They fought a war over the Chaco even though no one wanted to live there. They said more people died from exposure than from bullets. Even today there are less than a handful of towns spread over a couple hundred thousand square kilometers. In the summer it reaches 120°F and the snakes hang from the trees like ornaments; trying to find the wind. Both the puma and the jaguar would compass us in the night. Judas would wake me so wild that I was afraid to approach him. Though untied he was not trying to escape. One local man asked me from atop his mule if I had a gun, his rifle resting across his withers. No, I said, I just have a donkey. He paused, looked at Judas, spit out the coca leaves he was chewing and said, "Sometimes the donkey wins, sometimes the jaguar wins."

The two brothers spent everyday walking the streets, sifting through the trash looking for anything recyclable; mostly metal. They had found a good supply of emptied oil tins through a hole in a fence at the back of an abandoned warehouse close to where we slept. They came most every evening and we would talk as they smashed down as many as they could fit into their plastic 100lb sugar sacks. Some days they made as much as a dollar.

Maria didn't speak much Spanish, but more Spanish than I spoke German. What she lacked in vocabulary she made up for in enthusiasm. I taught her how to throw a frisbee, which for the life of them, between three sisters, they could not figure out and we spent most of Christmas week practicing.

It was Sunday and my host, a high level government official, invited to take me to mass so that we could “pray a little.” We said goodbye to his wife and children and then he took me into the country to buy sheep instead. The helper labored under the heat of the sun and the weight of the struggling and bleating animals. Not many people could afford to buy a dozen sheep on a whim. I talked with my host until the first stop where his mistress (stunning and a third his age) took my seat and I was directed to the following truck where I rode with the bodyguards. As we drove they laughed and joked in their bullet proof jackets, their guns jiggling around their hips. It was their job to protect him, of which, keeping secrets was the easiest part.