Okay, you can open your eyes. But don’t get too excited,” Jen warned, placing a heavy blue bag in my outstretched hands.

“You made it! Happy twenty-eighth!” Holly sounded nearly as psyched as if it had been her own birthday. Seconds earlier, she and Jen had ordered me to keep my eyes closed—tight!—while they ran around putting the finishing touches on my present.

“Wow, guys. Um, you shouldn’t have,” I said, laughing, as I dug through the tissue and pulled out an electric pink, blue, and silver kiddie tiara with matching dangly earrings. “This is just what I wanted.”

“We did have to spend a whole dollar at the party store, and it’s a matching set, so make sure you keep those pieces together,” said Jen, poking fun at my tendency to misplace important items, such as keys, phones, and now possibly plastic jewelry.

“That’s not all! Keep looking,” Holly said as she dropped down next to me on the bed.

Setting aside two small bottles of Inca Kola, the biohazardous yellow soda that tasted like bubble gum, I reached back in the bag to pluck out a pair of delicate black high heels.

I was genuinely thrilled. In my effort to be practical, to commit to the true “rugged adventurer” spirit of backpacking, I’d brought just three pairs of shoes with me: hiking sneakers, Tevas, and Reef sandals. Though I’d initially felt proud of my monk-like ability to unburden myself of material possessions (and secretly, that my backpack was the lightest of the three), I’d lost my ability to feel feminine along with the extra weight.

In direct opposition, Holly hadn’t bought into some arbitrary perception of what a “real traveler” should take on a journey—and didn’t believe in lightening up merely to save her spine. Every time we shifted locations, her strong runner’s legs would buckle under the strain of the travel novels, packing guides, energy bars, moisturizers, and cosmetics that consumed every spare inch of space in her pack. Whenever Jen or I would ask why she’d brought so much, she’d grin and say, “Just because we’re homeless doesn’t mean we have to look like it, right?”

Her tongue-in-cheek response never failed to make me shake my head and smile—she was only half kidding. Though I’d worked with Holly for almost two years at the magazine, I’d only recently come to realize that she had a sly, screwball sense of humor—which of course meant that she fit in perfectly with Jen and me. Together, the three of us could laugh about our most bizarre travel situations and agreed that we were totally at our most hilarious when exhausted (which, considering the late-night/early-morning nature of our travel routine, was 99 percent of the time).

In my recent quest to learn how to defuse stress with humor—and humility—it was Holly who had become my guru. After watching her soften up everyone from the grouchiest government officials to obnoxious bunkmates (and usually get her way), I’d learned that far more can be accomplished by being calm and sincere than letting your temper get the best of you. I still had a long way to go before I’d be even half as laid-back as Hol, but somehow, it was just easier to roll with the punches whenever she was around. Other than Jen, I couldn’t think of a single friend I’d rather have at my first-ever Southern Hemisphere birthday.

Once we determined that my glamorous new shoes did, in fact, fit, Jen told me to get dressed: she and Holly were taking me out to dinner to celebrate.

I unzipped my pack to survey the contents. There’s one undisputable benefit of cramming your wardrobe into 3,500 cubic inches: You really can’t burn through forty-five minutes trying on and rejecting outfits when you have only six to choose from.

Digging underneath the mud-encrusted pants and Deet-scented tops I’d worn in the jungle, I located the one nonutilitarian article of clothing I’d allowed myself to bring: a black cotton jersey dress with a V neckline and twisted Grecian-style straps. Unrolling it and shaking out the wrinkles, I laid the dress carefully out on the bottom bunk, placed the tiara and heels next to it, and awaited my turn for the shower.

 

I’d once read that the real nightlife in Lima centers almost exclusively around the process of dining and drinking, rather than partying in pubs and clubs. The city’s young elite breaks bread at new restaurants as a way to see and be seen—why hide in the shadows when you can be on maximum display on the floor of some trendy new tapas bar? So far, no place we’d visited brought this idea to life more stylishly than T’anta.

