Hippie

4

He was returning from his first lengthy trip along the latest hippie trail that was all the rage. With him was his girlfriend—eleven years his senior, born and raised under the Communist regime in Yugoslavia, the child of an aristocratic family that had lost everything but had given her an education that allowed her to learn four languages, flee to Brazil, and marry a millionaire. She would later divorce him when she found out he already considered her “old” at the age of thirty-three and had begun seeing a girl of seventeen. She then hired a top-notch lawyer who sued for enough damages that she would never have to work another day in her life.

Paulo and his girlfriend had set off together for Machu Picchu on the Death Train, a mode of transportation much different from the train car that he found himself in at that moment.

“Why do they call it the Death Train?” his girlfriend had asked the man responsible for checking tickets. “It’s not as if we’re traveling along any steep cliffs.”

Paulo didn’t have the least interest in the response, but he got one all the same.

“In the old days, these cars were used to transport lepers, the ill, and the bodies of the victims of a yellow fever epidemic that struck the region of Santa Cruz.”

“I assume they’ve done an excellent job sanitizing the cars.”

“We’ve had no casualties since, except for a miner or two forced to pull the pin and end it all.”

The “miners” he referred to weren’t those born in the mineral-rich region of Minas Gerais in Paulo’s native Brazil but those who worked day and night in the tin mines of Bolivia. Well, it was a civilized world they were living in; he hoped no one would decide to pull any pins that day. To the relief of both, the majority of the travelers were women with their bowler hats and colorful dress.

They arrived in La Paz, the country’s capital, 12,000 feet above sea level, but, having made the ascent by train, they barely felt the effects of the thin air. Even so, when they stepped off the train, they saw a young man wearing clothes that identified his tribe sitting on the ground, a bit disoriented. They asked him what was wrong (“I can’t breathe”). A man who was passing by advised that he try chewing coca leaves, which could be easily found at any of the nearby street markets. This was a tribal custom that helped those who lived there to face the high altitudes. The young man soon felt better and asked them to leave him where they had found him—he was to go to Machu Picchu that very day.

The receptionist at the hotel they’d chosen called Paulo’s girlfriend to the side, said a few words, and then completed their registration. They went up to their room and immediately fell asleep, but not before Paulo asked what the receptionist had said.

“No sex for the first two days.”

It was easy to understand why. He was in no condition to do anything.

They spent two days in the Bolivian capital without sex, without suffering any collateral effects of the soroche, as the lack of oxygen was called. Both he and his girlfriend attributed this to the therapeutic effects of the coca leaves, which in reality had nothing to do with it; soroche occurs only in those who depart from sea level and quickly climb to great heights—in other words, by plane—without allowing their bodies the time to adjust. The couple had spent seven long days on the Death Train. Much more ideal for adjusting to their environs and much safer than air travel—in the airport at Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Paulo had seen a monument honoring the “heroic pilots who laid down their lives in the line of duty.”

In La Paz, they came across their first hippies—who, as a global tribe conscious of the responsibility and solidarity they owed one another, always wore the famous symbol of the inverted Viking rune. In Bolivia, a country where everyone sported colorful ponchos, jackets, shirts, and suits, it was practically impossible to know who was who without the help of the rune sewn onto jackets or pant legs.

These first hippies they came across were two Germans and a Canadian woman. Paulo’s girlfriend, who spoke German, was soon invited for a walk through the city, while he and the Canadian woman looked at each other, unsure exactly what to say. When, half an hour later, the three others returned from their walk, they all decided they ought to depart immediately rather than spend their money there: they would continue on to the highest freshwater lake in the world, navigate its waters by boat, get off at the other end—which would already put them in Peruvian territory—and head straight for Machu Picchu.