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Published: July 11th 2015
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Time to move on again.
We'd booked our bus ticket to Arequipa two days in advance and got the pick of the seats so chose two front ones.
Our taxi dropped us off at the bus station with a good 45 minutes to spare so nothing could go wrong - could it? Wrong!
We were ushered immediately to another ticket desk had our tickets changed and then rushed at break neck speed to the departure tax window then onto a waiting bus. We protested we needed water so were ushered back to a stall where we bought 2 litres - much needed for the long hot bus journey.
When we got on the bus our allocated bus seats 1 & 2 were occupied. That,s when we realised that as the tickets were changed so were our seats. In fact we'd been shunted onto an entirely different bus company - an inferior one!
Two questions we'd been told to ask to ensure we got a good bus were ' are there two decks and is there a toilet? If the answer is 'Yes' then the bus will be OK. We had asked these questions and were told yes but there's no accounting for being bumped off one bus and put on an earlier.
We resigned ourselves to our fate, we got lots of curious looks as we were the only Europeans on the bus.
The journey began fairly normal (whatever that is here!) but after a while we were stopping at every small town along the way and left sitting there for ages wondering when we would get going again.
At each town someone would get on and stand in the aisle preaching the benefits first of some vitamin pills that could cure everything including cancer and preceeded to show photos of diseased organs. This went on for over an hour. When he got off another man got on preaching the benefits of fruit and granola and tried without success to get everyone to buy a bag of granola. No one was listening but still he carried on repeating himself over and over. Most of the occupants had long gone to sleep - he was flogging a dead horse!
Finally he got off and I began to wonder if we would have a toilet stop soon because of course the one on the bus was locked and 'out of order'.
Eventually the bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere, jusy flat wilderness on either side. Every one began to pile off and I quickly realised why. The men turned their backs to the bus and began to ' water' the ground and the women crouched down, and hidden by their big skirts, began to do the same.
Well, I'm afraid to say I did the same (only I had to get Stan to hold a wide scarf around me!) there are times when you just have to forget your pride, it was obvious we weren't going to have a proper toilet stop for some time yet.
We all got back on the bus and were on our way again, most of the water in our 2 litre bottle we'd bought for the journey stayed well and trully in the bottle and we became more and more de-hydrated as the sun shone down through the window relentlessly.
One good thing about the journey was the fact that I finally got to see flamingos at the side of the road but sadly didn't get the camera out in time.
At last, 9 hours later, we arrived in Arequipa but then had to battle through the rush hour traffic. I have never been so glad to get off a bus when we eventually got to the bus station.
The first job we did was to book our bus to Cuzco for Saturday night and this time make sure it would be the luxury bus we'd come to expect. We chose Cruz Del Sur company as they have a good reputation. We had wanted a daytime bus but just like before only the local's buses went by day.. We were not going to make that mistake again!!
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