The sun has just set and only thirty minutes ago I finished what may have been my toughest day of driving yet. Also, exactly ten months ago today, I began my Latin American pilgrimage on January 17th. I like it when such confluences of relatively insignificant events occur; they bring an unexpected specialness to a day. Today was already special. Each month, on the 17th, I try to have a little celebration as a way of congratulating myself for work well done under the often difficult circumstances of this pilgrimage. And I would give myself an A+ for today’s driving, so there is double cause for celebration. But I am a few miles outside of a poor farming town, alone in my van. How to celebrate here?

I will do a bit of writing. Like juggling and dance, writing is for me a celebration; it lets me express some measure of the beauty I feel within my being. This is one of my most defining personality traits. I need to create beauty in the world. Lamentably, my writing skills are not equal to the depth of the beauty I feel to express. But my juggling is getting close!

Other van travelers (from Germany) that I frequently
crossed paths with in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia

I drove away from Cochabamba this morning at 11:00 (but could easily have stayed another day in that appealing city). Four days earlier, upon waking early at the mechanics garage in Epizana, I had tried the motor to see if it would work. It started right up and, being hesitant to shut it off, I immediately began the two hour drive back to Cochabamba. The engine went strong for ten minutes and then died suddenly. After a fifteen minute wait, however, it cheerfully started up again. But then it stopped again, even sooner. Twice more we did this mechanical dance, and I was able to approach within thirty miles of Cochabamba. Then the motor really died and even two hours of waiting could not induce it to start again.

Hitching a ride to town, I stopped at the first gas station, in order to find the address of the local VW experts. The station manager scribbled something on a scrap of paper and I flagged down a passing taxi. After a frustrating series of wrong addresses, I found the garage and explained my problem. Soon, two mechanics and I returned to my van and towed it back to their shop. The owner of the shop, like numerous other shop-owners who have helped me along my Latin American journey, immediately fell in love with the van and promised to treat it like his own. Quite content with the mornings events, I went off for three days of lazy times in Cochabamba.

I had been feeling a pleasant sort of laziness coming over me the past couple of weeks, since finishing my photography at the Tiahuanaco ruins. While I will certainly take a few more photographs during my remaining four months of travel, with the ruins of Tiahuanaco I felt that I had completed the photographic work of this current pilgrimage. And, even more significant, I felt that I had completed the entire sixteen years of photography. Since that day I have felt the intensity of the pilgrimage and the pace of my travels slow way down. It’s like I have down shifted gears.

Cochabamba really set the tone for my new state of relaxed pilgrimage. I found the nicest hotel yet in my ten months of travel (definitely still a budget joint), a couple of great restaurants, and an inexpensive internet place with fast computers. The hotel had a great masonry floor ideal for bounce juggling, the town square was alive with neat people and lovely flowering trees, and the balmy temperature was a welcome change from the chilliness of the altiplano. Each morning I awoke late, meditated awhile, and then did a lazy hour of yoga on the spacious floor of my room. Breakfast and good coffee (a rarity in the Andes), followed by a few hours of writing got me ready for lunch and a nap. Afternoons, I juggled and read. Evenings, I drank slow beers in the plaza and sampled local foods. Late evenings, I added polishing touches to recent writings stored on my laptop. It was ever so relaxing to let all these things flow around one another in their lazy way. Frequently I found myself reflecting that Cochabamba would be a fun place to live, it was for me the most pleasant city I have yet found in my South American wanderings.

But, what of the today’s driving from Cochabamba to Comaropa? Even had I started earlier, I would not have made it all the way to Samaipata, the next power place on my itinerary. I am passing through remote and rugged mountain territory. Furthermore, the southern the road I had chosen has fallen into disrepair since the newer and faster northern route had been completed. The first two hours of the passage were third-gear roads, this being the highest gear I could safety use in driving this stretch. The pavement was a patchwork of countless asphalt repairs and it wound through rolling hills of small farms and stark rock outcrops. Then steeper hills abruptly began and the road degraded to a second gear way. Sharp pebbles jutted from between a million jagged potholes and the van’s suspension sounded as if machine guns were going off simultaneously in all four wheel-wells.

Hours passed as I wound my way deeper into the mountains. In the distance enormous bulbous clouds were surging around the mountain peaks and the valleys were hidden in a sea of gray. A road sign gave the ominous warning: Zona de Neblina, zone of fog. Soon it came. But it was more than fog, it was a soup. Thick, wet, and cold, it seemed to soak up all the light around it. Driving into it, I felt as if I were continuously entering a murky cave.

And still there were the bumps and potholes, now invisible because of the heavy cloak of the fog. The small rocks kept up their machine-gun jolting. To this was added an intense side-to-side swaying motion as the van dipped and climbed over unseen obstacles. Even to stay directly on this "road" was a real challenge. It was necessary to pay constant attention, not only to the front but also to the sides. The front, because an unlit truck might unexpectedly careen straight at you from the formless fog (few Andean truck drivers use or even have headlights, their excuse being that they "know the roads."). The sides, because a second’s loss of concentration and I might plummet off a cliff or careen into the jungle.

I have been on many second-gear roads in the past ten months of travel in Latin America, but today’s journey gave me the rare pleasure of three hours in first gear. The going was that slow. The level of visual concentration that was required approached that of complex three-ball juggling patterns, with the added difficulty of extreme danger thrown in. I could probably have driven the last two hours, on relatively flat roads, to Samaipata, but my eyes and brain are asking for a rest.

Strange thing then, here I am staring at a computer screen, not the most restful thing to be doing after such an incredible drive. But now this writing is completed and I can make some avocado, garlic, and onion sandwiches while listening to a new African music tape. All this in my wonderful van; exciting driving, using my computer, making sandwiches, and peaceful nights of sleeping in the deep mountains - now you see why I call it the Magic Bus.