THE WAVE WAS IN THE HOUSE at the Hotel Indiana. The place was a peerless, spectacular dump. The rooms were airless cells. The foul mattresses were lit by bare bulbs swinging from wires. The shower gave me an electric shock. It cost 4,000 pesos, or about $7, a night.

Hanit arrived shortly after me, the Jewish cowboys the next day. A dozen Israelis were usually in the front room, watching TV, with another dozen in the courtyard. A muscled kid, released from IDF service days before, ripped out 20 pull-ups as beardless boys and blooming girls compared notes on Gaza and Jenin, suicide bombers and

Looking for Mara/have not heard from you since Banes. Come to Salta April 1? —Anonymous, Hotel Indiana, Santiago, Chile

outpost sieges. Most of them had been drafted in 2001 and sent into the maw of the latest intifada. Kids shot at them and they shot back. Several confessed to having done things in battle that they were ashamed of, or to having strong sympathy for Palestinian nationalism, yet they were universally proud of having served. "When I was a child someone protected me," the pull-up champion told me, with fatalism. "Now it is my turn."

There was a shadow in the courtyard for each of them, the Palestinian in every traveler's memory. No wonder they loved travel. On the road you could wake up every morning with the one thing you never got in the Middle East: a fresh start.

The Indiana's version of the Book consisted of dozens of notes in Hebrew and English, covering the walls.

In the courtyard, beardless boys and blooming girls compared notes on Gaza and Jenin, suicide bombers and outpost sieges. No wonder they loved travel. On the road you could wake up with the one thing you never got in the Middle East: a fresh start.

They offered discounts at a certain laundromat (I got a dollar off), requested travel partners, and inquired after members of the opposite sex. Mating rituals like this were once a staple of the Book, but here, alas, the tracking abilities of Hotmail were proving far superior to bulletin-board flirtations.

At sunset, I climbed one of the small peaks that loom over downtown Santiago. On top, an Israeli tapped me on the shoulder. His name was Yaniv, he said, and he recognized me from the Indiana. Like a lot of young Israelis, Yaniv had overcompensated for years of military haircuts by sprouting everything he could: His chin was a wispy scruff and his sun-bleached hair had twirled into a mix of short dreads and Orthodox earlocks, all swept up into a kind of werewolf 'do. "The hair is because of the army," Yaniv admitted. "First the hair, then the travel."

Yaniv had been in the infantry, making incursions into Palestinian areas. "I actually looked at it as travel," he explained, with a wry smile. "I couldn't go to these places—to Nablus or Ramallah—as a traveler. But with a gun in my hand, I could. It's nice there in Nablus. You should go."

I'd been, I told him.

"Yes," he said, with sudden sadness. "You can go there."

IDF soldiers are paid a bonus at demobilization, and Yaniv, as a combat veteran, got close to the maximum: about $3,000. That was his budget for an entire year. In seven months he'd visited France, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. The trip was healing him, he said, closing wounds he'd never acknowledged even to himself.

"One thing I can say," he told me, "is that I am more tranquilo here than in Israel. I don't know if it is the war, or just a tense society, but being here has changed me."

To save one of his combat-pay dollars, Yaniv and I walked to the Indiana, halfway across the city. He used the time to coach me on blending in with the dewy Israelis—a tall order for a Scotch-Irish 40-year-old. First, Yaniv said, I should hide my guidebook. He relied on the Book where he could—the one at the Platypus Hostel, in Bogotá, was the best he'd seen, and there was a good one in Quito, Ecuador. Cuzco, however, was a nightmare. "Too many Israelis," he said. "If you are going to Cuzco, practice your Hebrew. Even the drug dealers speak it."

Second, I had to bargain hard. This was a stereotype but a true one, he insisted. "It is part of our culture to bargain, a Middle East thing," he said. "Don't come out frayer."

Pardon? "Don't come out frayer" is a crucial expression in Israel, translating as "Don't be a sucker." As an example, Yaniv cited the Indiana. "They told me the room was 4,000 pesos. Now, I thought, I can get a better price. So I argued, and now I am paying 3,500 pesos. That's OK. But I think that maybe some of the other Israelis are paying only 2,500 or 3,000 pesos. So if they find out what I'm paying, then I'm frayer."

I, of course, was paying the full 4,000 pesos. The Indiana was such a dive that it hadn't even occurred to me to bargain.

Yaniv stopped walking when I told him this. "My friend," he said with pity, "you are frayer already."