A Traveler's Diary - Evolution of the Bus Experience

So it all starts with this ten hour bus ride to the border of Brazil. Ten long, boring hours. Sort of an anticlimactic beginning to this adventure that I have planned for the last month, but this is now my life until I get back to the States. Busses, perhaps a rare boat, is where I will be spending too much of my time, beginning with ten hours right now. I guess I have prepared though. I mean, we did 7-9 hour trips through the Nevada deserts in High School for soccer. Of course, there were 20 guys to hang out with, 20 girls to flirt with, as well as music and a movie if we had chartered a tour bus. Now I have myself for company, perhaps a dubbed movie in Portuguese, and if there are any girls, they probably would be really weirded out if I go try to talk to them in my terrible Portuguese. At least I know my friends Miriam and Nilso will be there to pick me up from the terminal. Finding a taxi to their house sounds complicated and is something I would rather not do. Well, I am off. Goodbye Curitiba. Will I ever see you again?

* * *

I am finally on the bus after waiting several hours at the Paraguayan border station. It would have been a lot simpler to catch the bus out of the terminal in Asuncion, but I had to make things complicated and catch it at the border. At least it will be direct to Montevideo, Uruguay, a long 16 hours away. There are only three other people on the bus. They are nice, young, traveling in some regard as well. They are all South Americans and thus speak Spanish, so it is hard to understand them at times, but good practice. It is nice to have space to stretch out in and friends to talk to. It is starting to get dark though, and I think I am going to try and sleep through as much of this trip to make it be as short as possible.

I am awake again. Getting to sleep was hard, and now I have to get off and show my passport and open my bag for the Brazilian border crossing. An arduous procedure, especially being drowsy. But we’re done now. Back on the bus, and back to sleep.

Up again. Another border? Where in the world are we? What time is it? No matter. Get off the bus. Show the pass port. Open the bag. Try to keep from falling to sleep where I stand. Back on the bus. Wait for sleep again.

* * *

Morning. 8:00 am. 12 hours down, only 25 hours left to go, and lost somewhere in Argentina between Buenos Aires and Rio Gallegos. What have I gotten myself into? I should have flown, who cares what stupid, ridiculous conditions I had set for my trip? Or I should have at least paid the extra $20 for the cama bus with its fully reclining seats. All I have now is the half reclining, fairly comfortable seats that my head slides off of whenever I start to sleep, producing some serious cramps in my neck. What ever was I thinking when I thought it would be better to save $20? Small price to pay for my sanity.

I have seen my third movie this trip, the second for today. Normally when you watch two movies in a day you feel like so much time has passed. Not now. I am begging for another movie to pass the hours by. It is only mid afternoon, and I have the rest of the day and all night left to go. I have tried to pass the time in other ways. I tried reading, but I got sick. I never have been able to read well in vehicles. I have stared at the bleak, flat, endless land of east Argentina for too many hours, and there are too many more left to go. The only thing more endless than this journey is the fence that continues to pass by outside. There hasn’t been a break in it for as long as I have been watching it…which has been all day. A never ending fence. Who builds a thing like that? Counting the fence posts as they flash past makes me drowsy though, and here comes sleep…

32nd hour, third day. The morning light hurts my eyes. My ever faithful companion is still there, the never-ending fence on this never-ending journey in this never-ending story. A few hours more and I will be off this bus and then back onto another, arriving at my final destination a long 10 hours later. Never again. I will fly. For now, a few more hours sleep. I will need all I can get to keep sane on this next leg.

* * *

Never say never. So it isn’t 37 hours straight, but it is 3 different buses of 12-14 hours each. A 12 hour day journey, a layover of a couple hours, an overnight to some lame Argentine town I will have to spend the day doing who knows what, then a final overnight bus that will take me to where I want to go. 40 hours of bus time in about 53 hours of travel time. Never, ever, EVER again…until next time…

