Wheels Travels Renee Bruns

This story took place in October 2023…
We – my mom, my sister, and I – arrived at the La Paz, Bolivia airport around 2 am.  We flew from Columbus, OH to New York to Bogota, Colombia, and finally to La Paz, Bolivia.  We fumbled through the immigration process as immigration officers took our pictures and payments for our 30 day tourist visas.
We stepped out the door of the airport and found a taxi who drove us into the city.  I had arranged for a two bedroom apartment in the heart of La Paz and advised the host that we would be arriving late.  He confirmed that it was no problem and that a key would be inside a lockbox which would be locked securely on the fence near the building.  He sent pictures of the lockbox with a video on how to open it, and directions on how to get into the apartment.
Our driver was young and friendly.  He found the high rise building that we were staying in and patiently waited as we searched for the lockbox.  I sat in the backseat of the car, not wanting him to drive away until we were securely inside.  La Paz, Bolivia is certainly not the safest city in Latin America, and I didn’t want to be standing outside in a neighborhood I as unfamiliar with at 3 am.
My mom and Natalie searched and searched, looking at all of the fences near the building.  They could not find it.  They searched in bushes and around the corner.  Nothing.
I messaged our host on WhatsApp but got no response.  Our driver was getting impatient, naturally, because his meter had no way to charge us now that were at a standstill.  He eventually insisted that he needed to leave and started to unpack our luggage from the car.  I paid him and gave him a generous tip for his patience.  But now we were standing on the sidewalk, in the pitch black of the night, three American woman with luggage and valuables and nowhere to go. 
I tried to call our host but there was no answer.  Of course there’s not.  It’s 3 am! I thought to myself.
We stood near the entrance to the building and I pulled up Google Maps.  There was a hotel around the corner and we decided this was our best option.  We’d squeeze into a small bed if we had to.  At this point, we just wanted to be inside where we knew it was safe.  Plus, it was only about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and we were not dressed for the weather.
We walked just a few minutes and turned the corner.  The street was lined with lamp posts, many which were not working.  There was a hotel but it’s lobby was dark and it’s door was locked.  The other stores and restaurants were all closed too.  There were few people and it was incredibly eerie.
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I remembered the name of a hotel I almost booked before I found the apartment.  Hotel Europa.  It was a very nice hotel and, according to Google, it was still open.  We didn’t know what else to do, so as soon as a taxi drove by, we flagged it down and I told him, using my limited Spanish, where we were going.  We piled in the backseat, holding our bags as my wheelchair had taken up most of the trunk space.
I followed the map as we moved away from the city and saw that we were driving into the countryside.  I started to wonder why we weren’t turning left at every intersection.  My map clearly indicated that we needed to go left.  And we needed to go left several blocks earlier.
I asked the driver, again in Spanish that I had only been learning for four months, why we weren’t going towards the hotel.  I pointed this time at the map and he nodded, shaking his head with a bit of a smile.  He mumbled something under his breath and turned around.  Whew!  I thought.  Where were we even going?
About 15 minutes later, he pulled up to a very nice building, probably the nicest building in La Paz.  He turned the corner towards the main entrance and I saw a dark lobby.  Crap!  I thought.  What are we going to do?  We have now

In two days, I will turn 40.  I sit in Mendoza, Argentina and wonder if this was how my life was supposed to turn out, or did I so strongly will for something different that I landed myself on a path moving so rapidly and intensely that I can’t get off.  I can’t even remember what I thought my future looked like a year ago, or two years ago.  I suppose if I’ve learned nothing else in my 40 years, it’s that it never turns out the way we think it will.  But man, this is a great life!
I think back to 654 days ago – my last day working in corporate America.  It was one of the absolute most scary days of my life.  I had no idea what I was going to do after I was done traveling, and I didn’t know if things would ‘work out.’  Months after leaving, I talked to mentors and peers, searching for some solid plan to move me forward.  Of course, no one could tell me exactly what to do.  The advice I always got was, “It will work out.  If you had the guts to leave your job, you can do anything.”
I still frequently wonder if they are right.  Maybe it won’t work out, but I have to believe that the strong pull I’ve been having to do good in this world will turn into something wonderful and grand.  So I will keep going, because I am so fortunate to be able to.  And because I have done some really cool things this past year.  And I’m not just talking about becoming a Guinness World Record Holder (which is pretty bad ass)!
This past week I took Spanish language placement test.  I passed into the C1 level, which is the ‘Fluent Speaker’ level.  There’s only one level higher, and that’s the ‘Native Speaker’ level.  When I landed in Argentina 10 months ago, I spent most of my nights researching how to learn a language faster.  It turns out the best way to learn it is to just do it. 
I cried with my professors and there were days when I told Tony I just wanted to ‘go home.’  It was really, really hard.  But…I can actually call myself bilingual, and for this farmgirl from rural Ohio, that feels really cool. 
I have no idea what I’m going to do with this new skill.  I’ve thought about teaching English to Spanish speakers when I get back to the US, or leading a Spanish-language meetup.  But what I do know is that I am better because of this experience, my mind is stronger, and I understand an entire part of our world that I could have never fully experienced or known had I not dropped myself into a strange place where no one was like me.
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What I haven’t written about publicly is something new to me since I left my job all those months ago.  I was six months into my travels when I had this sudden desire to know what my medical diagnosis is.  My family and I have always been told it’s some sort of skeletal dysplasia, and most commonly we were told that I have diastrophic dwarfism.  This diagnosis never fit, mostly because I am at least five foot tall and people with diastrophic dwarfism are much shorter.
My family and I have done genetic testing many times.  When I was a child (several times) and again when 23andme.com became a commodity.  The results were always inconclusive.  There was never a genetic (DNA) diagnosis for me.  I started to accept that science was just not advanced enough, and I may never know what this thing – this disability – that has caused me so much joy and so much heartache is.  I started to live with the uncertainty and it became a comfortable thing for me.  I suppose that could have led me to leave my job and enter into the uncertain.  I was just used to not knowing how things would turn out.
But on a random day in October 2022, while visiting some islands in the South Pacific, I had a strong desire to know what my diagnosis was.  There must be some irony in the fact that I was in a place with little WiFi when I had this urge to research, extens

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wheelstravels.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wheelstravels.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wheelstravels.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wheelstravels.substack.com