📸 Photo

and Grandma shouting advice to everyone. I packed my things and tied them up in two bags and with a safety pin fastened a note to one of them: ‘Property of Yossi Ghinsberg. Will return December 15.’ I shoved the bags under a bed. I took my backpack. It held only the bare necessities, including Dede’s red poncho. It had been in my pack since the trip.

Although I wasn’t leaving for two days, I wanted to get my farewells over with. Then I would be completely free of obligations. So early that evening I went to say goodbye to Lisette and her family. They were good people, and I had become attached to them during my stay in La Paz. Their home was in the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood. I had spent many pleasant evenings there listening to wonderful Bolivian music, enjoying fascinating conversations, and eating delicious foods. I was on particularly cordial terms with her mother, and at the end of these evenings her father would drive me back to the old-folks’ home in his fancy car, and the guys there would give me a hard time, teasing me about my good fortune.

Lisette and her parents listened to my plans for the trip and grew anxious.

‘That’s too dangerous, Yossi. Don’t go. Stay here. Terrible things might happen to you there.’

I promised to be careful. I left my documents and my remaining cash — two hundred and fifty dollars — with them.

‘If I’m not back by December fifteenth, please