It was when he veered his truck off the road that I wondered if I was going to make it out alive. Up to that point, I’d been grappling with a growing sense of unease, silently cursing myself for getting in a vehicle with a man I barely knew. I was 20 years old, traveling alone through rural Bolivia. I had no phone. No one else knew exactly where I was.
The hostel owner had seemed nice enough, if a bit eccentric. His was the only hostel in this speck of a town, and I was the only guest. He’d been openly enamored with me from the start, but after six months in Bolivia, I was used to the unapologetic stares and theatrical proclamations. With my fair complexion and curly blonde hair, it was impossible not to stand out. Men marveled over my “sexy freckles,” which had never been previously described to me in those terms, and often asked if they could touch my pelo de oro (hair of gold).
As a young woman, attention from men made me feel both worthy and uncomfortable. I’d been a late bloomer and hadn’t turned all that many heads in my teens. At age 20, I was just growing into myself, and I had a bad habit of being “too nice” when men crossed the line from playful flirtation to aggressive pursuit.
I’d always been nice by nature, but society had also taught me, as it teaches all females, to please, to smile, to avoid offense. Except, of course, if I should find myself in a sticky situation with a member of the opposite sex. Please, smile, defer… until he puts his hands on you. Then lay down the law. Set clear boundaries. Remember, no means NO.
It was all very confusing, to say the least.
As I was getting into a truck with a strange man in rural Bolivia, I knew I probably shouldn’t be getting into a truck with a strange man in rural Bolivia. But I was already too deep in. I didn’t know how to extract myself from the situation. And, of course, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
//
Truth be told, I was also lonely and bored as hell. I’d been studying abroad in Bolivia for six months and had traveled to most corners of the country with various friends, both American and Bolivian. This was my last hurrah before heading home, and I thought it would be “fun” to not only try traveling alone but to try traveling alone to a string of remote and largely untouristed towns.
In retrospect, it hadn’t been a great plan. The benefit, I was realizing, of traveling to places with other tourists was that there were things to do — not to mention that places with other tourists have… well, other tourists. And as much as I wanted to feel superior to tourists — unlike most of them, I spoke good Spanish, ate street food, and used public transportation — there was no mistaking that I was still a gringa through and through. A gringa still hungry for photo ops and “authentic” cultural experiences.
I’d arrived in this town, whose name now escapes me, past midnight. The one paragraph my Lonely Planet guidebook devoted to the town did not include information about accommodations. A fellow bus passenger took pity on me and led me to the only hostel, banging on the locked door until the owner, bleary-eyed, opened it and showed me to a room.
The guidebook did mention a lake, so the next morning I decided to go for a swim. After days of mostly sitting in various town squares, I was desperate to move my body. I did feel a little nervous about stripping down to my swimsuit on the perimeter of the lake, after which I had to wade for about a quarter mile to get to water deep enough to swim in. I was acutely aware of my exposed skin, glowing against the murky waters. But no one else seemed to be around.
When I came back to the hostel with wet hair, clutching a towel to my chest, I told the hostel owner I’d just gone for a swim. His mouth dropped open. “In the lake?” he asked. I nodded, wondering where else someone in this town might go for a swim. “But mi hijita,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned, “that lake is full of piranhas!”
I shivered and sighed simultaneously. I had already checked off the one thing mentioned in my guidebook — a mention that did not include piranhas (though to be fair, did not include swimming, either) — and two days still stretched relentlessly before me.
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