Bus Travel

There is a great range of bus companies here in Peru. The first and best is Cruz del Sol. It is like no other bus. The seats fully recline, and put the rider almost horizontal, making sleep very easy. And the cabin is climate controlled. There are meals served, not that good, but at least some food that is not Peruvian style junk food, think American junk food but lower in quality. It is like the company is pretending it is an airline.

Then there is what I would call a mid-tier companies. These are the types that have offices and ticketing, and lines, and promise bathrooms and movies. These have a wide range comfort and tend to be full of false promises. Often, there is no air condition, when the person in front of you reclines, your knees get nailed, the bathroom is out of order, and the overhead light seems to be more on then off during the night. And there is no air condition so the windows must be opened for fresh air which is a dream/nightmare. Dream because the air is is no longer stagnant. Nightmare because often the air is full of smoke from other vehicles.

And then there is another kind of company, they seem sort of like the "mid-tier" but are really much more feral (lack of a better word.) These companies have ticket counters and names and seem very legitimate but are not. Sarah Erlinder and I rode one the other day and when the man was counting the numbers and checking if everyone was in their proper seats, he said, "Two foreigners, check." This was in spanish but Serli gave the translation. On the same ride, which was eight hours over a mountain range, we saw how average (and by that I mean, rural, poor) Peruvians travel. The bus ride was insane. The road through the mountains was dirt with no shoulder, and no guard rails to stop the bus from tumbling down very steep cliffs. The cliffs that lead to very deep gullies down below. I had to close my eyes and tell myself, the driver is a proffessional, he does this everyday, heaps of Peruvians take this ride everyday, I`m never going to die, etc etc. These pep-talks sort of worked except they were interupted by frequents stops letting folks on and off in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, the grabbing of me by passengers who had to stand and were holding on to me for leverage, crying babies, bags of live chicks who couldn`t stop squeeking, and the constant yelling of the doorman, "Huaraz, Huaraz."

And the last type of bus we experienced was the combi. I would call this a party bus. They are always jam-packed, have a man hanging out a window yelling the route, and seem to be covered in decorations (unclear why, but a lot of them have to do with Jesus.) They are smaller then an 18 passenger van and bigger then a mini-van. These buses are all over, Lima, Cusco, Iquitos, everywhere. One time, earlier in the trip, Ben Boudreaux and I attempted to take one in Lima following strick instructions from homestay Grandma. What happend was we took what seemed like white, used school bus, in the wrong direction and ended up at the Navy head quarters north of Lima. Yesterday, Sarah and I took one of these little party buses. We ended up cutting our trek a few days short and needed to catch a bus back to town. We were sitting, wet, dirty, and cold waiting for the bus. A few donkeys with wood tied to their backs walked by, there were some loose chickens running about, a stray dog with a terrible underbite, and some men working on some building project across the street. All of this with the beautiful snowcapped Andes in the background. Then a party bus rolls up. It is completely full and by that I mean over capacity by maybe ten bodies. They stop throw or packs on the roof and show us our seats. By looking at our seats I would have thought maybe two nine year olds could fit there. Nope, room for two 23 year olds. Sarah entered first. And then I crammed in. I thought the door was going to shut on my leg, it didn´t because somehow between me and the door fit another man. Sarah was the unlucky one. She had three other legs between her legs. That is two of one woman and one of another man. We are talking full strattle here. And she had a small white dog practically on her lap, it left a lot of gross dog hair on her brown pants. I only had one man`s leg between mine but unfortunitly had to share lap space with him. He liked to smile. I got a window seat. I guess we should have been happy because we didn`t have to sit on the roof with the luggage. Sarah counted twenty bodies. Somehow we made it, unharmed and cramped.