The Heights – of irony (Drive day 180: Dec 26th, 2003)
Even though La Paz is the highest (in altitude) of any South American capitol, it actually sits in the base of what looks like a collapsed pit. Which is why the slum town-turned-third-most-populated-city in the country is called El Atlo. It perches on the edge of the pit and is the site of the most recent rounds of riots. It’s easy to see why – people here have nothing left to lose. And yet one of them, a taxi driver named Eosebio, guides us down into the city so that we arrive safely at the only hotel he knows of with a parking lot big enough for our camper. A Christmas gift indeed.
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.
"TeresaBruceBooks" 