Escape Through the Andes

by Thomas M. Daniel

  Entering Puno, we parked the car at the roadside about one hundred yards from the railroad station. We left the key in the ignition, took the registration and rental documents from the glove box, and walked to the station. Outside we found a teen-aged boy selling cigarettes. Gonzalo bought a cigarette. “Y un fosforo,” he said to the boy, asking for a match. Gonzalo then told the boy that he had noticed a car just up the road that had no license plates and that its key was in the ignition. “Someone must have left it there. Maybe in a hurry to catch the train, or something.” He pointed to the Datsun. The young man paused, thinking about the situation. He then collected his wares and ambled toward the car. Reaching it, he climbed inside. The car then disappeared up a side street. Gonzalo crumpled the car’s documents at the roadside and lit them with the match he had obtained, adding the cigarette to the burning papers. At the station we found that the Cuzco train had left, as we expected. There would not be another train until the following morning.

  We found a modest hotel—there were several on the main street of Puno—and secured lodging for the night. Our choice was the Hotel Real. We registered, booking a double room and presenting our passports to the clerk. “We’re tourists—Americans—on our way to Cuzco and Arequipa. We’ll not be going back to Bolivia. Can you change our Bolivian bolivianos into soles?”

  “I should be able to do that, but I won’t be able to give you the bank rate. But there isn’t a bank here, anyway. There’s a cambio at the station, but it won’t be open until just before the train leaves. And their rate is the same as ours.”

  “Okay,” I said, as Gonzalo and I emptied our pockets of our Bolivian money. We collected the Peruvian soles, our passports, and our room key, then climbed the stairs to the second floor and found our room.

  “Well,” I said, “there is not much regal about this hotel, despite its name. Now then, we have to find a way to spend today mostly out of sight. I hope that doesn’t mean sitting in this dreary hotel all day.”

  “You know,” Gonzalo said, “the Uru people live on floating reed islands in the lake here. I’ve never seen them, but I bet there are tourist boats that would take us out onto the lake to see their islands.”

  “Sounds interesting—and out of the way,” I replied. “Grab your pack and let’s go.”

  “No point in taking our packs,” Gonzalo said.

  “But we should, always,” I replied. “Hard to predict what will happen. The Boy Scout motto is ‘Be Prepared.’ That should be ours as well on this junket. Who knows? Maybe we won’t come back here.”

  “Okay. You’re right.”

  We left our room key at the hotel desk and made our way to the waterfront, where we booked a tour to the Uru reed-island settlements that would keep us away from any pursuers for several hours. And it proved to be fascinating. On the boat we were told by a man who was apparently some sort of tour guide that there were seventy islands, all of them made of reeds and floating on the water. These settlements, he told us, date to pre-Incan times. More than that, little was known about the origins of the Uru people. We would, of course, visit the most important, the most typical of these island communities. And, I thought to myself, the one that gives the largest kick-back to our guide on souvenir sales. We pulled up to one of the islands that appeared to house a modest-sized community. At the point where we stopped, booths had been set up and souvenirs were being offered for sale. Made on the island, I wondered, or imported from China? We did not succumb to the lure of these items; several of our fellow passengers on the tour boat did.

  Returning to the dock at Puno, we found one of the ANSEB agents waiting for us on the dock. As we pulled in, I said to Gonzalo, “I think he is the guy you pushed into the drink at Copacabana.” As we left the boat, he collared Gonzalo, moving him to the side so that other passengers could disembark. He berated Gonzalo and waved his gun, again trying to arrest him or somehow force him to return to La Paz in his custody. My turn, I thought, and I rushed across the dock to push him into the lake.

  “Let’s go,” shouted Gonzalo, and we took off running. Then, “Follow me.” We ran back to the railroad station, where we again found the boy selling cigarettes, the boy to whom we had given the car.

  “Listen, my friend,” Gonzalo said as he passed a one-hundred-sol note to the boy. “We need your help. But I can’t tell you here. We need to get out of sight. Then I can explain.” The boy took the money, quickly picked up his cigarettes and led us hurriedly up the side street where he had previously taken the car.