From our table situated along the back wall of the restaurant, I could see that the place was crawling with Peru’s hipster bohemians. The girls, slender-limbed and beautiful, wore almost no discernible makeup but sported shaggy crops streaked with champagne-and manila-colored highlights. They dressed for the unpredictable weather of the Peruvian coast, layering floppy woolen scarves and off-the-shoulder tops over asymmetrically hemmed dresses or jeans, and stood strategically under the heat lamps.

“Where’d you hear about this place?” I whispered to Jen after a waitress delivered our Pisco Sours. “And how’d you get us a reservation?”

She smiled cryptically. “Oh, never mind. I have my special connections.”

The three of us had sipped our way through our first round of foamy green drinks when Holly excused herself to find the ladies’ room. I immediately looked down into my bag to locate our shared roll of toilet paper, and when I looked up, a saucer-eyed Holly was slinking back into her chair.

“Uh, I’m not sure…I could be going crazy, but you don’t think…over there, that could be? Well, maybe not. But I think the guy really looks like…”

“What? What are you talking about?” I said, leaning forward to have a look.

My gut clenched even before I could identify the guy I’d just spotted across the room. How could I have missed him before? He was the only person in Lima I actually knew—but had no desire to meet again.

“I think I just saw Carlos,” she said, squeaking out the name a second too late.

Crap. I melted back into my seat, my brain racing through potential escape routes. It seemed there were none. We were seated at the back of the restaurant, so I’d have to walk right past him to get out. Could I just crouch under the table until he left?

“Carlos? Here? No way.” Jen swiveled around to look behind her and snapped back again, clasping a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God, it is him.”

“Only you, Amanda,” said Holly, shaking her head. “Lady, I swear, this kind of thing only happens to you.”

Stealing another glance at Carlos, I groaned. She was right. Most women could visit a foreign country packed with 28 million people and manage to avoid bumping into the one man they’d blown off just a week before, but not me.

Over the last few years, I’d become something of an expert at crossing paths with guys I hoped never to see again, usually in claustrophobic spaces like elevators and ATM vestibules. Obnoxious dates I’d neglected to call back. Setups that never should have been set up. Ex-boyfriends I could have sworn had left the state years earlier. Holly always joked that I had some kind of weird karmic energy or power of attraction that forced me to reencounter guys from my past over and over again. “Either the universe is telling you that you still have something to learn from them,” she’d say, “or else someone up there just gets sick pleasure out of watching you squirm.”

Natural-born pragmatist that I am, I never believed that “the gods” had put a romantic hex on me. I just figured that bumping into boys of relationships past was simply a matter of geography. Living on an island not much bigger than a university campus, wasn’t it only a matter of time before I ran into someone I no longer wanted to know? Of course, that theory could hardly explain why one of them was sitting less than twenty feet away from me in a restaurant I’d never been to before ten thousand miles from home.

 

I’d met Carlos exactly a week earlier during a brief layover in Lima before we went to the Amazon. Once we’d secured our Brazilian visas and packed our bags for the jungle, we went in search of Café del Mar, a restaurant and jazz club Anthony had raved about back in Cusco.

Everything about the place had been done on a dramatic scale, from its forty-foot ceilings to the massive wall stocked floor to rafters with top-shelf liquor. Warm amber backlight made the bottles glow and turned bartenders into swiftly moving silhouettes. We’d parked ourselves on a cut-velvet sofa and were just noticing how underdressed we were when a waiter skated over to deliver a message.

“Perdóname, señoritas. Alguien quiere comprarles una botella de champaña. ¿Aceptan ustedes?”

“I think he’s saying…someone wants to send us a glass of champagne,” Jen said.

“No way,” said Holly, looking around. “Who?”

“¿De quién? ¿Quién lo nos compra?” Jen asked the waiter. “Who’s buying it for us?”

