Roads meant for studier beasts (Drive Day 188: Jan 3, 2004)

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Funny, my dictionary didn’t tell me that secondary roads mean cobblestone. Not that we have an alternative. The rains have washed out all but a questionable passage through remote, rugged central Bolivia and quickly the secondary road becomes a “carriage route.”

0103b.jpgWhich means cows, not campers, should be using it. We pass only one other truck, careening madly through the dust which becomes mud a few minutes after the rain starts again.

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Some tourists actually come to Bolivia to test their driving skills against its legendary “roads.”

 

0103d.jpgWe did not and one particular hairpin turn, under a waterfall, while the camper fishtails dangerously close to a 300-foot drop off, nearly shatters our faith in surviving this journey. We pull off to sleep on the side of what someone, somewhere calls a road – lost and unnerved.

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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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