  “I am a Bolivian,” Gonzalo began. “I am a businessman. I have a used car business. My friend here works for me there. I also have sort of gotten involved in Bolivian politics. That is, I campaigned against Morales in the elections. Campesinos elected Morales; business people campaigned against him. I have continued to speak out against him, but I am not a criminal and not dishonest. I’ve done nothing wrong except speak out against Morales. Now he has shut down my auto business and is trying to arrest me. So we—I and my salesman friend—are on the run. His agents have just found us. We need to hide.”

  The boy seemed thoughtful. Then he said, “Come.” He led us two blocks further along the street. The houses became smaller, I observed. He stopped at one and said, “I live here, with my mother.”

  A woman appeared at the door. “Jaime, what’s all this?”

  Gonzalo stepped forward and repeated what he had told the boy. “Can you hide us?” he asked. “We can pay you.”

  Jaime’s mother seemed thoughtful. Then she led us around the house to a shed. “You can hide there tonight, but you must leave in the morning. There is some straw you can sleep on.”

  “Many thanks,” Gonzalo said.

  “Two hundred soles,” she stated. I peeled off two one-hundred sol notes and gave them to her.

  “Is there a place nearby, out of the way, where we can get some supper?”

  “In the next street, right through that alley. There is a bar that serves some food.”

  At dinner that night we ate hamburgers. Once again we failed to find the trucha that we had been unable to finish in Copacabana. We returned to the shed after our supper.

  “Nobody should bother us here,” I commented to Gonzalo.

  “Yes, but….”

  26

  We stumbled awake in the morning, stiff but ready for breakfast. We found Jaime’s mother and said goodbye, offering profuse thanks to the woman who had sheltered us. She had a question for us. “How much do you think I can get for the car you gave to Jaime? We have no use for it, and money is always welcome. I am a widow. My husband worked on a road crew, but that didn’t pay much—barely enough for food and Jaime’s school fees. He was killed a year ago when a speeding truck hit him. A lawyer tried to get me some money from the truck driver, but he didn’t. I guess the driver was just as poor as we are.”

  “Well, the car’s in good mechanical shape, although the body is a bit battered,” Gonzalo replied. “And you don’t have registration papers for it. It came from my second-hand car lot. Because the body has some dents and scratches, I have not been able to sell it. That’s why I gave it to Jaime.” Whether or not she believed Gonzalo, she did not question the car’s origins further nor ask why we chose to get rid of it. “In La Paz it is probably worth about twenty thousand bolivianos—with its papers,” Gonzalo continued. “I would ask thirty, but bargain down to twenty. Bolivianos and soles are about the same. Is there a car dealership here in Puno? If so, you could do a little comparative shopping—a little snooping—to see what a similar car might be priced at.”

  “No, not here in Puno.”

  “Well then, I suggest you ask about twenty-five thousand soles and be prepared to come down to fifteen. Don’t bargain too hard, or you might find yourself trying to explain your possession of a car without papers. Find a notary or someone who can type out a respectable-looking bill of sale for you.”

  “Many thanks. You have given us so much. I wish I could do more to repay you.”r />
  “But you have helped us,” I said. “Jaime especially. So we thank you.” I wondered if the car’s absence of VIN numbers might impede a sale of the car. Probably would not be noticed, I supposed. Or, if noticed, ignored.

  We made our way back to the Hotel Real. A buffet was laid out for hotel guests. We gave the server the number of the room we had signed in for but not occupied and enjoyed a hearty breakfast. American rather than Bolivian, probably because most of the hotel guests were North American tourists.

  “Look,” Gonzalo said. “There’s Jaime out at his place hoping to sell cigarettes.”

  “You know, we need tickets for the train. Let’s see if he can get them for us.” I went to the door, put my fingers to my lips, and gave a loud whistle. Jaime looked our way, and I waved him to us.

