Copacabana Coincidence

In 2002, my wife and I took a year off work to go travelling around the world. We had no real set agenda of where we were heading, preferring instead to listen to the experiences of fellow backpackers wherever possible to make the most of our travels. We were on an excursion to the silver mines in Potosi in Bolivia, when we met an older American traveller who was on her own. After striking up a conversation, we got on the to the inevitable discussion about places we had visited thus far. Our new found companion was clearly very well travelled and we decided to invite her out that evening for a bite to eat and a few drinks so we could tap into her wealth of knowledge of South America in particular. We told her that we were keen to get off the so called 'Gringo Trail' if possible and she then told us about an excursion into the Peruvian Amazon basin she had recently made that sounded right up our street. The trip would need to be set up by someone she had met while travelling who lived in Maine U.S.A. It would involve a 4 day trek by various means of transport to get to a rendezvous with her friend's father-in-law, Pepe, who was a former forester-turned guide. He had a boat and could take us on a trip up the Peruvian leg of the Amazon and out into jungle itself where he had set up an eco-tourist campsite. The trip would cost hardly anything and sounded too good to be true, especially as we were heading for Cusco in Peru and that was the best place to set out from to get to the village where we would find Pepe. We took down the name and email address of our companions contact. His name was Scott Grierson. The next day we went for breakfast in an internet cafe and sent off the first of many emails necessary to enable Scott to get in touch with Pepe and give us the details to find the village. We continued with our journey around Bolivia and used every opportunity to keep up to date with our emails to check on Scott's progress in getting hold of Pepe. We arrived at Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca on the Bolivia/Peru border from where we would be able to get a bus over the border and on to Cusco. Whilst we were in Copacabana, we decided to try the local delicacy of barbecued, fresh caught trout from the Lake. Clearly the trout we eat was not that 'fresh' and we both ended up bedridden for a number of days in our room as we both tried to get over a nasty case of 'Bolivian Belly'. I was the first to recover and set off in search of something safe to eat from the town. Whilst I was there I saw a book exchange and as I had completed the novel I was reading, I used the opportunity to swap my book for something more interesting to read. Both my wife and I are fans of Bill Bryson's work. There, sitting on the shelf, was a copy of his book about walking the Appalachian Trail entitled 'A Walk In The Woods' which neither my wife nor I had read. We were also both getting into hiking as well, so it was a no brainer. I swapped the books and set off back to my wife with a big smile on my face. My wife was still too unwell to read herself, so she asked me to read the book aloud to break the monotony of laying in bed. Bryson's book goes into a lot of detail in the beginning about how long it takes to walk the full length of the trail. In one particular passage he mentions the names of the fastest walkers to have completed the feat so far. One of the names that cropped up was that of a speed-hiker from Maine which is at the end of the trail. His name was Scott Grierson although he was better known in hiking circles by his nickname, Maineak. At that point my wife piped up and asked me to re-read the name. 'You don't think that Scott Grierson from Maine is Scott Grierson from Maine do you?" she asked. We decided it would be too much of a coincidence, but I couldn't wait any longer to find out. I hurried down to the internet cafe and checked our hotmail account. The latest set of instructions were waiting for us from Scott. I sent him a reply to thank him, but deliberately referred to him as 'Maineak' rather than Scott, just to test the water so to speak. The response came the next day. Yes he was Maineak but how could we possibly know that as the lady we had met in Potosi would not have been aware of that fact? I then explained the mention of him in Bill Bryson's book, which he had never heard of. The chances of reading that particular book, at that particular time in our lives, when we were corresponding with someone mentioned only once, in one passage, have to be very remote. I don't believe I would have picked up on the name had I been reading quietly to myself. An amazing Amazon coincidence! By the way, we made it to our rendezvous with Pepe and it was definitely one of the highlights of our year long trip thanks to Scott's assistance.