Touring South America: In Search of Our Inner Children

By Nico Bonder

In South America we discovered how important it was to allow to our inner children to be free. Let them play, laugh and explore.
This book has that spirit. You can skip chapters and read the trip chronologically or you can follow the order of the 10 thematic axes.

In "Touring South America" I tell you the best (and worst) that we lived during 195 days in our adventure of almost 31,000 kilometers through 10 countries in South America, and although not everything was happiness and good times, you can live the happiness that we felt every time our inner children ran free ahead of us.

A book that all travel lovers will enjoy, those who get excited feeling the experiences created mile by mile by backpackers on the trails of our continent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nico Bonder
• Release date: Sep 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005143633

Nico Bonder

Nico Bonder escribe ficción hace más de 10 años. Luego de haber compartido más de 100 cuentos en internet decidió compilar los mejores en 3 volúmenes, llamados: Una caricia divina, Visita oficial y Anécdotas infantiles.En 2016 emprendió junto a su pareja un viaje de 7 meses por 10 países sudamericanos, excusa perfecta para unir dos pasiones: viajar y escribir. De esa experiencia nació "Recorriendo Sudamérica", un libro que con espíritu lúdico nos muestra cómo es viajar como mochilero por Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Surinam, Guayana Francesa y Brasil.Los textos de Nico Bonder avanzan rápido, con más acciones que descripciones, con un tono directo y toques de humor.

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LEARNING AS YOU GO

26 - Murphy's Hitchhike Laws

Murphy's Hitchhike Law #1: The amount of time you'll have to wait on the road, will be directly proportional to the anxiety you show to the drivers passing by.

The trip started successfully, the first time we thumbed a lift, a truck stopped at side of the road. We were surprised by our effectiveness, because in Colombia it was not easy to hitchhiking, and most of our attempts had failed. The fear of war lasts in the souls of people even when their president receives The Nobel Peace Prize, as a consequence they see any stranger as a potential danger. It is a fear that can be seen in the fleeting look of the drivers or in the speedy speaking way of the people on street when they talk to you.

Murphy's Hitchhike Law #2: The more elegant the car, the more ignored you will be.

Our driver's machine was neither cute nor new, but it went to the same destination as us.

Traveling 12 hours straight in a truck gives you hours of silence, which can be used to appreciate landscapes appearing in front of you for the first time or to think and reflect. Landscapes, in general, bore me. If through 800 kilometers there are just mountains and trees, and every once in a while there`s a village, I only wake up from my astonishment when I get to these villages, there I try to see a little of the lives of those people who inhabit these sides of the road and who watch the time passing by peacefully, watching big trucks going by in front of their houses, fleeting like a whiplash. The rest of the time, my inner child is rocked by the movements of the big truck engines which leave him exhausted as if he had climbed the mountain running.

Murphy's Hitchhike Law #3: The higher you climb in your trip, the fuller and loaded your truck will travel.

One of the longest trips we made was to go from Bogotá to Medellin. The most difficult thing had been to leave the Colombian capital. We traveled to the land of paisas, where more than two and a half million people from Medellin live, and who show an exaggerated pride due to two things: their transportation system and being the friendliest people in Colombia. The truck that took us there was loaded with 34 tons of food for chickens; it's like carrying 60 cows on two axes. To get there we had to go through one of the most dangerous routes in the country, where deaths due to avalanches are common. The monotonous noise of the engine and landscape makes you move like in slow motion, everything takes longer to mutate, that's why we felt that we were not moving, and 12 hours travelling were fading away as slow as the drops that came down from our forehead. My inner child woke up when we went through some villages where baths and truck washes were possible thanks to the amount of natural water that flowed from the mountains.

The day before, there had been an avalanche on the main route, that's why they had enabled an alternative route, but on the day of our trip there was a new avalanche and that route was also blocked, so when we were about 100 kilometers from our destination the trucker, one of those big Colombians with brown curly hair, had to call his boss to find out if we were going to be able to pass or not.

Murphy's Hitchhike Law #4: The more generous your truck driver is, the heavier his cargo will be and the slower his truck will go.

About 70 kilometers from Medellín, the driver told us that police allowed to go through the avalanche area until 10 o'clock, and it was already at 9 o'clock, so he was going to spend the night in a hotel and if we wanted, he would pay us a room. Seeing that at that time it would be impossible to hitchhike, we accept his proposal. Hotel was cheap but for us it was better than the Marriott. One side of the hotel was bordered by the road which led to a precipice. Jumping through it, we could see a great mountain. A bright moon like the reflector of a lighthouse served us as a guide in that epic landscape for our eyes. The hotel had a pool so big that our friend, the trucker, could have parked his machine inside it and another pool a little smaller, in which only a car would fit, and witch was full with stream water. We dined the famous bandeja paisa (perhaps the third pride of Medellin): a dish that includes beans, rice, fried plantain, salad, yucca, fried egg, arepa, chorizo, pork rind and beef steak. The trucker chatted with people from the hotel showing some acquaintanceship but not a friendship. They commented about the avalanche news and talked about whether the weather was going to improve or not. The kindness was not only in gestures, like the one that the truck driver had had with us, also in the tone of voice clearly paisa, that moves with a tune made with pauses and without hurries, with stretched vowels, kindness is perceived in that peace felt when listening to that slow, polite and courteous talk.