“I bet you a hundred soles that it’s from those two,” said Holly, motioning to a couple of guys in button-down shirts lounging at the bar about ten feet away.

“¿Champaña es de ellos?” Jen asked the waiter, make a subtle gesture with her hand. He somehow interpreted the motion as his cue to take off and return to our table with not a glass but a bottle of bubbly. I’m sure we could have tried harder—or at least somewhat—to prevent him from popping the cork, but we rationalized: wasn’t half the point of traveling to meet new people?

The waiter tipped the frothing liquid down the sides of three glasses, and within minutes the guys edged their way over, pausing at our table almost as if it had been an afterthought. Carlos and Daniel, as they introduced themselves in English, admitted that they’d been our secret benefactors and asked if they could join us.

“Don’t worry,” Carlos teased as we shifted over to make room. “We have another place to be tonight, so you won’t have to put up with us for long.”

With thick, wavy hair that fell just below his ears, deep brown eyes, and a voice that trailed off in a low, throaty growl, Carlos definitely struck me as the more intriguing of the two guys. And so when he opted to sit beside me on the sofa—leaving sandy blond Daniel to slide into the chair across the table—I didn’t complain.

Setting down his glass with a light plink, he turned to face me directly. Back home, this would have been the moment when the first-encounter interview started—a casual yet carefully phrased interrogation where one person determines if the other has the right combo of desirable attributes (résumé, title, earning potential, family background, social circle, geographic location, and attractiveness) to warrant a prolonged conversation. It was a dating and mating ritual that had at first intimidated me—but I’d finally accepted as an occupational hazard of meeting new people in New York.

But Carlos didn’t seem interested in my on-paper attributes. He wanted to know my opinion on a wide variety of topics, such as…Peruvian politics. And social issues. And current events. Had I been following the tight presidential race between candidates Alan García and Ollanta Humala? What did Americans think of Humala’s connection to the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro?

I confessed that I’d learned about the details of his country’s election only last month, not mentioning that just a fraction of Americans could locate Peru on a map, let alone voice opinions on its leaders. I felt completely lost, as if I’d memorized the answers to an English test and had somehow been given the MCATs instead—in Spanish.

Fortunately, Carlos didn’t call me out on my ignorance. He patiently walked me through the basics, giving me the kind of insight into his country—its political corruption, the agendas of its parties, and his personal connection to its violent history—I’d never find in a guidebook. Once we’d covered the tough stuff, I trotted out the big guns of my own, broaching a topic that I’d been hesitant to discuss with strangers in Peru.

“Of course, you can ask me anything,” he offered, placing a hand on mine.

“Well, okay, here it is. Since I’ve been here, I’ve found toilet paper in maybe six of the bathrooms. I mean, what do people do when they have to go? Do they pack their own before they leave their houses? Or, uh…just finish up and go without?”

It took him a second to switch gears, but once it clicked, he turned an impressive shade of crimson. He tilted his head back and coughed heartily to cover his laughter.

“Oh, yes, I see your confusion. People in Peru, sometimes they bring this paper with them. Why, maybe do you need to use some right now?”

Now it was my turn to go red.

As Carlos excused himself from the table to get our bill, I turned toward the girls and realized that they were deep into a heavy conversation of their own.

“But I do not understand,” Daniel was saying. “Why do you vote your president George Bush into office for another term? He makes many poor decisions, no?”

Oh, man. I bit my lip and listened as Jen tried to explain the difference between red and blue states. In the short time that we’d been away, we’d already had to defend our own voting record (if not the president himself ) several times to travelers from around the world.

Carlos returned and saved us with a proposition. He and Daniel were attending the opening of a new nightclub in the city—would we like to join them? After some deliberation in the bathroom (one with toilet paper, thankfully), the girls and I accepted.

It was clear immediately upon arrival that these guys were no slouches on Lima’s club circuit. Interlacing his fingers through mine, Carlos led the three of us right past a massive line of girls clad in stretchy fabrics and guys wearing Gucci sunglasses fitted snugly over slicked-back hair. He sidled over to speak with one of the bouncers, then ushered us up a long flight of stairs. When we emerged, the five of us were standing on a small VIP balcony space perched directly over the main dance floor.

Below us, a sea of bodies gyrated to music pumped out of Escalade-sized speakers. High above, a DJ commanded the entire room, an evangelist spinning hard house tracks. Mylar strips in saturated shades hung from the pipes, swaying and shimmering in the updraft created by so much heat and movement.

Everybody in the club was getting tipsy—and no one more rapidly than Carlos and Daniel. Between dances with us they retreated to the bar to refill their drinks. In their absence, the girls and I discovered that this VIP area was stocked liberally with men—mostly sweaty, frantic, unattached men. We tried to deflect their attention, dancing with one another in a tightly locked ring, the signature formation of women at nightclubs the world over, but our dodge, draft, and rescue maneuvers didn’t work nearly as well in Peru as they had at home. Despite our best efforts, we were soon surrounded.

“¡Que jodienda! ¡Estoy sudando como un puerco! It’s hot in here, no?” Carlos returned and broke up the mob. The men scattered a few feet, biding their time until he turned his back again.

Carlos danced with all three of us for a few minutes before he turned his attention solely on me, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the crowd as some technopop version of “Hips Don’t Lie” filled the air. For some reason, we couldn’t seem to escape Shakira. We’d heard this song playing in every Internet café, Laundromat, hostel, bar, and nightclub from Lima to Lake Titicaca and back again.

As we danced, Carlos moved in closer, insistently pressing my body against his. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, and the heavy scent of whiskey clouded around him. When his hands wandered lower, I backed up. He allowed that, then tugged me in again, locking his arms around my body so that it was impossible for me to get away.

Looking up at his face, I could see that he was smiling, but his eyes seemed dull and obscured. I felt as if I were dancing with an entirely different person from the one I’d come with. With no preamble, Carlos leaned in to press his lips against mine, his tongue aggressively darting in and swirling around my mouth. I reeled back forcefully, separating myself completely from his grasp.

“Hey, where did Daniel go?” I asked, searching for something to say as I resisted the temptation to dry my face with the back of my hand.

“I am not sure,” he said, eyes narrowing. “You wanted him maybe to dance with you?”

“No, it’s just that I, well…maybe we should go somewhere else.”

He shrugged and took a step toward me, wrapping himself around my body once again. I definitely didn’t like where things were headed but wasn’t sure how to get out of the situation. I knew without looking at my watch that we’d reached the witching hour, that tricky time of night where blood alcohol levels spike and personalities unravel. Few good things could result from sticking around. Just as I was contemplating my options, Carlos’s hand slid under the back of my shirt and he leaned in, tongue first this time, to go for another kiss.

“Hey, Carlos…actually, I think maybe…maybe we should just go home.”

A slow, sly smile tugged across his features. He put his arm around me again, a firm hand on my back drawing me in toward his open mouth.

I jerked away. “That’s not what I mean, Carlos.”

“What?” he asked, his brows furrowed. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I think I’m just going to grab the girls and head out. It was great meeting you. But it’s time for us to go home. Alone.”

“No…you’re wanting to leave?” He shook his head and stared down at me, glassy-eyed. “Please do not go. I have been enjoying you so much. Want to know you even more. My parents, they are not home this weekend—we have the whole place, just for us.”

“Wait…you still live with your parents?” I couldn’t believe it. He had to be rounding thirty at this point.

He looked at me, his sweaty forehead furrowed, clearly baffled. “Yes, of course. The men, they all live with the parents until they get married. Come, I promise…no one is home. Estamos solo. We are alone.”

I had no intention of going anywhere with Carlos. As I turned on one heel and stalked off to find the girls, he trailed after me, baffled by my behavior. Did I not have a good time? Why wouldn’t I want to go home with him?

