Advertisement
Published: March 14th 2008
Edit Blog Post
makeshift cafe
The makeshift cafe with blue tarp and blue clunker car. He is sitting on two big boulders along a soggy dirt road waiting for his bus to pass. He is roughly an hour from Chachapoyas, the nearest town, on a dead end road in the Andes and it is sprinkling. There is a makeshift café next to him under a blue tarp serving various grilled meats, potatoes and coffee. The hood of an old blue clunker of a car is acting as a table. It is getting chilly and dark and he still has two hours until he is supposed to catch his bus.
The reason for this situation is that he went on a tour of pre-Inca ruins in the morning and wasn’t going to make it back to town in time to catch his 6:00 bus. This intersection is the midway point between Chahapoyas and the ruins and in theory he can simply meet his bus here when it stops at the intersection.
The journey to the ruins was about four hours by mini bus on a dirt road, climbing to 7500 feet into the cloud forest in the northern Peruvian Andes. The road snaked through avalanche slides, around sheep herds and through low water crossings.
ruins
The pre-Inca ruins of Kuelap, the reason for the delay. It starts to rain harder and he goes to get a cup of coffee. He doesn’t even like coffee.
The intersection is blocked off until 7:00 because of road construction, so traffic only goes through here at night and cars are beginning to line up to wait. The intersection opens at 7:30 and the cars pass. Technically his bus should be here by now.
He has been waiting for two hours in the rain and its so dark even the stars are hiding. He walks down the road and around the corner to a gathering of small shacks next to the intersection of muddy dirt roads where a few lonely locals huddle under an overhang. Here he begins to weigh his options.
First, he was pretty sure this was going to happen so, he made arrangements with the tour operator before he left that morning. They would pay for his room and another bus ticket if he missed his bus. Option one was return to town, sleep and get a bus home the next morning, but he only had 10 soles, equivalent of about $3.50 American, and there are no taxis, cars or phones here. Option
futbol
This is a soccer game above the city of Chachapoyas. two was to flag down a car going the direction of Chachapoyas and hope they would kindly drop him at the hostel and not rob him and leave him alone…or worse. Option three, which was never really an option anyway though he did entertain the thought, was to find a place in the bushes and trees to sleep and figure things out in the morning. Option four was keep waiting. But how long do you wait alone, in the dark and rain, for a bus that may never come?
Chachapoyas doesn’t have many bussing options due to its relative isolation and he had already seen four busses pass. He was standing at the intersection flagging them down to see if they were his. One was going in a different direction, so that was out, the next was the right company but only to Lima so they wouldn’t let him on. The third bus slowed down as he stood waving in the road but just went around him. He thinks that was actually his bus. The fourth bus stopped, looked at the ticket, laughed and drove off. Four busses, no luck.
He watches the fourth bus roll by and
gocta
This is the Gocta waterfall, supposedly the 3rd highest in the world. Its pretty cool. it is still raining and its still dark and he is still alone. The only light is from a single light bulb hanging from a wire, in the middle of the shack, of which he is standing outside. It casts a shadow onto the muddy street and he sees the silhouette of people inside as they pass by to see if the gringo is still waiting. He is, and he hears them laugh a little.
So what does he do now? He’s not really scared, mainly because he is to naive to know how bad the situation actually is. He is getting worried though.
Its 8:00 and he believes that his 6:00 bus isn’t coming or has already passed. He can see the headlights of cars coming down the mountain from about two miles away, making long, serpentine zig zags and around sharp switchbacks. He shakes his head, laughs a little, says a tiny prayer and realizes that this is his story, not as if he really needed one. He’s alone, its dark, its raining, he doesn’t speak Spanish and is basically stuck in the Andes. There is no town, no phone, no cars and he has 10
gocta
They let you get pretty close. I think it was about a 2 1/2 hike after a 2 hour minibus ride. soles. He’s in trouble…deep, dark trouble.
He sees headlights coming around the corner. It’s a bus, its not his bus, but a bus nonetheless and it stops. Standing in the rain, he hands his ticket to the man in the passengers seat and begins to stumble through his Spanish and explain the situation. They let him on up front and tell him they will take him to the next town, Pedro Ruiz, still two hours down the same soupy, sloppy, boulder strewn road, where his bus will be stopped to pick up more passengers. It’s a long-shot but he figures its better than sleeping in the bushes. He climbs in the front with the two men and looks back at the little shack and sees the people standing in the doorway to see the gringo disappear into the rainy Andean darkness. The men in the bus look at him puzzled and amazed at what he has been doing for the past two and a half hours, he’s just thankful to be on a bus going in the right direction.
They drop him at Pedro Ruiz where he does in fact see his bus. He shows the driver his
uhhh...
hey thats me. I spent 4 days in Chachapoyas and really had a good time aside from the mishap. I traveled with a guy from Lima who worked in Red River New Mexico and a Swiss couple of which the guy sings in a Elvis tribute band in Switzerland. ticket, gets in and goes to the last seat in the back of the bus, in the corner by the window. The bus pulls away and he puts on his headphones and stares out the window, for 8 hours into the rainy darkness. He doesn’t sleep, just stares and try’s to comprehend what just happened and what could have happened. He shakes his head, laughs a little and says another tiny prayer.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0381s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tressa
non-member comment
eek!
glad everything turned out okay, primito. just think in less than a week you will have a companero to endure this kind of stuff with.