Murphy's Hitchhike Law #5: The hotter it is, the older and less comfortable your truck will be.

With Lu we changed our clothes and went to the pool to freshen up, something that suited us well after having traveled more than 12 hours with a heat that had made us perspire thick drops, and that felt really suffocating in the cabin of the old truck, without air conditioning and with the windows down, which let in the hot air of Colombian mountains. In reality we didn´t cool down, we freeze until we trembled: our teeth sounded like castanets, but even so we couldn’t stop smiling. Our laughter cut the silence of that cold night, which little by little began to smell of happiness.

1 - The Tucumán ´s boy film

We started our trip from Córdoba, we headed to Tucumán making autostop. The first ride, which was only about 5 kilometers would be the hardest emotionally, it meant to say goodbye to family and loved ones, but also to certainties, meant to start feeling the anxiety of not knowing what is going to happen and how it is going to be. My dad was in charge of that trip, and when he left us at a gas station he could not control his tears, so I had to say goodbye quickly so that he would not continue to be distressed while we waited for a truck driver to give us the OK to begin our adventure.

Unlike what would come further north, the experience was good and we moved fast. First a truck took us to Jesús María, then a van approached us at the intersection of Route 60 and there we found a parked truck. There the movie started, and it was an Argentinean traditionalist movie, with a couple of clichés to show the archetype of a truck driver. In the film ´s trailer they will have to put a sign with a warning This film contains adult language and scenes of nudity.

The Tucuman truck driver had stopped to urinate on one side of the road, we could say that we caught him red- handed. With his 5 feet and round face, he first distrusted us when he saw us next to the truck, but he accepted to give us a lift quickly. We have two hypotheses about Tucu: or he had lived too many stories or he was a good liar. His movie could be a road movie showing 24 hours of a truck driver's life. It starts with Tucu talking with another truck driver who confesses that he is gay and Tucu replies that although he had nothing against him, he is not interested in trying. In the next scene told by the protagonist, we could see Tucu in a typical town in Buenos Aires ´s interior, in one of those where it seems that nothing happens, every neighbor knows each other, rides a bicycle and everyone greets each other, and bad things become open secrets. Tucu parked next to other trucks in front of a cabaret that apparently was for gays and many transvestites were seen. Tucu and his friend did not know if what they saw were men or women. He finished his story there, at that point, leaving us intrigued, then when we asked him what would happen if he faced a cute transvestite, he doubted about what he would do. He smiled, and continued driving along the bumpiest route in northern Argentina.

Later he told us that he had a mistress teacher, and the film would shows that this woman is waiting him in her white coat in another town a few kilometers away from the transvestite cabaret; she is standing on the side of the road, and when he arrives, they make love violently, then he gets into his truck, throws her a kiss from the cabin and leaves without looking the rearview mirror to not see how she stays there waving.

Stories that Tucu told us didn´t stop accumulating pornographic scenes. We do not know why, but in his anecdotes there was always a teacher. He said he once picked up another teacher who told him that her fantasy was to fuck with a truck driver so he pulled over the truck and satisfied the woman. With Lu we listened to those stories like someone who goes to the movies and decides to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the story. With my partner we have known each other for so long that we did not need to ask ourselves if we believed him or not, we both knew that we had chosen to do it, for the sake of the story.

In the police fiction he had another movie. Once a thief broke into his house, he heard noises and barks from his Rottweiler dog. Very cautiously he went out into the yard and saw a tall man, with a huge back who was trying to enter through a back door, Tucu yelled at him and the guy ran holding a knife, his faithful pet that was standing behind our hero, ran and jumped over his back, and grabbed one of the thief's arms while Tucu managed to protect his belly from the knife of the thug which reached him and came to cut his shirt. Can you imagine the scene in slow motion? I do.

He left us 30 kilometers from Bella Vista, which was our destination. After hitchhiking a half hour stopped a bus that is responsible for bringing workers to harvest lemons and we had such a good luck that it turned out to be a neighbor of Lu's grandparents, so he left us at the house ´s door. Hitchhiking in this stage was so good that we felt encouraged and believed that the rest of our road trip would also be easy, big mistake. Nowhere else, we would be lucky enough to find a truck driver with the ability to narrate so many movies in such a few kilometers.

11 - When bad luck chases you

In the trip from Pisco to Lima it seemed that destiny would smile on us, the first truck that stopped was going to Peruvian capital, it was going to be first time that we would get from one point to another in a single post. But, the truck driver was one of those people who move through life with a black cloud floating above his head.

He told us that his wife had left him, as many of songs we heard in Peru said, the woman told him that she wanted to dedicate herself to having fun. She exchanged husband and children for party and alcohol. The man went on telling his story, and we as vagabond psychologists listened and tried to comfort him and give him some advice. What to say to a man who feels his life has no meaning and that we have just met? His eyes moistened and his voice faded, although he tried to hide his pain. Nervously he adjusted his hair as black as the steering wheel of his truck with quick movements and touched his thick nose, Inca pride.

We were witnesses and