On the border (Yacuiba, Bolivia)

Hell must be freezing over. Or the end of the world is near. Have the rivers started running uphill or did pigs begin to fly? Something must be happening because Davy ate meat. And then he ate some more.

Davy – my avowed vegan – has never eaten meat. Even when he was a baby he devoured mashed up carrots and brown rice, but any kind of meat I attempted to put in his mouth came right back out – with force, I might add.

We were walking along the street in Santa Cruz a couple weeks ago and I stopped to buy some meat-on-a-stick. “Can I have the potato skewered on the end?” Davy asked. That part came as no surprise.

But when he asked for a taste of the meat, I was flabbergasted. And when he asked if he could buy a stick for his very own, I was bowled over. I figured he was hungry – very hungry.

Fast forward to today and our meals arrived in the restaurant. I figured John and Davy would do their normal swap – Davy gives his meat to Daddy in exchange for rice and potatoes. So when Davy picked up his fork and knife and started to eat his milanesa (a Bolivian version of chicken-fried steak), I was pretty much awestruck.

When he asked for more, well, let’s just say that I doubt my eyes will ever return to their original position after bugging out so far.

We’re now at the Argentinian border – on the Bolivian side – and I feel like such a hypocrite. It wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote about fear of the unknown paralyzing would-be travelers, and yet now we’re here – in Bolivia – for the express reason that it is Bolivia. It’s safe, it’s known, it’s comfortable.

We had planned to cross the border and begin a new adventure today, but somehow the thought of yet another currency to get used to and a new way of doing things was a bit more than we wanted to deal with. We checked into a hotel and will face the Argentinian boogeyman tomorrow.

Kilometers today: 26
Kilometers to date: 22327