“But you’re an American,” he sputtered, as if that should explain everything. “I thought you are, how do you say—touch-and-go?”

“What? What does that even mean?” I spun around.

“You know—you touch,” he said, making an explicitly sexual gesture with his hands. “And then you go. Right?”

My mouth dropped open and I took a breath, ready to tell him off, when another hand grabbed my wrist. It was Jen’s. “Hey, babe, let’s just leave. C’mon.”

She pulled me in the direction of the stairs, and we descended with Carlos following in hot, if clumsy, pursuit. He caught up with us just outside the door and reached for my hand again.

“Please, can you take this?” Carlos slurred in a voice that almost made me feel bad for him. “Just take this, and call me when you are here again in Lima.”

I turned around and looked down at the card in his hand. Jen flagged a taxi as Holly stood next to me.

“Amanda, I am sorry if I say or do the wrong thing,” he said. “I’m not meaning to upset you. I would like to see you again. I take you and your friends out when you return from the jungle. We go paragliding. Dinner. Anything. You will contact me?”

I didn’t answer but let him press the card into my hand before I got into the cab.

Rolling down the window for air, I breathed out the compressed tension. What had just happened? I recapped the end of the night for Jen and Holly.

“I hate to chalk it up to this, but he was just being a guy,” said Jen, trying to make light of things. “No matter where in the world we go, they’re always gonna try, right?”

Maybe. I watched as the lights of the city streaked outside the window, feeling exhausted and disappointed at how things had turned out. I’d really liked the prenightclub Carlos. Why did he have to go and get all aggressive on me?

As we walked inside the front door of our hostel, I let Carlos’s business card flutter down toward the trash can. I had no plans to ever connect with him again.

So how was it then, exactly a week later, I found myself pretending not to watch Carlos as he pushed his chair back and starting maneuvering his way in our direction?

“Oh, no…I think he’s coming over. What should I do?” I looked down, addressing my empanadas. “What do I say?”

“Just act natural, it’s all good,” said Holly casually as she watched him below shaded lids. “He probably just saw us sitting here, and now he feels obligated to say something.”

As Carlos walked the last few steps toward our table, he pushed a lock of dark hair behind his ear and tugged down his sleeves. He looked—nervous.

“Hello, ladies. You are back from the jungle, I see.” Carlos came around to my side of the table. “Nice crown, reina.”

I’d forgotten that I’d tossed on the sparkly plastic tiara and matching earrings. My hand reflexively reached up to tug them off, but I stopped short.

“Oh, what…this? It was a present from my friends. I mean, I wouldn’t normally wear something like this to go out, it’s just that…” I could hear myself rambling. “Actually, today’s my birthday.”

“Yes, yes, I remember you saying about this last week. Happy birthday. Maybe you will go out to the clubs again tonight?” he asked.

“No. I’m pretty sure after last time, we’re done with clubbing for a while.” I hadn’t meant for it to sound harsh, but the comment dropped with a thud.

“Ah, I see. Of course.” Carlos swiftly shifted the subject and his attention to Jen and Holly. “So, tell me about your trip to the Amazon. Did you enjoy this part of the country?”

The girls politely chimed their agreement.

He returned his gaze to me. “And for you—what was your favorite part?”

My favorite part? I flashed through the video clips in my short-term memory, trying to pull up a single headlining event from our time in the Amazon. My mind drew a blank. All I could think of right now was Carlos’s Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation at the nightclub and how I’d left him standing there on the curb.

Sensing that no response was forthcoming, Holly jumped in to save the floundering conversation, compensating with animated tales of shaky suspension bridges and killer tree frogs and rodents of unusual size. Jen helped pick up the slack, distracting Carlos with pictures of the three of us feeding the monkeys and hanging off the back of motorcycles in Indiana. Pretty soon the three of them were laughing while I sat there, trying to reconcile the fact that this polite, sociable guy was the same one who’d offended my sensibilities so acutely the week before.

