‘It is normal, Gabi,’ I told her, looking into her still slightly defensive eyes. ‘We can all be bisexual, if we want to be. But only if we want to be, not for someone else’s titillation.’
‘You’re right.’ She smiled. ‘Now let me do something just for you.’
Her mouth showered kisses all over my breasts and then circled one of my nipples. She started sucking, gently and hesitantly, and then more greedily, almost like a suckling baby. Her fingers echoed her actions on my other nipple and I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the sensations, wanting to be completely passive so that she could choose for herself what she wanted to do to me. I knew she’d do it right.
Always sensitive, my nipples felt like they were on fire from her protracted sucking and nuzzling. Her other hand moved down past my belly and rubbed lightly over my fleece and then pressed firmly in a circular motion just above my clit. My whole sex was suffused with that velvety warm feeling, combined with the delicious certainty that I was going to come, and come hard. Then she turned around and I thought she was going to give me her sex to tongue again while she did the same to me, but instead she spread it over my tits and moved lightly from side to side. It was as though her cunt was sucking my nipples up inside it one by one as she swayed on top of me. Her hands meanwhile had found other work, with two of her fingers gently fucking me while her other hand played my clitoris like a violin, one finger fretting the hardness itself while the flat of her hand pressed down on my mons. I raised it up to meet her palm and she took the hint and pressed hard and fingered faster and I grabbed the trim pale globes of her arse as she slid crazily across my breasts and pulled them apart and mashed them together. She took up my rhythm with her hands and in my mind’s eye I could see inside my cunt, see the walls swelling and reddening and throbbing and pulsating and then landsliding as the orgasm shook me.
We ate fondue and a massive salad in the hotel restaurant, spearing bread and dipping it in the molten cheese and scoffing the salad as though we’d spent the day labouring in the coca fields, then fell into bed and slept, satisfied in every respect.
There were two things they told us. First, the path down to the river was obvious, just start at the corner of the football field. Unfortunately after about an hour of walking in the intense heat we’d stopped exclaiming at the bananas and coffee growing at the side of the rapidly narrowing track and walked round a piece of old sheeting spread with leaves. Coca leaves.
I say unfortunately because the other thing they had said was, take care not to get off the right paths in the jungle areas and stray into the coca plantations. Whoops.
‘Shall we go back?’ asked Gabi nervously.
I looked around. There was no one in sight and I wondered how bad it would be if we were found in the plantation. Loads of tourists must make the same mistake and end up off the path, and it was hard to believe we would be harmed. The track was descending so I guessed it would still lead down to the river; maybe not at the point we’d expected, but we could always walk up or down stream. Retracing our steps and starting again would mean two hours lost, and it was too hot to walk uphill unnecessarily.
‘Let’s just carry on,’ I decided. ‘Just for another half an hour, and if we can’t see the river by then we’ll turn back.’
At that moment a couple passed us, going uphill; a man in jeans and a woman in the usual five skirts – how do they stand it in the heat? – both carrying bundles on their backs, which, no getting away from it, had to be coca leaves. They responded to my
buenas días
politely and I brushed off any fears and set off down the way they’d come up with an obviously reluctant Gabi in tow.
Life would be boring if all our decisions were right ones, but when three men appeared in front of us and stood stock still, waiting for us to walk towards them, I rather wished that I’d made the right decision and turned back earlier.
‘Bliss, what do we do?’ asked Gabi, agonised.
‘Keep walking, smile and say hello and hope they get out of the way,’ I said in an undertone. We had to brave it out, otherwise we’d clearly be running up the path away from them. I had no doubt that if they wanted to they’d be able to catch us.
Following my advice – another bad decision – we reached them but they didn’t move. There was no way round them.
‘
Buenas dias
,’ I tried again with a smile. ‘
Podemos pasar
?’ I knew
podemos
meant can we do something, and from the Spanish Civil War stuff I’d read I thought
pasar
must mean pass.
The one in the middle answered me in a torrent of Spanish of which I understood only the first word, which was ‘No’. We seemed to be at an impasse, both literally and verbally.