  “Jaime, my man, you’ve been very helpful to us. Would you do us another favor? If you will buy us two first-class tickets on this morning’s train to Cuzco, we’ll give you another tip.” I peeled off ten one-hundred sol notes and handed them to him. That should cover it, I thought. Jaime took the money and ran to the station. Shortly he returned with our tickets. He handed us our change, and I gave him one hundred soles.

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said. “I hope you have a good trip to Cuzco.”

  “Yes, we will.” But first of all, a good trip to Cuzco meant getting on the train, hopefully leaving the ANSEB men behind.

  “I wonder,” I said to Gonzalo, “where our followers spent the night.”

  “Not our problem.”

  We sat in the dining room of the Hotel Real until ten minutes before the scheduled train departure time. Then we hurried across the road to board the train. Not surprisingly, two ANSEB agents were waiting to greet us beside the train. One of them reached out and took hold of Gonzalo’s arm. “Gonzalo Mamani, you are under arrest for treason.”

  Gonzalo shook him off. “Nonsense. I am an American. Let go of me.” I pushed between them, and Gonzalo climbed into the first class coach. I followed.

  “Well,” I commented, “I think we can count on their company all the way to Cuzco.”

  27

  Tickets in hand, we settled into the first-class coach. There were many empty seats; we chose a pair from which we could look out to see the station platform. We briefly investigated the regular coach behind us. It was crowded. We were glad we had the money to pay for the first class tickets. Good use of the soles we had been given.

  Departure time arrived, but the train did not move. Passengers were still climbing aboard and crowding into the regular fare coaches. About a half-hour behind schedule, the train started to move. Out the window we saw two men run and catch the train, climbing into the economy coach behind us.

  “There they are,” I said to Gonzalo. “They’re going with us.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think they can do much to us during the train trip. They can’t arrest me here. They could force us off the train, but then where would we and they be? There would be no way back until another train, and that would be late in the day—maybe this same train heading back tomorrow. And they would have a tough time hanging on to us, I think.”

  As the crow flies, or maybe the condor might fly if it were on the Altiplano, Puno to Cuzco is about 150 miles. Our train would cover this distance in about eight hours, arriving about two and one-half hours after the schedule alleged it would. Along the way, it would make more than two dozen stops. This train was the link with the world for many Peruvian Altiplano hamlets.

  Somewhat after midday, we descended from the train at one of the stops to buy lunch from one of the many vendors that crowded every stopping place. We chose cooked items and beer—safe to eat and drink anywhere. Salteñas—my favorite and, I thought, maybe my last opportunity to have them—for me. Something broiled on a skewer for Gonzalo. Women selling knit goods crowded around us. I wished I could buy a poncho for Susan, but I doubted that I could get it to Salaverry and wherever I might go after that. The two men we assumed were ANSEB agents got off the train at our lunch stop. They watched us, but purchased nothing. Don’t they have some sort of expense money for lunch, I wondered.

  I was making my way through the crowd of hustlers selling food and local wares and generally moving toward the train, when I glanced back to see Gonzalo up against a building wall, hands in the air, with one of the ANSEB man pointing a gun at him. Without really thinking but knowing that I had to do something, I ran toward them. I screamed liked a banshee. People turned and looked at me. I have never been a fighter—not even a grade school playground scrapper—but I assumed my best Muhammad Ali persona and swung my fist into the agent’s abdomen. He doubled over. I grabbed his arm, swinging it away from Gonzalo. The gun fired, sending a bullet into the ground. I wrested the gun from him and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed over the train.

  People scattered, hurrying away from the mad scene. Gonzalo ran to the train, and I followed. On the train, we looked out the window to see the two ANSEB men climb into the coach behind us just as the train was beginning to move. “Well,” I said to Gonzalo, “I guess we provided some excitement for this little town today.”

