Advertisement
power lines
The power lines that got caught in the man hole of the bus. the ride from cuzco to lima started off like any other 23hr bus ride i presume, boring long and full of stinky foreign people... me being one of them. About 12 hours into the trip the bus pulled over to the side of the road to restock on water. during this time the bus was shut off, so with it being 36 degrees outside got very hot and sweaty very quickly. The attendant for our bus ride opened the over head port hole windows to let in a bit more air for the passengers which was greeted by a sigh of releif by all. Until a few minutes later when we pulled away from our stop to hear a huge crunching sound followed by a few big bangs and sparks flying outside of the bus. no one was really sure what was going on at this point until we looked up to see that there was a massive powerline stuck in the overhead port holes, the power poles swaying to and forth and various other power lines strooned across the ground and on the bus it self. people very quickly realised what was going on and started yelling to the bus
driver to stop the bus before he broke the main powerline which was somehow still in tact
.
A few minutes later after he had stopped and the panic in the people had turned a little more to relief and confusion with still a slight hint of are we going to be electricuted to death. ( in my mind i knew though that this wouldnt happen because we were insulated by the busses tires.
the locals decided to gather outside of the bus where at first the seemed more interested in helping rather than causing trouble. this could also be to the fact that my spanish is really shitty but thats the impression i got. one by one for some reason which was not clear to me at the begining the local mob started picking up rocks and putting them in the middle of the road as far as the eye could see. i had heard of this hapening before as an attempt to stop oncoming traffic from hitting the power lines and bus. but later realised that there real intention was to make it impossible for the bus to leave. a few minutes later in all the mess
1
the road blocked by rocks and confusion outside there was a huge smashing sound as one of the mob decided to throw a rock through one of the windows on the bus as a few of them started yelling a sentence which i could only understand one word... fuego... meaning fire.. i later was told that the mob were so angry that we had taken out there power that they wanted to let the air out of our tires on the bus and then burn it down..
a few minutes later there was another huge bang which made the crowd outside run as we saw the national police drive up in armored vehicles to surround the bus dressed in full riot gear. we were told to get off of the bus because it was not safe for us to be on it anymore.... well obviously i thought to myslef. a few minutes later all the passengers were outside and hiding around the corner with a stricken look of fear and confusion on there faces. ( accept for a stupid 1 or 2 who shall remain nameless who decided it was a good idea to get some photos of the action lol... ) although the mob
had decided to despurse by no means had they decided it was over.
on the distant hills they had decided to re-group to hurl stones at the bus, police and of course the passengers. some coming within feet of my self. the police response to this was more tear gas and what i beleived was rounds of live ammunition which really didnt seem to have as much of an affect as one would have thought. unfortunatly for the passengers from the bus at this time they were standing down wind... all of a sudden i felt a sharp pain in my lungs and my eyes started to water and as i looked around to see other passengers fleeing even further away from the scene with clothes over there mouths and eyes watering and coffing up there lungs, i realised that the tear gas had started to come our way and realised it was a good time to re treat with the others.
a few minutes later in the midst of all the chaos the police had managed to clear the road and free the bus from the power lines by presumably realising the power had gone dead and telling
the bus driver to just hit the gas until he was broken free of the lines. this at the same time put some panic into the passengers because it looked like the bus was fleeing..... everyone started to run like crazy around the back of the buildings for protection from the stone throwing mob in the same direction as the bus until there was an open feild and we could all see that it was waiting there for us just down the road with another couple of police armoured vehicles. to the one side of the field the police had created a line holding up there sheilds for protection from the rocks for the passengers to slip behind and once again rejoin the bus... there were a lot of releived and thankfull faces when we finally made it back on to the bus with a huge cheer for the police as we made our escape out of there and back to lima with only a few minor injuries.....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0723s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb