Pacinho

The locura, the craziness, I'm referring to started in Santiago de Chile and only ended in Quito, a little more than a week later. I said good-bye to my Austrian homeboy Matthias, a friend I made before New Year's Eve in Pichilemu and who was a big help in my ATM- and VISAless time, and boarded, in lack of reasonable offers on part of the flight companies and a lack of general reason on my part, one of the many buses that would take me to Quito. I won't go into details on the rides, since it won't surprise that bus rides are boring and wearing. Just some facts: my first ride was 32 hours to Arica, I coastal town I visited on my way south before. Crossing the border: 2hrs in a crappy collectivo which ... read more

Aric was sharing one of his latest travel memories with us: ´The other night I was taking a night bus in Bolivia, we were going down this steep hill and all of a sudden the breaks gave out. They had to pump them up and up and you could smell the burnt rubber in the bus. I was thinking, man, what´s gonna happen to me tonight.´ The three of us just left Cusco for Santa Maria - a station on our way to Machu Picchu - in a crappy public bus, it was 9 p.m. We started to descend the first of the many slopes on the route (Cusco is at 3300m, Santa Maria at ´mere´2000). ´Man, couldn´t you wait until we are out of the bus and have breakfast to tell me this ´, was ... read more