Sendero Gringo

Book excerpt: At the turn of the twenty-first century, several preoccupied travelers wander the gringo trail in South America. Among them, Albert, a retired U.S. postal worker, has come to the southern continent to live in the moment. Ten months into his journey, however, after experiencing epiphany on Salar de Uyuni, the power of love in the Rurrenabaque rain forest, and unbounded farce during the offseason at a beach town in Peru, the weary pilgrim cant keep his eyes off his watch. Among them, Reynaldo, a Spanish teacher on sabbatical, aspires to reconstitute his life following divorce. He has already blown a chance for renewal with a cellist he met during Holy Week in Santa Cruz and driven off a poet who attempted to seduce him the night he met Albert. After breaking up a fist fight in Vilcabamba, Equador, Reynaldo hides out in his room at a hostel and wonders whether deliverance from his neurotic obsession will ever transpire. Among them, Marci, wife of an incorrigible philanderer, hopes that holiday in rough country with her husband will save their marriage. When Jerry ditches her at the start of a hike on Huayna Picchu, a Chicano boy named Simon volunteers to lead her up the peak and then plunges to his death at the top of their climb. Back in Cuzco, she learns that her spouse has betrayed her yet again. Among them, Simon, who was cheated out of a field trip to Peru in high school, has vowed, during a stay at a treatment center, to make the journey on his own. Due to his shaky grasp of geography, he begins his southern trek in Chile. In Tupiza, Bolivia, he befriends an addled Vietnam Veteran and, during an altercation between the two, shoves the ex-marine off a cliff. Sendero Gringo is a collection of travelogues that begins at the end of one road and ends at the beginning of another. No one path guides its reader but another and another wind ahead and back instead.