On a one-horse-power open ferry (Drive day 179: Dec 25th, 2003)
If there’s one piece of advice I’d give future road trippers it would be to avoid driving in Bolivia on Christmas Day. The roads are lined with children begging for food and the custom is apparently to slow down and toss out bags of bread. The worst part is they don’t tear into the treats like kids should – they save it for later and keep flagging down vehicles. When we arrive at the ferry terminal to cross Lake Titicaca I am numb with sadness. Which I have to snap out of to process the fact that we are going to entrust our home-on-wheels to perhaps the least seaworthy vessel I have ever seen. Even my father didn’t try this route, but we’re here and there’s only one way across. We can’t sink on Christmas, right?
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.
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