Rant #3- Effing Buses.

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This travelling lark is loads of fun apart from the actual travelling bit. Whoever said getting there is half the fun obviously didn´t travel by bus and was an idiot. I have endured in silence many awful bus trips but the final straw came while trying to get a bus from Puno to Cuzco. Some people love to travel by locals bus to ´get local flavour´and save about ten pence to spend 3 hours longer getting wherever- not me, I like sanitized and preferably tourist only comfortable coaches. These exist but we seem to fail to get on them with alarming frequency. This was the case but we were assured the locals bus would be just as good. Due to leave at 8:30, we get to the bus station to be told we´re not going til 9:45, that´s OK I can live with delays. By 10:30 we finally board the bus, slightly wound up but at least we´re on our way. It would appear the locals here use the bus system to actually move house, the ammount of luggage they bring is staggering. The guy next to us decided to bring ,what I´m fairly sure was, a flat pack cabinet with him as hand luggage onto the bus. This obviously didn´t fit neatly into the overhead locker so he spent a good while grunting and panting trying to rearrange it comfortably, the whole time with his arse in my face. Next we are treated to the wailings of a small boy belting out tuneless peruvian folk tunes and then expecting money. I payed him so he would shut up and get off. Finally we limp out of the bus station and I find at my shoulder a small mucky faced child who proceeds to make deeply guttural growling noises at me. This seemed funny at first but after ten minutes I´m afraid I lost my cool and told him to Piss off. The bus did seem to be limping a bit and sure enough after another ten minutes we grind to a halt. Everyone floods off the bus, surrounds the driver and starts yelling at him. I still don´t know what was wrong with it but it turned round and went back to the flippin´terminal. It seemed mechanically fine on the way back. When we later quizzed our travel agent he blamed strikes, police and dodgy truck conversions amongst other things all of which sounded a bit fishy, he was very quick to give us a refund especially when he saw Em´s face. And so it was we had a fun extra day in Puno. Went to a different agent who assured us that indeed we had been booked on the tourist shuttle. Sure enough when we went to get the tickets we find that our booking has been booted in favour of a large tour group of Slovakians and so it´s local bus for us. This makes Em cry and me angry. Long story short and we´re in Cuzco now and it is a lovely place ( except when it rains like today).
This all brings sharply into focus every bloody awful bus trip we´ve had and we´ve had a lot. I hate buses. I´ve always hated buses. I think it is a collection of factors that evokes such a strong emotional reaction to them. It all starts in the bus station. These are truly the bum holes of any city. Invariably they are located out of the way down dodgy streets and are crowded, noisy, confusing places. Most of the people there look shifty or filthy and more often, both. There is never any sort of information available and departure times seem to bare scant relation to that scrawled on the ticket.
The buses themselves are a mixed bag the world over and are actually the least of my worries. A seat is a seat when all is said and done. It´s fellow passengers I object to. Perhaps it´s my delicate sensibilities but women peeing into plastic bags or bringing up the contents of there throats and hocking into the street and men who fart a lot without shame, children who throw up and native women who get there saggy boobs out inches from my face to feed children who are big enough to ask for it , are not very pleasant travelling buddies. That´s just the half of it.
My other main problem is with bastard drivers. These characters are a law unto themselves and I believe have a very broad mean streak. The first trick is to pull away after a lifetime at the bus station only to stop within two minutes for absolutely no reason. Then pull away again and do the same. All the while random folk seem to get on and off. The next trick is to make everyone get off at a toilet or lunch stop and then just clear off leaving us quite confused only to return in a different bus- it´s all mind games. Once finally moving in some manner of uninterupted fashion, just as you recline and start to listen to some relaxing tunes, on comes the music. Always very loud, bad folk or Euro pop blasting out. Couple this with a dramatic increase in air con or heating just to ensure maximum discomfort. This is usually when you find you need the loo but the driver has ´forgotten´to unlock it and you won´t be stopping for six hours. It´s the seemingly unplanned stops that get me, just pulling over to the side of the road for 20 minutes. I have even seen a driver get out and have a lie down on the grass while everyone else swelters. I say again- bastards.
Finally it´s the whole nature of bus travel, you never know where you are, and so where it is you need to get off. Unless you know your destination intimately and unless the bus terminates where you need to disembark, there is always a couple of hours of wondering wether you need to get ready or wether you can relax for a while. This is as true in England as it is anywhere else.
I hate buses, I hate them and if it wasn´t a money issue I´d fly everywhere. The sooner they invent Teleporters the better. I may consider just walking everywhere from now on. unfortunately I fear my immediate future holds much more joyous bus travel but I have been assured that buses in Chile are a breed apart. Until I have seen this with my own eyes I will remain a furvent bus hater.

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Comments

[Jack]

Steve, absolutley hilarious and so so true, I have lost count the number to arses I have had in my face whilst quietly minding my own business on buses in Peru and bolivia! Any complaint is met with the afore mentioned arse being thrust a few inches closer.. Lovely... Anyway Keep up the good work and cary on enjoying the travels.. Jack