Bus rides...

Most of you are probably going to pass this update by because it is lengthy and picture free (sorry this computer doesnt have an accessable USB port). I recommend that you read it though, even if for no other reason than to give me a lot of shit about it later. Enjoy my suffering!

So we were going to leave Huancayo last Friday the 4th, but the train for Huancavelica wasn’t working and everyone who worked at the train station gave us a different assessment of the situation and when the trains would be running again. We decided that the main reason we were even heading to Huancavelica place was to ride the old train though the mountains and valleys, so taking an 11 hour bus straight to Ayacucho on Saturday morning became out next plan of action. The bus ride was an action-packed adrenaline rush that I certainly wasn’t expecting. As usual with buses in Peru, ours looked like it had seen better years… decades rather. Any rusting metal was considered esthetic and quickly checked off the nonexistent inspection list. I wasn’t too worried about the condition of the bus though, considering some of the busses I had ridden in Costa Rica and let’s be honest, this bus was in better shape than any Chinatown bus in the states. We boarded the bus (still a little tipsy from celebrating our last night in Huancayo just 2 hours earlier) at 8 in the morning. As soon as the bus left Huancayo, my buzz turned into a hangover (mainly aided by the extreme influx of ripe-smelling people boarding the bus). The bus wasn’t about to stop letting people on and stop earning extra money, so within a few minutes, the aisle was packed 2 to 3 people wide the entire length of the bus. Luckily, we all planned ahead and bought window seats in order to enjoy the amazing views of the valley during the trip. This decision saved us from aisle standers leaning on our shoulders and ultimately protected us from the quite unpleasant ass-to-face experience that aisle seat owners always encounter. The road from Huancayo to Ayacucho is little more than a rocky, dusty motorcycle path chiseled into the side of the Andes, overlooking the Montaro Valley and River. This is where the excitement of the trip comes in! As our massively over-packed and top-heavy bus tried to make hairpin turns, it would lean. I’m not talking about any old lean though… Surely aided by the entire bedroom furniture set and crates of goods piled 10 feet high on the roof, the leaning we were encountering reminded me of a Weeble Wobble (minus the reassurance that we would upright ourselves). As we climbed higher and higher up the side of the valley, the cliff to our right quickly climbed to well over 1000 feet. Fresh on everyone’s minds was the bus that went off the road just two weeks earlier, killing 30+ people. Occasional leans sent people standing in the aisle to the far side of the bus trying to compensate for the treadless rear tire that was now perilously dangling in thin air. Sitting on the outside window seat is very interesting because you can’t see the road or any land below you. It looks and feels as if you are floating through the valley (like in the movie half-baked) until the spine-jarring road slams your head in to the window and your mind back to reality.

We arrived to Ayacucho at 7pm ready to find a hotel to shower off the thick dust that had accumulated in every exposed (and amazingly some unexposed) area of us and our stuff. Ayacucho is an absolutely beautiful colonial city. Even though the streets have a majestic feeling as you walk through old stone churches and mansions, Ayacucho doesn’t see its fair share of travelers. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, they had a problem with a Maoist terrorist group called the Shining Path. Led by a local university professor in Ayacucho, the shining path guerillas targeted and terrorized mostly indigenous local villages and caused a massive migration to the larger cities. The shining path used gruesome terrorism to make their presence and cause known and of course, the military wasn’t much more tactful in their fight against the movement. The 11 year war left 69,000 Peruvians dead or missing (mostly in remote villages… many around Ayacucho) and finally ended in 1992 with the capture of the leader of the movement. Although Ayacucho is perfectly safe to travel these days, there seemed to be a certain stigma that the local citizens carried and have a (rightfully so) hardened exterior presence. At least that was my observation in the short time I spent in the city.