  With that bit of excitement behind us, we decided to remain on the train at future stops. At one stop we watched a Peruvian woman trying to sell a knit poncho to those of us in the first class car—obviously the more affluent passengers and probably mostly tourists who might buy her wares. She had her eyes fixed on a woman in the seat just ahead of us. The passenger woman had been passing time during the long journey knitting something, perhaps a sweater, I thought, using a circular needle. Then I observed the woman, the passenger, gesturing with her hands. The Peruvian woman was similarly gesturing.

  As the train slowly got under way, I asked the woman passenger what had been transpiring. “The woman wanted my circular needle, and offered to trade a lovely poncho for it. But I have a sweater for my son-in-law half-finished on it. Otherwise I might have given it up.”

  “But the gesturing, your hands?”

  “American sign language. I’m a speech therapist back in Omaha. She must be deaf. I wonder how she learned signing.”

  “So what did she say? Is that the right word? Or sign?”

  “That’s beautiful.”

  “Amazing,” I commented. “She doesn’t speak English. You don’t speak Spanish—or Quechua—and yet you two could communicate. There’s something nice about that.”

  Not long after our lunch stop, one of the ANSEB men came from the coach behind into our car. He came up to our seat and leaned over to Gonzalo, who was sitting next to me in the window seat, and launched into a verbal tirade that was too rapid for me to understand. Gonzalo put out hands, palms up, and shook his head. “No hablo español,” he said in an American accent. “I am American and speak only English. I don’t speak Spanish.” The ANSEB agent grabbed Gonzalo’s arm and continued his tirade.

  I stood up, shoved the ANSEB man aside, and waved to the conductor who was at the front of the car. He strode quickly to our seats. “¿Que pasa?”

  “Somos Americanos, touristas,” I said. Then, changing into English and hoping to be understood but not wanting to reveal my Spanish fluency, “We don’t know what this man wants. He is attacking my friend, who does not speak any Spanish.”

  “Stand aside,” the conductor commanded the agent, pushing him to the other side of the aisle. Then to us, “May I see your passports, please?” He examined our American passports and turned to the ANSEB agent. “Your ticket, please.” One glance at the agent’s ticket and then, “You have a coach ticket. This is a first-class car. Return to your car and stay there. If you come here again, I will stop the train and put you off—wherever we are at the moment.”

  “But they are Bolivian criminals,” the ANSEB agent said.

  “With American passports? Not likely.” We were glad that the conductor seemed sympathetic to us. “Return to your seat in the rear coach, now.”

  In halting Spanish mixed with English
, I thanked the conductor profusely. Gonzalo added his thanks, in English. “Un boracho, tal vez,” commented the conductor.

  I translated for Gonzalo, “A drunkard, perhaps.”

  But the ANSEB agent was not so easily deterred. About twenty minutes later he was back. The conductor saw him and hurried to our rescue. “I told you to stay in the coach car,” he said.

  “This man is a dangerous, violent criminal. He is wanted in Bolivia. It is my duty to arrest him.”

  “Not here,” said the conductor. “This is Peru, and these men have American passports. They are not Bolivians.” With that he grabbed the agent’s arm. “I warned you. You are off this train.” The train was, in fact, slowing to a stop at another village. The conductor led the agent to the rear of our car and forced him off the train. But he was not gone. Looking back from the window I watched him reenter the coach behind us as the train slowly resumed its journey.

  The sun was far in the west as the panoramic spread of red tile roofs of Cuzco appeared. The train made a series of dramatic switch-backs and took us down into Cuzco.

  28

  We sat in our seats, watching as disembarking passengers made their way along the platform to the terminal building. We saw the ANSEB agents leave, one at the head of the crowd, the other lingering behind. The conductor approached us. “We hope to avoid the man who accosted my friend,” I said. “He seems to have reboarded the train, and he is just walking up the platform now.”

  “Bueno,” he replied. “What you should do is go back to the last car of the train. Then get off and walk back along the platform to a bridge that crosses to the next platform. The train from Machu Picchu is due to arrive on that platform in about fifteen minutes. There will be many passengers leaving that train. Join the crowd, and you should be able to leave the station unseen.”