As Carlos grabbed the camera and scrolled through the images, I let my shoulders drop, just a little. All right, maybe he had just come over to be polite, to mitigate some of the weirdness from the other night—not, as I’d thought, to give me a hard time. Compared with uncomfortable reencounters I’d experienced in the past, things definitely could have been worse. Besides, any second now, he’d wrap things up, retreat back to his table, and then we’d…

“So, ladies,” he said, putting the camera down. “I have told my friends over there all about the traveling American girls, and now they are very curious about you. Would you like to come over and meet them?”

Three pairs of eyes stared at me, and I fumbled for a nice way to decline.

“Oh, well, that’s really nice, but we wouldn’t want to interrupt your dinner…”

“No, no, we’ve already finished.”

What could I say? “Okay…sure.”

Abandoning our mostly empty plates, we followed Carlos. The chatter among his friends, a lively-looking crew of artists and designer types, slowly trickled off. They shifted in their chairs, and I was relieved to see that Daniel was not among the bunch.

“Ah, it is the Americans,” announced a guy wearing a jacket that looked as if it were made of tapestry material. “You better watch out for that guy. He’s trouble.”

“Oh, we’ve already discovered that,” I said, glancing over at Carlos.

“Hello, I am Anabella,” said a dark-eyed brunette with retro Brooke Shields eyebrows. “It is so nice to meet you.”

Holly extended her hand, but the girl ignored it, kissing both of her cheeks instead.

The process repeated itself around the table, embraces and kisses subbing for handshakes as we were introduced to the entire group.

“Come, you will sit next to me,” said Anabella, pulling Holly away. “I need to hear everything about New York. I will be visiting in the fall.”

Within minutes, both of my friends were absorbed into conversations—Holly with Anabella and Jen with a shaggy-haired guy sporting thick black hipster glasses—and Carlos and I found ourselves standing awkwardly at one end of the table, not quite facing each other.

“So you had a good time in Peru? I hope it won’t be the last time you visit.”

“Oh, no, it won’t be. I’ll definitely be coming back at some point.” I avoided his eyes, watching as a waiter whisked the plates off the table, skillfully balancing the heavy load as he returned to the kitchen.

“When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow. We’re heading to Rio next, then traveling through Brazil for a couple weeks.”

“Good, good. Brazil is very nice. Just be careful if you go out in Rio. Those Brazilian boys, you know, they’re even more persistent than the Peruvians.”

I finally cracked a smile. “Really? That’s hard to imagine.”

We stood staring at the group for a minute before Carlos spoke again.

“Amanda,” he started, turning slightly in my direction. “I don’t mean to bring up a bad subject. But I know I upset you the other night and…I feel terrible about this. We had a good time at Café del Mar, no? But after we got to the club…I don’t know what happened.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure what happened, either,” I responded, crossing my arms over my chest. “One minute, we were dancing and the next, we were…and then you tried to…well, it doesn’t matter.”

“No, it does matter. Tell me.”

“I mean, we’d just met, like four hours earlier, and already you were pressuring me to go home with you. I mean, do you really believe what you said about American women? Being touch-and-go, I mean? Because I hope you know, we’re not all like that.” Of course, if he did, I couldn’t entirely blame him. Several British and Aussie backpackers had confirmed that American women have developed a real Girls Gone Wild reputation overseas.

“No, no, Amanda…of course not. I should not have said that,” he said, now facing me directly. “I wanted all week to call you, to say something, to apologize, but I did not know how to reach you. And now you are right here. This is kind of crazy, no?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy all right.”

“Do you think maybe we were meant to see each other again?”

I thought about that but didn’t answer. We spoke for several more minutes, untangling any remaining knots of weirdness between us. By the time he and his friends had paid their bill and were ready to take off, I actually found myself a little sorry to see him go.

“I’m really glad that we bumped into each other, reina,” he said, giving me a light hug.

“You know, Carlos—I am too.”