‘We’re going down to the river,’ I thought I said in Spanish. They laughed and spoke to each other, and the middle one stepped forward. He was small and dark-skinned with a moustache.
‘You, no, be, here,’ he said, jabbing a finger towards me. Gabi took a step back.
‘I do be here,’ I replied pleasantly, figuring that he wouldn’t understand anyway. ‘OK, if it means that much to you, we’ll go back.’
One of the others who had a handsome Indian face said something in Spanish. Although my heart was thumping my fear was modified by the fact that neither of them sounded particularly threatening, and the average Bolivian is about three-quarters my size. Maybe they were just as frightened of me, though Gabi’s backup lacked a certain presence. Anyway, sometimes you have to live dangerously and the adrenalin rush was exhilarating.
‘You,
Norteamericana
?’ asked the handsome one.
‘
Inglés
,’ I answered with a smile, then pointed at Gabi. ‘
Frances
.’ I almost felt I was getting the hang of this Spanish lark.
‘
Inglés
?’ he repeated, and put a hand on my arm. I decided not to assume they were going for a gang rape and smiled again and nodded. He was quite cute, and I was still charged up from the bike ride and sex with Gabi the day before. I couldn’t resist making my smile a little bit pouty.
The moustached one slapped his hand away from mine and said something to him angrily then pushed me, quite hard, and then Gabi.
‘You go,’ he said fiercely. ‘You no here.’
The handsome one intervened again with a bit of nudging and I started wondering if I shouldn’t have smiled so suggestively, especially when he put his hand on my waist. Why do I always have to go too far?
‘Oh shit, Bliss, what are we going to do?’ wailed Gabi.
‘Tell them we’d love to entertain them but we’ve left our condoms back at the hotel?’ I suggested, but without much spirit left. The man with the moustache was looking as though he was considering a change of heart and my determined cheerfulness took a nosedive.
Suddenly they stepped backwards and started shuffling a bit, and then a voice came from behind us, rattling away in Spanish in what was most definitely a threatening tone. From our three chums’ reaction I assumed, and hoped, that the menace was directed at them and relaxed.
Turning I saw the kind of guy I’d have been delighted to have been introduced to in any circumstances, but if he was going to save us from assault by three skinny farm workers I was prepared to blind him with my maximum charm. He was tall for a Bolivian, with an aristocratically pale face unusual for someone with such high Indian cheekbones and sculpted lips. His dark eyes flashed fire as he harangued the men and despite the heat he was dressed in smart khaki trousers and a white shirt.
After he’d finished they slunk past us up the path without looking back. I turned to our saviour.
‘Thank you so much,’ I gushed. ‘
Muy, muy gracias – habla Inglés?
’
He wasn’t looking very happy. ‘Yes, I speak English. But I would suggest that as you don’t appear to be able to communicate with the field workers, your trespass is at best unwise, at worst completely irresponsible. It might be a good idea for you to bear in mind that English girls are seen as –’ his lips took on a disdainful sneer ‘– asking for it.’
I was furious. ‘Well that might be your take on it,
señor
, but I can assure you that to most people two women who have lost their way are not just easy game for any peasant who happens to be walking along the path. Anyway, she’s French.’
He laughed tightly. ‘In that case, don’t be stupid. Your guidebooks tell you not to go near coca plantations. Don’t they?’
‘So how are we to know?’ I asked innocently.
Not even bothering to answer me, and I don’t blame him because it would have been obvious to anyone, his eyes hardened even more. ‘When you’re in a strange country you must respect the customs of that country as much as its laws. You cannot do just what you like, and go where you want to.’
It was all quite right, but he was really bugging me. In one way I was impressed by his authority but I wasn’t too keen on being treated like a silly little girl.
‘As I said, we simply lost our way. We had no intention of showing any disrespect for anybody. So, thank you for helping us. We’ll be on our way now.’
Ironically he was blocking our path now but in the other direction, back the way we came.
