off these Christian rules long ago? Would I have loved and been in love, and allowed the abandon of love to overrule my churchy world? I began to doubt that my choices had been a result of my incredible willpower, that to honor God and Scripture I had rejected the advances of cute boys. Because no boys had advanced. In my twenties I had been proud of how pure I’d been, but now, watching Weston, I realized that my goodness was closely tied to my plainness.
But by the pool in Trujillo, I wished to be hot and shallow and desired. I wanted to be heckled. I wanted hormones to make decisions for me. Not all this philosophy. Not all this prayer.
Weston, enjoying the stares of the girls, and the boys, kept circling the pool, smoking his joint in plain sight. And I wished God had trusted me with a body like that, that He had thought I could have the willpower to overcome it. I wished I had been given that calling, and failed, and had sinister sex, and felt guilt at how attractive I was, and how weak.
And finally, I wanted to get back on the road, away from the beach and the pool and all the jocks on vacation. I wanted to feel special again, intriguing and adventurous on my bicycle, not like I felt here, invisible.
* * *
—
ON THE THIRD MORNING, I paid for our rooms, and we packed up and headed south. Always headed south. I didn’t like the desolate coast of Peru and hoped Lima would save us, but it was still hundreds of miles away. Weston complained about the desert, too. Yes, he liked the sun. He liked being shirtless. But he remembered overheating in Colombia. He remembered being dehydrated and scared. By the time we had biked a few more days down the coast, the landscape had become completely barren. For long stretches, we saw no leaf or sign of a growing thing. The only trees we saw had been planted in the little towns, leaving the stretches between human settlements rocky and lifeless. The traffic, though, was thick. Massive trucks assaulted us with trails of black smoke. Stray dogs scrambled from behind rocks and falling-down shacks to give chase and nip at our tires. Weston’s tubes blew twice and mine blew once. When we were out of spares, we sat on a dune baking and worrying about running out of water until a truck stopped to give us a lift to the next town.
Casma offered a few trees, a few stores, some spots offering tours to archaeological sites in the area (common in coastal Peru), but no bike shop with the tubes we needed. We were fucked. Lima, our best hope, was still three days’ ride away. Too far for hitchhiking. But with our shoddy Spanish and a bit of begging, we found a bus to Lima that begrudgingly let us shove our bikes in the luggage hold.
Lima is another giant South American metropolis, but unlike Bogotá, Quito, and others we’d see
n, this one wasn’t at high altitude, on some verdant mesa in the Andes. The Peruvian capital lies at sea level, and springs from the barren land like a mirage. Ten million people on a cliff next to the ocean. The dark desert was lit by streetlights on the outskirts of town, warm yellow beams cascading onto walls through the coastal fog.
Our bus approached the city at night, passing through a seemingly endless expanse of clay and cement houses. Were they gray, yellow, tan? I couldn’t quite tell in the glow of the orange streetlights. I saw people and stray dogs walking in the shadows, appearing in the pools of light, then vanishing. Trash piled high in the ditches. As we neared the center of town, glass buildings rose up tall and clean. Then, just inland from the newer developments, we entered the old city of stately Spanish buildings, some preserved and beautiful, others derelict or crumbling. I knew Lima was famous for its food, and we wanted to stay for a few days. But it was expensive. We couldn’t find a hostel for less than twenty dollars a night. We tried to find a host home, but hadn’t had Wi-Fi in so long we couldn’t lock one in. So we decided to stay a night or two in a hostel anyway to figure out our situation. It was hard on us. I was so worried about Weston’s money that I couldn’t enjoy spending a dime.
At a café the next morning, Weston informed me he was going to Hawaii.
“When?” I asked.
“In May. I can’t miss my friend’s wedding. They sent me an e-mail and I can’t miss it.”
“Okay, I get it. And you haven’t been home yet at all.”
“No, and I’m in the wedding. And it’s all-expense-paid. I’m gonna go.”
This was a new side of Weston. This air of certainty. The Weston I knew was a reed bending in the wind, smiling and squinting his stoner eyes at the flow of the universe. But here was a man with a firm plan. Telling me instead of asking me.
Truth is, a separation was already happening. We kept the same schedule, but were no longer in a common battle. We were like the couple who had long ago bought the fixer-upper, excited by the dream, but now just felt stuck in the mess of all they had asked for. We’d been through Oregon to Mexico to Peru now. And for me, Patagonia was still too far off to feel. We were in that part of the valley where neither the mountain we came from nor the mountain we sought was visible, and the river fog made us feel like the valley is all there is, forever. I was annoyed at worrying about money in a circumstance I had created. I felt indulgent and dumb. Lima was dirty and annoying. Weston was dirty and annoying. He’d found an escape. I needed one, too. I needed to get out of there.
Before Weston flew out for the wedding, he wanted to see Cusco, the legendary capital of the Inca empire. So did I. We’d seen enough desert. We both wanted trees and mountains and beauty again. But Cusco was at least a two-week bike ride away, plus the climb of getting from sea level to 12,000 feet. Fortunately, tons of buses ran up to Cusco from Lima because most tourists coming to Peru were headed there. We settled on traveling by bus up into the mountains, then riding to Cusco from there.
Before we left, I invited a group of friends from LA to come hike Machu Picchu with us. I wanted to do a popular five-day hike through the mountains, and I thought I could lure them to join me. Once in a lifetime adventure! The chance to see some of the most famous ruins on earth. And I would get to see some old faces and get some new conversations. A little break from one-on-one time with Weston.
As soon as I sent the e-mail, I got responses. “Looking at flights now!” “We’re coming!” That felt good.