The girls and I said our good-byes to Carlos and his friends as they left the restaurant, then returned to our own table to rehash the events of the previous hour.

“So what were you guys talking about over there?” Holly pounced.

“You two looked like you were getting pretty cozy,” Jen joked. “Maybe you’re the touch-and-go type after all?”

Just as I was filling them in on everything that had happened, Anabella came streaking back through the front door and collapsed at our table. “Oh, this is very good! You are still here. Ah! My friends and I have all been talking and we have decided that you cannot celebrate your last night in Lima, or the big birthday, just at T’anta. Dinner is nice, but not special enough. If you agree, we would like to throw for you a party.”

“A party? When?” asked Jen. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“No, you crazy girl. Right now, at my house,” she said with a grin. “I will stay with you until you finish up, and then I will drive you. You never find the place otherwise.”

The idea of an impromptu birthday party seemed outrageous (who did something like this for people they’d just met?), but once again I rationalized—wasn’t meeting new people half the point of traveling?

Twenty minutes later, we were squeezed into Anabella’s ultracompact car and winding our way up steep streets that cut through the hills east of the city. As we climbed, I could make out the silhouettes of homes built directly into the cliffs, glass-faced affairs that bore no resemblance to the concrete sprawl and decaying tenements we’d seen in other parts of the city. From the look of things, we’d just entered the Hollywood Hills of Lima.

Anabella’s place, by comparison, was relatively modest. Her apartment comprised the top floor of a two-story building perched directly over the valley. When she ushered us inside a dimly lit room, all I could see was the view of city lights spilling down the hillside and blurring into a golden haze near the ocean.

The crew from the restaurant showed up right behind us, along with a few new people we’d yet to meet. Within minutes the counter of Ana’s pass-through kitchen was loaded with wine, beer, liquor, and mixers. One thing was for sure: Our new friends certainly knew how to celebrate. They’d managed to throw a party together in a less than an hour.

“A toast to the Americans,” Carlos said. “Especially the birthday girl.”

“Yes, we are so pleased you are spending your last night in Lima with us,” added Ana, raising her glass of wine. “Salud!”

“Salud!” Everyone clinked the glasses in their hands.

It could have been the abundance of alcohol or just that twenty-somethings of any nationality rarely need an excuse to party, but Holly, Jen, and I managed to integrate seamlessly into our new group of Peruvian friends. I took it as a good sign when Marcus, the guy in the tapestry jacket, snatched the tiara off of my head and placed it on his own.

“It is after midnight. Birthday is finished. Now I am the king of the party, no?”

“Oh, let me take your picture!” said Holly, digging through her bag to find her camera. But before she had a chance, one of the other guys grabbed the tiara and plopped it on his head. Then someone else tried it on for size. Pretty soon everyone got a crack at my crown, with Holly documenting everyone’s fancy new look.

I took my glass of wine over to a chair near the window. I watched the girls break it down Latin-style for a few seconds, then turned my attention to the view outside.

Wow—how ridiculous was all of this? Just a few hours earlier, I’d been at an $8-a-night hostel with Jen and Holly, content to have a low-key dinner and a couple glasses of wine. Now the three of us were celebrating my birthday with a dozen strangers in a swanky apartment somewhere high above Lima. I knew that if I hadn’t bumped into Carlos again, the three of us wouldn’t be in this surreal situation. And had our entire interaction taken place in New York rather than South America, I probably wouldn’t have given him another chance at all. It would have been all too easy to decline his invitation, to claim that some other plans precluded me from attending his friend’s party.

But that’s one of the unexpected peculiarities of traveling, especially for so long. I really didn’t have any other plans. The only friends I had now were the ones hanging by my side 24/7. Without a jam-packed schedule or an extensive social network to hide within, I suddenly felt free to gamble on new possibilities. I glanced across the room, watching both of my friends laughing hysterically at Marcus’s attempts to tango with Jen. For tonight at least, the risk had definitely been worth the reward.