* * *

Oh how I long for the luxury of Chilean or Argentine busses. The movies, the seats, the services, the smoothness of the roads they drove on, the distances they could cover. I would gladly spend 20 hours in one of those busses than 5 in their Bolivian counterparts. But here I am, stuck in a Bolivian “bus,” shake-rattle-and-rollin’ along the windiest road one could possibly conceive. My seat doesn’t recline from its 90 degree angle, the guy with the window seat prefers my shoulder to the window as a pillow, as does the woman perched on a stool in aisle. Chickens chatter from a bag somewhere under one of the seats in front of me and the altiplano folk music – with its shrill voices, electric harp melodies, and haunting similarity between songs – blares out from the scratchy speakers and makes minutes seem like hours. It may be midnight, but I can’t sleep, not just due to the previous list (as if that wasn’t enough), but I am also in the middle of a spout of diarrhea (unavoidable Bolivian experience, no matter how careful you are), I am recovering from altitude sickness (not aided by the fact that I am traveling from a town situated at 10,700 feet to one perched high at 13,600 feet), and when I said we were rattling, I meant so bad that my private area hurts due to the serious amount of turbulence and I can’t wear my jacket against the cold because it is currently acting as a support pillow to said private area. There is no movie and no bathroom until we stop who knows where in the middle of the night to pee in the street, the countryside or the middle of a town a trifling detail. This may only be an 8 hour trip (actual time) of the promised 6 hour duration (as given in the office), but I am completely serious when I say it is the longest bus ride I have ever had to endure.

* * *

I stroll confidently past the shouting ticket vendors yelling out their bus’ destination 30 times in 10 seconds, past the blanket vendors, food vendors, and shoelace salesmen, all the people with gum. I don’t even think about it really, it is all so normal now. To think that this all seemed so foreign and strange and even a bit scary to me before, but it is just another day in my life now. I ask for a ticket, bargain down the price a bit, ask when it leaves, knowing it will be 15 minutes past the time given when we finally roll out. Minimum. Is it direct? Sí, sí señor. Definitely isn’t. Will I have to change busses? No, es directo señor, no te preocupes. One, maybe two bus changes. How long will it take? 8 hours. Ok, make it 16.

* * *

Record marathon journey thus far:

--Leave Huaraz, Peru at 8:00 pm Saturday night.
--Arrive Trujillo, Peru 5:30 am Sunday morning. Find out I can’t leave until 11:00 pm that night. Wander town, eat, read books, wander some more, eat lunch, use internet, re wander previous wandered streets, see new Batman movie in Spanish, slowly walk to bus terminal, read for final couple hours until the bus leaves.
--Leave Trujillo, Peru at 11:15 pm, Sunday night.
--Arrive Piura, Peru at 5:00 am, Monday morning. Check bags in bus office. Wander to find supposed international bus company a few blocks down and wait for it to open. Fortunately, the bus drivers sleep in the bus station, and let me in to buy my ticket at 6:00 am, then I wander back to the other company to get my stuff. Unfortunately, this company doesn’t officially open until 8:00 am, so I wait outside the door for an hour and a half. Carry my overweight bags back to other company, and wait some more.
--Leave Piura, Peru at 10:10 am Monday morning. Cross Border. The overly astute will realize I am one day over on my visa, but luckily South American passiveness comes in handy, and rather than making a big deal that I am a day over, I am instead waived through customs.
--Arrive Loja, Ecuador at 6:15 pm Monday night. Get some dinner.
--Leave Loja, Ecuador at 8:20 pm Monday night.

--Arrive at Riobamba, Ecuador at 6:30 am Tuesday morning. Flag taxi cab to hotel, crash in my room at 7:30 am, Tuesday Morning.

8:00 Saturday night until Tuesday morning at 7:30. 4 busses, 5 towns, 60 hours travel time. Never? Ha! Won’t be using that word this time!

* * *

Professionally dressed staff, passenger only waiting room with cable TV, and people telling you exactly where you need to go and when you need to be there. Thumbprint on the page, smile for the video camera, and be confused as to whether you should be happy for the security measures to make your journey safer, or if you should be concerned that there is a need for measures such as fingerprinting and video footage of all passengers. Plush leather seats, flat screen TVs, and the bus equivalent of flight attendants. The sound of keyboard elevator music and the “fresh” scent of seven emptied aerosol canisters fill the interior. So this is what Peruvians consider luxury bus service. Not too shabby, you think to yourself, but you also can’t help but wonder how many Peruvians missed the bus as it pulls out of the terminal exactly on time.

* * *

Chicken Busses are the way to roll in Central America. All dogs may go to heaven, but all the old school busses you went to school in back in the day go to Central America, get painted in bright, flashy, retro colors, are packed with people and things (breaking every school bus rule you ever learned), and are rallied to their destinations like no bus driver in the States could ever accomplish, except for maybe Otto on The Simpsons. I love ‘em and I hate ‘em, but I need ‘em, and they are carrying me in retro style and smoking glory back home.