Weston and I took an overnight bus the 350 miles to Ayacucho, a humble little town of unpainted gray cinder blocks crammed in the narrow hollow between two mountains. We arrived in late morning to scenes of stray dogs, sheep, and vacant-looking people. Famished, we tried for an early lunch in a cement doorway that displayed a sign with images of food on it. We wanted fuel before we hit the road. Inside were two plastic tables, with tablecloths and lawn chairs. In a corner, a World Cup qualifying game played on TV. A little girl stood in the kitchen doorway, watching us. When a woman appeared, I asked for a menu. She cocked her head in confusion. “Do you have a menu?” I repeated, this time in Spanish.
“No menu. Only lunch.”
“So is there a lunch menu?”
“No menu. Only lunch. You want lunch?”
“Yes,” I said.
She walked into the kitchen through a floral-patterned sheet hanging in the doorway, and only then did I realize that she obviously lived at the restaurant. Or better said, the restaurant was her house. We had walked into her living room.
Weston and I watched the soccer game. I found something comforting about the game. Somewhere, thousands of people had enough free time to sit in the stands and scream for a team. They probably drove there. They probably all had beds to sleep in. Woke up in them and went back to them at night. Not like our life on the road, where we seemed caught in a cycle of repeating concerns: where to sleep, what to eat, are we safe, will we get rained on, will we be cold, am I saying this in Spanish correctly, are we imposing, does this family resent rich Americans, regret letting us into their home?
The woman reappeared with two bowls of soup, a whitish yellow thin broth in which floated one dark gray potato and a chicken foot. The foot protruded out of the bowl like a scrunched hand trying to fit through a tight bracelet. The sight devastated me. Hungry as I was, how was I supposed to gnaw on this lizard-like foot?
When she left, I whispered to Weston, “The food in Peru is so famous.” We chuckled and I ate some of the potato. When we paid, the woman seemed sad that we hadn’t eaten more. In mangled Spanish, we tried to assure her she was wonderful, then walked next door and bought potato chips, Oreos, and cokes.
As soon as we stepped on our bikes, we were hit hard by the 9,000 feet of altitude. We hadn’t acclimated like we would have had we biked from Lima. We had stepped on the bus at sea level, and stepped off into mountain air. And per usual, the temperature fluctuated quickly. Clouds would roll over and chill us to the bone as we rode, then they would pass, and the sun burned like a laser. Just about the time we’d strip off our jackets or flannels and tuck them into our mounds of cargo, we’d cycle into the shade of a mountain and have to pull them back out.
We biked for the day and into the evening and as the sun set there was nowhere to camp. The road was carved into the side of the mountain with no shoulder and no thickets or forest. Finally, we found one small hotel in a woman’s house and slept on cots. We froze all night. The next day we aimed for a town fifty miles away but we only made it thirty. The steep hills and the altitude combined to slow our progress to a crawl. When we asked a woman at a roadside market if there was a hotel anywhere nearby, she said of course not. We stood there feeling dejected and began trying to recollect if we’d seen any ditches or bridges where we might sleep. But the woman was listening. She walked over and said, “There is a barn behind the market. You can camp there.” We enthusiastically accepted.
The barn was dark and cold inside but we were grateful to be out of the elements. We hung our hammocks from the rafters and settled in. I read Time magazine on my iPad. Weston used the light on his phone to read his book, Siddhartha. He was rereading it now. He kept saying “I hate this cold,” as if to himself, or God, but I drifted off and slept well.
We woke up and cycled on. Up and up. We were making terrible time. The hills were too steep, and the altitude had done something to my head. There was a sharp, relentless headache deep in the middle of my head, and sometimes moving right behind my eyes. I’m not a hypochondriac, but all day I wondered if it was a tumor.
By that evening, we were still nowhere near a town. On my Google Maps, what showed as a town turned out to be an empty barn or an intersection with a dirt road. With no stores, we survived on salami and cheese and crackers.
Finally we saw a few trees beyond a field, tucked between two hills. We pulled our bikes off the road and slogged t
hrough the mud to get there. But when we got to the trees, we realized they were too close to each other. Maybe we could get one hammock up, but not two. Weston walked farther into the gulley, looking for a better option. Meanwhile, I was troubleshooting in my mind. Okay, we can lay our rain tarp on the ground. We can huddle together for warmth. What if it rains? God, I hope it doesn’t rain. Maybe we could string the rain tarp over one hammock and the other person could sleep underneath. Hmm.
When I looked up I saw Weston walking back in defeat. Then he jerked to attention, looking behind me. He gestured with his head and eyebrows to turn around and look. I did. Coming around the corner from the road was a man on horseback, coming right for us. Shit. We’re on his land. His horse wasn’t trotting, but slowly approaching, as if the man was studying us, angry and choosing which words to use. He’s gonna kick us off his land and it’s twilight and we’re fucked. It was in moments like this that my mind would zoom out, and I would remember that no one knew where we were. If something bad happened, no one would find us.
As the man on horseback got closer, though, he became a she, and the horse became a mule. The woman wore the standard-issue bowler hat. Two long black braids hung over a dark brown poncho. Her skin was very dark. As she came close, I could see that she was missing one of her front teeth, and she was scowling. I jumped into damage-control mode with a torrent of horrendous Spanish. “Hi, sorry! We are on bicycle to Cusco, from the United States, and looking to camp. Sorry. Is this okay?”
She replied with a few short words that didn’t sound Spanish—Quechua, I assumed—and made a quick scooping gesture, indicating for us to follow her. We stood there, confused. She smiled this time, and scooped again. At that, we jumped to gather our things.
To Shake the Sleeping Self Page 24