PULLED INTO TUPIZA, feelin’ about half past dead. Ok, not quite, but I definitely was spent after another night bus ride. I’d stayed in Potosi, a gorgeous city high on the Altiplano, 12,500 feet up and at the foot of Cerro Rico, the phatest silver deposit on the planet, a bit longer than planned due to the political unrest that the nation had experienced for a month. The president resigned the following week. As a result, touristas’ itineraries had been waylaid by the many blockades that Bolivians deployed to express their discontents. As La Paz and the North seemed the center of the cataclysm, I planned to spend a week or so further South, in the red rock canyons around Tupiza and the wine country of Tarija that reminded the first Spanish settlers of Andalusia. Sounded good to me: hiking the mountains and drinking in the foothills of New Spain. As good a plan as many and better than holing up in Potosi for the duration.

After a few hours “sleep” in a local hotel, I roused myself to discover that this little village was surrounded by red rock mountains. Getting excited, I found my way to the mercado and bought provisions. I also picked up a map and briefly spoke to a quasi tour guide who assured me that there was hiking a’plenty close by and easy to find. The map listed distances to various awesome spectacles though it was quite sketchy of the trails. Nevertheless, I felt confident. I had all day, the sun was shining one of those stunning clear blue days that you get in the mountains during the winter, and I could see how narrow this river valley was.

Tupiza and the environs were gorgeous, a lot like Southern Utah, just as billed. (This region also was where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their maker, after robbing banks laden with miners’ payrolls.) Sure, I was alone and at times a bit lonely but days like these were why I had come to Bolivia. I walked down the “main” road out of town, which paralleled the train tracks and was lined by houses to one side and ranchland on the other. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to turn because the map sucked but I figured no worries. If I overshot the trail, I would hit a fork and some sort of industrial plant. Predictably, I overshot the trail—at least I think I did—but hit the intersection in question. The “road” heading West looked more like a drainage ditch but it was a small, poor town so I figured maybe it’s right.

The ditch turned out to be a bonafide road. Houses lined it, at intervals, with a few stray dogs guarding fenced enclosures, pedestrians and a couple of Bolivianos on bikes. I flagged one down, showed him my map, and asked about La Puerta del Diablo, the Devil’s Door, which I presumed to be a prominent local landmark and was the first destination on my hike. He seemed to assure me that I was heading in the right direction, though our conversation was hardly long or coherent, my Spanish being less than decent. The road, actually, was a floodplain. In the dry winter, though, it was wide (fifty feet?), dusty, and rocky.

As I moved into the “campo” (countryside), perhaps more than three kilometers from my hotel, I still wasn’t certain of my route. So when I saw a man painting the front door of his adobe brick house a resplendent shade of blue, I figured to ask him the way. I veered off the “main” section of the “road,” towards his house, still over fifty feet from him. I hadn’t called to him, but it seemed clear that he saw me coming. Then, my life changed.

From the sides of his house and the other one next to it, a pack of dogs appeared. I’ll never be sure how many there were, four or five, I’d say. Black, somewhat hairy, each maybe 40 pounds, all barking and fast approaching. I was taken aback by the speed and anger with which they approached but was confident that nothing would happen, as I clearly was harmless and far away from their presumed master and house. Alas, I was wrong. Though I started to shout sternly at the dogs to back off (such tactics work regularly when dogs come at me while bicycling through rural Illinois), they didn’t heed my commands.

Then, before I really knew what was happening, I’d been bitten. And then again. And then I realized, sort of, that I was surrounded by a pack of very angry, bloodthirsty dogs! I started moving away, then running, shouting at them, not sure what to do. I must have fled at least a hundred feet further away from the house, dogs on my heels, quite literally taking bites out of me. Somewhere along the way, I started to punch a few in their snouts. I fell as the creekbed rose a bit on the far side of the “road” and grabbed some rocks. While hiking a week back with a Peace Corps volunteer, Mike had told me about one of the only Bolivian pastimes that he had acquired: throwing rocks at vicious dogs. Now I understood. I started throwing rocks myself. I don’t know if any human called off the dogs, or my resistance forced them away, if they were tired, or if they’d defended their turf, but they backed off. The whole incident lasted, dunno, maybe three minutes?

I was stunned and saw a second man coming towards me. I stumbled towards him. He seemed older than the first man, who I never spoke to and never got a close look at, but I presumed that this man was the father of the other. He was toothless, a cheekful of coca leaves sticking out from his dark brown face. He seemed sad, muttered a few things, and then went back to one of the houses. He returned with some medical supplies, uttered further condolences, and started to clean me up. It was then I first looked at my wounds: both legs had been attacked multiple times. It appeared that I had been bitten perhaps five times, scratched a few others. I discovered a few more wounds as he slowly dabbed antiseptic on cotton balls wrapped around matches. We conversed a bit, but of what I don’t recall. I think it was then that I started to go into shock and worried that I would pass out, bloodied and battered on a dirt path a few clicks from Tupiza, not a soul who knew me knowing where in the world I was (well, I had emailed a few people from Potosi informing them that I’d be taking the Potosi-Tupiza night bus and I’d left a 4 word note on the bed of my hotel room: “Canyon of the Incas”). The wave of nausea passed quickly and I got my wits about me. I asked the man his name and if his dogs had rabies. He replied with a stone face. I think he knew what I was asking and didn’t want any trouble: gringo attacked by his dogs smelled bad, I knew.

So I got up, collected my things, and limped back to the main road. Surprisingly, I hadn’t walked that far until I was by the intersection that I’d fatefully turned at. I managed to catch a micro-bus back to town and paid my one Boliviano (twelve cents) while I started to think more clearly. At first, I thought I might be fine by the following day and go for another hike! Then, I realized that what had occurred was far more serious. Random dogs in the campo, biting my sorry ass (well, legs). That, that, that, could mean rabies! Like most folks, I knew rabies were fatal, required a belly-fully of painful shots, and little else.

I also knew that I had to deal with this situation and pronto. I got to my hotel, showed off my battle wounds to stunned workers, and limped to the closest phone. Almost in flashback I could see mi amigo Chris (a friend of five years from back in Illinois; his wife and my friend Gloria works with me and was on a Fulbright in Bolivia) saying, as I left Cochabamba about five days back, “If you get into trouble, we’ll come and get you wherever you are.” At the time, it seemed a bit melodramatic and I assured him I would be fine. Well, I wasn’t.

I called Chris and Gloria’s house in Coch and got Gloria. “How are you doing,” she asked; “not good,” I replied and told her my saga-in-progress. Naturally, she was aghast. We agreed I would call back in thirty minutes, enough time for the two of them to make some phone calls to a Peace Corps nurse and some friends who were pilots of small aircraft. I killed some time cleaning myself up and eating a bit and then called back. Their friend claimed that there was an airstrip not far from town and that the flying time would be perhaps three hours. It was a little after 1PM, Chris would meet the pilot at the Cochabamba airport by 2 and arrive between 4 and 5! My job was to get to the drop sight, wherever that was, make sure the landing strip was clear of debris, and light a signal fire so that the pilot could see which way the wind was blowing, literally. Holy moly!

The wheels were in motion. I emailed my family in the States to reveal the shocking news: attacked by random dogs! Possibly rabid! Instead of getting treated at the little hospital in town or taking another 8 hour night bus to the much larger city of Tarija, I’m rendezvousing with Chris at a remote mountain airstrip where I’ll be whisked back to Coch for treatment! News at 11!