‘I will show you the right path to the river.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ I said stiffly. ‘I think we’ll just go back to our hotel now – OK, Gabi?’
She nodded and he stood aside and let us walk on. However, I was aware that he was following behind us right up to a junction in the path, obviously where we had gone wrong. I swept past it and on to town without a backward glance, but I almost sensed him standing on the track, watching us to make sure we did indeed go back.
‘Well done, Bliss,’ said Gabi forlornly. ‘I wasn’t much use back there, was I?’
I put my arm round her. ‘Doesn’t matter. I suppose he was right, but he didn’t have to be so bloody rude about it.’
‘He was a bit frightening, I thought.’
‘Yeah. But tasty!’
She laughed. ‘You’re terrible. Aren’t I enough for you?’
I kissed her full on the lips. ‘Of course. It’s that bloody Carlos; he’s given me a taste for powerful men.’
‘You might have a taste for them, but I just can’t raise any interest in men at all at the moment.’
I wasn’t surprised, given the fact that her ex-boyfriend had made her into an unpaid and involuntary porn star. Poor Gabi; like too many women she’d been conned by a man playing the role of lover. We went back to the hotel and cooled off in the pool, and then I made her feel as special as I knew how.
Despite the delights of Gabi’s slim body I couldn’t get my mind off the man in the forest. Who was he, the plantation owner? He looked more like someone who would own a proper business, a legal one, rather than be involved in drugs. And what was he doing out there? Picking leaves surely wasn’t something that needed much in the way of supervision.
I shrugged off my suspicions – after all, anything could have happened with the three peasants – and let the memory of his angular face and chiselled lips come between my hands and Gabi’s body, which sent her whimpering over the edge, so he had done us a favour in more ways than one.
Back in La Paz we had a few days of half-hearted sightseeing and full-on fucking while we made our separate travel arrangements. Gabi was going south to reach Chile across the salt plains, while Carlos had recommended that I take the single-carriage train ride across the Andes.
‘I wish you would come with me,’ said Gabi on our last night together. ‘It’s the first time for months I’ve felt really happy.’
Bless. I was tempted to change my plans, but I was afraid she would get to depend on me. And realistically, while I love making love to women, after a while I really start to crave the attentions of men, especially tall blond ones and short dark ones. A pretty hopeless case, I’m afraid.
‘You’ll be right,’ I said, copying one of Red’s expressions. ‘I’ve got a feeling we’ll meet up again, if not in San Pedro then further down the line, and in the meantime you’re bound to hook up with someone else. Just try to stick up for yourself a bit more.’
My train left early in the morning, and Gabi came to see me off. We clung together and kissed passionately as the train pulled in to the platform, creating a bit of a stir among the couples who were to be my travelling companions. As luck would have it my seat was next to a middle-aged Englishman who kept trying to talk to me – oh of course, you want to know what women do to each other! – but I clamped my headphones on and stuck my nose in the George Orwell I’d picked up in the hotel’s book-swap library and only removed it to look out of the window. He gave up and started a conversation with the people behind and I had a peaceful journey.
Unfortunately the other end of the line, Arica, was in close competition with Puno for the least prepossessing place I’d encountered so far in my travels. Food and accommodation were expensive compared with Peru and Bolivia, but I economised by eating hot dogs and booking the night bus south, which would save a night’s lodging. There was little of interest in the town apart from a pretty little cathedral designed by Monsieur Eiffel – I wondered if it would have made Gabi homesick – so I beat a hasty retreat to San Pedro de Atacama.
It’s one thing leaving a girl a note saying see you in San Pedro, but quite another actually meeting up with someone in a strange town, even a one-horse oasis like this. It was like being in a western, the waterhole in the middle of the desert. If Red and Robbie were around I guessed I’d meet them sooner or later. Meanwhile I booked into a guesthouse that had rooms arranged around a central courtyard and got talking to some of the other backpackers who were hanging around it, who included the French Simon and Garfunkel guys I’d met on the Inca Trail and the Swiss couple from Taquile. The great thing about backpacking is you’re almost bound to meet everybody at least twice.