Throughout my childhood, there was a feeling of invincibility. A feeling of cosy comfort; a careful shielding from the outside world which softened any rough edges that I may have perceived, as I watched them from a safe distance.
Growing up in a beautiful and calm setting nestled within the British countryside, it felt as if very little could go wrong in my world. There were few moving parts. School (where I boarded) provided for my needs free of charge and free of hassle. I was able and indeed encouraged to pursue new and varied interests and roam as I pleased, within the boundaries of the rules.
“A small voice … was asking if this wasn’t just a bit easy”
I’m sure to most people this sounds just about ideal. Three meals a day, a truly excellent education and your worries only extending as far as how you would get on in a physics test that, in truth, you hadn’t really revised for beforehand.
Yet in quite a few ways I felt caged, desperate to see the world beyond the gates and beyond the idyllic British countryside. Once I left I travelled. Since my first solo trip, I haven’t ever really stopped.
A few years (and trips) after school, I found myself on a red-eye flight from Miami to Lima. The plane, an ageing and claustrophobic one belonging to Latam, was rammed full of Miami-based Hispanics, doubtless heading back to Peru to visit loved ones and reconnect with their origins. Though I was there for a different reason, I was equally excited as I struggled to get to sleep.
The thought of trekking the Inca Trail, seeing the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia or wandering the madcap city streets, tasting new food and experiencing new cultures was tantalising. Almost literally a world away from where I had come from.
It didn’t disappoint. Though I had potentially been to wilder and less-travelled corners of the globe during previous adventures, the differences were stark in culture and the people who called the continent home. I was able to try new things; eating guinea pig in Cusco or seeing condors soar above the Colca Canyon were both unforgettable.
This was all well and good yet there was something still sitting deep inside of me. It was a small voice which was asking if this wasn’t just a bit easy. I had been able to book all my buses and hostels online, there was little uncertainty and I rarely felt like I was pushing any boundaries. I was enjoying my time but in a relatively comfortable way.
Bolivia’s de facto capital city, La Paz, was no different in this regard. With streets stretching along the length steep and craggy hillsides, usually filled bumper to bumper with colectivos (minivans which serve as a form of public transport to you or me) and shops selling anything from shoes to llama foetuses, it was certainly an onslaught on my senses.
There was noise. This wasn’t the sort of noise which could be blocked out by a clever pair of headphones either. The car horns, rumbling engines and throngs of people wandering the street-side stalls all combined to create a noise which reverberated through me as I inhaled a heady mixture of diesel fumes and aromas from frying meats. It was surprisingly intoxicating.
At the same time, the city wasn’t devoid of comforts for a Western tourist. My hostel, situated just a stone’s throw from the presidential palace, had a bar for travellers to meet and share stories of far-flung corners of the world and some of the streets had been partially pedestrianised to encourage foot traffic through the city centre. There was noise and chaos but at the same time, there were sanctuaries which I could escape to when I felt I wanted to.
In hindsight, my judgment was naïve, a product of the largely sheltered existence which I had led in large part up until (and indeed beyond) visiting La Paz. Wandering the streets of the famous Witches Market, one of the semi-pedestrianised zones, I felt something drop down my back and onto my legs.
Twisting round, a bird had clearly taken the opportunity to relieve itself as I walked underneath. Without beating around the bush, I was covered in bird shit.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of this happening to you before, you’ll know it’s always less than pleasant. Still, I remained reasonably calm and almost instantaneously two men, who had clearly seen it happen, came to my aid to clean it off. As I stood there, I was just happy at their kindness in helping a tourist who was going through something of a moment of need. I never thought that they may have in fact been the cause of the mess down my back and legs and that there was a clear second motive to their actions.
Thanking them with my best gracias as they disappeared off at the point where they had cleared the worst of it off the back of my legs, I was overcome by a feeling of unease. I checked my pockets.
My passport was back at the hostel. I still had my phone. I could feel the weight of a wallet in the thigh pocket of my cargo shorts. Reaching into the pocket, I drew out a similar but definitely empty wallet which they had swapped with mine.
“The comfort blanket that I thought would protect me had been ripped away in an instant”
Panic rose inside me.
I whipped around the intersection where the theft had taken place, scanning for any sign of the two men who were, by this point, long gone. Then, a woman beckoned me over and signalled that they had got into a red colectivo. I sprinted off down the hill, panting in the thin La Paz air.
There were a couple of potential culprits. I dashed up to their sliding side doors, ripping them open in the hope of confronting my thieves. Even if I could have identified them (which I doubt I could have done) I had no plan for how to get my possessions back. In short, it was hopeless. My wallet, complete with all my cards, was gone.
This was the point where I switched into damage limitation, quickly bringing my phone out of my pocket to begin to cancel everything. My head was in a complete spin – the comfort blanket that I thought would protect me had been ripped away in an instant. Suddenly, I was facing a much greater level of adversity, travelling a foreign continent without a single bank card.
With my heart still pumping adrenaline around my body, I knew that I had done all I could in that moment. Dejected and annoyed at myself, I wandered back in the direction of my hostel.
While making my way back to the sanctuary of my dorm room, I sat on the steps up to the entrance of a nearby bank branch and cast my mind back to where I had come from. This filled my mind with a greater sense of clarity and calm than had been the case over the preceding fifteen minutes or so, which had resembled something more akin to blind panic.
Being pickpocketed was still a shock and not insignificantly distressing. There were certainly also practicalities around how I was going to continue on my trip without any bank cards at all. Even so, there was a small part of me which had wanted this; I had wanted to break away from the shielded and occasionally stagnant tradition of where I had come from.
I had implicitly acknowledged that there would be times when that would involve taking a giant step away from the comfortable option. Here, the comfortable option would have been to watch a video guide of La Paz on YouTube or perhaps to experience it with a guide and private transfers between places. It was an option I had rejected consciously.
The whole incident left me conflicted. I was undoubtedly pissed off at letting such a thing happen – that shroud of invincibility clearly wasn’t as strong as I had imagined in years gone by. At the same time, it was a lesson that I clearly needed to learn and I had been lucky that I didn’t lose more in the process of doing so.
For the first time during my trip to South America, I felt that I had truly broken away from the comfortable option, as I watched all the colectivos grind past at something much slower than walking pace and considered the adversity I now faced. Allowing myself something between a smile and a grimace on my step, I couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of how far I was from my days as a British schoolboy.
All that was left was to work out how to actually carry on without bank cards. At least the pickpockets had been generous enough to provide me with a new wallet.
Into The Elsewhere 