Daisy and I decided to head to Cusco rather quickly, leaving Tina (the girl from Finland) in Ayacucho to explore on her own. She will probably meet up with us shortly in Cusco since she isn’t doing the Inca Trail with us. We left for Cusco on a 23 hour bus at 6am Monday morning. 23 hours on a bus seamed daunting, but it saved us from having to pay for a hostal that night and it meant getting to Cusco (where there is no shortage of things to do) much quicker. The first 10 hour leg of the trip went by quite fine. We had the beautiful Andes and valleys to keep us distracted from the horrid road and the increasing numbness in our asses from sitting for too long. Another thing about Peruvian buses is that they are bowel and bladder busting (during the 10 hour trip, ours only made 1 stop halfway through for lunch). We arrived to the halfway point of the entire trip in a small town called Andahuaylas where we had an hour before boarding another bus that would take us the rest of the way to Cusco. We hurried to a local restaurant and scarfed down some Chaufa (fried rice with chicken). We boarded the second bus at 7 and made out on our way to the sacred valley. The second bus was a tad nicer than the previous two we had ridden on. It even had a little bathroom (pee only) downstairs. The first problem on this trip was that as usual, the bus company let people board the bus without tickets and they were forced to stand (which turned into lay) in the aisle. This was especially bad for the people who paid for aisle seats because our leg room was now taken by a random leg, arm, or even the occasional, daring entire upper-body. An hour into the trip, everyone started closing the windows to keep out the cold Andean night air. It was at this point that the trip took a turn for the worst. Our bus had nearly 60 seats and probably 10-15 people lying in the aisles… with a few precise smell assessments and a little math, I decided that there was a good chance that the population of our bus had collectively racked up more than a year’s work of shower-lacking. Some people, especially the guy sprawled out on the floor, cuddling with my calf, made up for the people who decided to shower that week. When you close the windows and seal in that kind of smell, add to it the guinea pigs that someone thought would enjoy the trip stored inside the bus instead of below it, and the smell of rotten fruit, you have a deadly concoction. A smell that putrid could definitely wisp consciousness away from victim in an instant. The smell brought back childhood memories of opening up the 8 margarine tubs in the fridge looking for the one that actually had margarine. Inevitably, I would end up opening up the one that contained some 2 month-old food (mold rather) that my mom was sure that she would reheat the next day. That was the smell that I was experiencing… and it was taking a toll. A few hours later, things got worse as the people in the back of the bus started getting motion sickness. Helping my ex-girlfriend through Chemotherapy definitely made me more familiar with throw up than I ever wanted to be. I had become quite accustomed to it though, and it rarely made me nauseous. But if you ad that smell to the already existent stench on the bus, and the Chaufa that was now about to join the party, you have a nasty combination. I thought that surely I could overcome the problem by thinking about something else and blocking the inevitable from my mind. Sweat started to pour down my face… I could feel myself getting paler and paler… I had to go to the bathroom. As usual when traveling, this wasn’t a planned or controllable thing. I decided that I couldn’t hold it any longer and tried making my way towards the front of the bus. This meant prying off the guy that was now drooling down my ankle and waking up 3 other women sleeping on the floor. I finally made my way to the door where I was hoping to find the Bus’s helper (he handled money, tickets, and removed rocks from the road when necessary). Go figure that when I arrived, he wasn’t there. He was sitting in the unconnected front cabin with the driver. At this point I started panicking. My options were running out and my stomach muscles were losing strength. I quickly found the nearly old lady to see if she knew how to help me out. After explaining the situation to her, she screamed out “Ayudante,” searching for the helper. It was helpless though, as her yelling did nothing but wake up the entire bus. As each row woke up, the news of my sickness was passed throughout the bus… “El gringo esta mal!” Trying to ignore the fact that the entire bus was now chatting it up about my pending diarrhea, I found a phone that I continually picked up and hit every button that I couldn’t see (the lights have been out the whole time). Finally, the lights turned on and the bus screeched to a halt. The door was barely half-opened when I clambered out, explaining my situation to the ayudante before he could say a word. I had to go and I had to go right that instant. But another problem had just presented itself: Where to go? One side of the road climbed straight up the side of the mountain while the other side fell off into a seemingly endless cliff. On top of the mountain, a cold rain was now pelting me and turning the road into a muddy river. I thought about the front of the bus, but the being in the spotlight of the headlights wasn’t going to be that much fun. I couldn’t get to the back of the bus because the road was pitch black and way too thin for me to try squeezing between the buss and the cliff without being able to see. My options had run out and I did what I had to do. I dropped my pants right there just a few feet from the side of the bus. I was so caught up in the satisfaction of finally ridding myself of my problem that I hardly noticed the 5 Peruvian women who had situated themselves all around me, hiking up their skirts. We had been on the bus non-stop for 5 hours and they were taking advantage of the opportunity. There was a strange lack of discomfort as the women started to talk to me as we all did our deeds. They were asking if I was ok and one woman even went into detail about how the same thing had happened to her a few weeks ago. I think it’s important that we take a second to look back at this scene:

