To Wee or Not to Wee

---

I’m now in Arequipa after taking a nightmare bus journey. It started at 7am, and at about 11am we decided to ask the driver to make a bano stop (crap bus = no toilets) and he mumbled something in Spanish which included the word “claro” so we thought we had understood. About 20 minutes later we stopped in a tiny village to let a woman get off, and we went to ask the driver again. He told us we would be in another village in about an hour, and didn’t want to let us get off. An hour!!! No way!!! We basically marched off the bus, saying “un momento por fovor” and ran behind a wall to do the business in hand. The dumb-arse driver then proceeded to drive the bus forward by about 10 yards so as we were there, bums out and squatting, suddenly in full view of the driver and everyone on the entire bus! They all hung their heads out for a better look and a giggle - Grrr!

To make things worse, the road is unpaved and sooooo bumpy and surrounded by high drops, and we spent quite a long time following a precarious-looking lorry with “Danger - combustibles” in big letters on the side! The final straw came when we arrived at our destination and retrieved our bags from underneath, only to find that they had turned white from all the fish-smelling powder that had leaked onto them from a nearby sack! Aaaaaaaaaaargh! The only reason we’d taken this crappy bus in the first place was because it was only 30 soles, as opposed to the nice and comfy train which was an outrageous 140 soles (but only 30 soles for Peruvians!). Welcome to transport in South America!

Whilst I’m on the subject, we also had a nightmare bus ride in Bolivia. It was supposed to be a 6 hour overnight bus, but it turned into more like 8 hours. About 20 minutes into the journey we stopped because another bus had broken down. We ended up picking up all the people from that bus and putting, no CRAMMING, them onto ours. There were people sitting on the floor in the aisles, cramming their bags everywhere. One woman tried to put something wrapped in a white cloth on the overhead shelves and it immediately fell down onto me. I instinctively went to catch it, thinking for some strange reason it was a baby (they carry them around here like a fashion accessory!), and found it was a big raw leg from some kind of animal - grose! We spent the rest of the night breathing in the rancid raw meat vapours, listening to raucous latino music, and watching the distant lightning and worrying about our backpacks on the roof!

After that little moan, I feel much better!

Keep smiling,

---