The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America Read Online Free Page A

what are we looking for exactly?”
    I shrugged. “Stories, I guess. Adventure. Ghosts.”
    We both laughed at how little we’d planned anything beyond that moment. At least in this, I thought, we had something in common with Thompson. When the nurses at the neighboring table got up to leave, Sky’s eyes followed them to the door.
    “You know what they call speeding in Colombia?” he asked, turning back to me. “
Ir a toda mierda
, which basically means ‘going full shit.’ ”
    I laughed again and finished my beer. The two of us stayed at the pub for a couple more hours that night, poring over the map and sketching back-of-the-napkin itineraries beneath posters of scantily clad Aguila beer models. By the time we teetered back to our hotel, feeling chummy and intrepid, my backpack was waiting for me in the room. On one of the plastic clasps, the airline had tied a short note.
Buen viaje y buena suerte
, it read. So long and good luck.
II
    “It’s good that you should see a Colombian mall,” Sky said the next morning as we nursed our hangovers with fried eggs and guava juice. “They’re no different than American malls, really, but Colombians love them because they combine two of their favorite things: shopping and air-conditioning.”
    The Muzak and fake foliage of the Portal del Prado shopping center wasn’t the rugged, romantic setting I’d picturedfor my first full day in South America, but simply “going full shit” into the wilds proved more difficult than I’d envisioned. There were errands to run and bus tickets to buy, and in Colombia, these kinds of seemingly straightforward tasks can sometimes occupy one’s entire day. Simply put, America’s quintessentially Protestant emphasis on efficiency has never gained much of a foothold in Latin America, where any number of commonplace tasks and routines can seem needlessly swaddled in layers of tail-chasing and bizarre, paradoxical frustrations.
    Consider the phenomenon of Colombian cell phones. Before setting out for Guajira, Sky and I needed to gather a few things: some nonperishable food, cash, batteries, a couple of bags of “goodwill” candy for any kids we met along the way. But most important and time-consuming was the task of acquiring a couple of cell phones. It had never occurred to me that I might carry a cell in South America. For starters, I was accustomed to a messy system of contracts, carriers, and expensive plans back home. Moreover, I hadn’t expected to find much service outside of the major cities. So the ubiquity of cell phones and cellular coverage in South America was the first of many misconceptions about the developing world that would evaporate for me in the coming months.
    This is not to say that Colombian cell phone usage makes any sense. Dirt-cheap and available on every street corner, most Colombian cells operate on a counterintuitive arrangement in which minutes are prepaid and incoming calls are free. The result of this, Sky explained on our way to the mall, is a Kafka-esque scenario in which everyone owns a cell phone but no one ever has any minutes. So rather than waste their own, most callers will simply dial their intended target, then wait for a single ring before hanging up, hoping that the recipient will call back on his or her own dime.Which, for lack of minutes, no one ever does. Consequently, the streets of most Colombian towns are crowded with vendors charging customers to use fleets of non-depleted cell phones, which they keep tied to chains like pens at the bank. In even the smallest Colombian villages, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a sign that advertises these
minutos
, posted in corner-store bodegas, on street carts, and even in private homes.
    But we didn’t want to rely on
minutos
, and we figured there’d be times when we’d need to call each other, so we squared away our phone situation at Portal del Prado, enjoying some Arctic air-conditioning in the process. Sky’s Spanish was vastly