Here I am, perched high on an Andean cliff, in the middle of the night, shitting in the pouring rain, talking to 5 Peruvian women who are peeing just a few feet from me and the bus full of curious onlookers.

The bus’ horn honked, colorful traditional skirts were put back in place, and we all boarded the bus. I thought I had expelled everything and my predicament was over, but 20 minutes down the road, it was back! How the hell could this be happening to me again? Once again, I climbed over the people on the floor and made my way towards the front of the bus. Shocking voices exclaimed “Otra Vez?” (again) as the entire bus once again woke up to my problem. Embarrassment was starting to set in. One old lady promptly ushered me to the pee-only bathroom and told me to wash it down with a bottle of water. Stopping again was not an option. The bathroom was at the bottom of the stairs as you leave the bus and was hidden by nothing more than a glass door. Since it was on the bottom level, and rarely used, glass was sufficient. Besides, Peruvians are so accustomed to not having bathrooms that they are used to peeing in front of everyone just as casual as if they were tying their shoe. I sat down and continued what, at that point, was uncontrollable. After 5 minutes and almost entire confidence that I was done, another situation presented itself. What to do with the toilet paper? I couldn’t throw it in the toilet… I wasn’t even supposed to be doing anything other than peeing anyways. There was a tiny open window which I was sure was there just for TP anyways. There was a slight moral contemplation about just throwing it out the window, but this was an emergency, there were no other options. Besides, I had just done the same on the side of the road just 20 minutes earlier. Not more than a second after I let the paper fly, the bus slammed on its breaks sending me face first into the glass door and then the floor. Quickly pulling up my pants and checking my nose for blood, I heard a tapping on the door. Looking up, I saw that the tapping was coming from the barrel of an assault riffle. Thinking of how the hell I was going to explain what had just happened, I cautiously opened the door with a guilty look on my face. This trip couldn’t get any weirder. Standing in front of me was a huge, gun-bearing, anti-drug trafficking officer. He realized that I was just a stupid gringo and angrily told me to go sit down. It turns out that the bus had just come to one of the numerous police checkpoints in Peru. Usually they just open up the bottom compartments, chat with the ayudante, and wave the bus through (no help from the fresh wad of cash in their pockets, huh?). These officers were much more thorough in their search of every bag and every person on board. I was only hoping that some of their rudeness wasn’t the result of any poorly timed toilet paper tossing that had just occurred. After 30 minutes of searching, they finally got off the bus and we were back on our way. Luckily, I had no more stomach problems throughout the rest of the trip. It was a good thing too, because the lack of leg room, stench, and terrible ass pain from sitting all day, left me in plenty misery. We got here to Cusco a little before 6 in the morning and quickly made our way to a cheap hostal. Spending nearly 35 hours on a bus in only 3 days was just a little bit much for my body. Welcome to budget traveling huh? We leave Saturday for the 4 day Inca trail hike and until then, we are going to visit a lot of sites in the sacred valley and live up the night life here. I will keep everyone updated as much as possible!

---

---