northampton, ma

Talk about an adventurous two days on my way to Cusco, the famed city of the Incas and the jumping off point for Machu Picchu, and the city where I am currently typing this story. My last two days involved 27 hours sitting on a bus. Not exactly everyone's idea of a good time, but I swear the grueling trip was worth it.

My story begins two days ago in Ayacucho, as I sit at the bus station at 630 am, waiting for our bus to shove off. According to the bus office, the trip would be 10-11 hours total. We would end up in Andahuaylas, the town halfway to Cusco, between 5 and 6 pm. That seemed fine to me, it would be a long day on the bus but I could unwind in Andahuaylas that night and get refreshed prior to my bus to Cusco. It didn't quite work out that way.

We did take off from Ayacucho on time. I'll give the bus company that much. The problem was that one hour into the trip, our bus turns around and heads right back to Ayacucho. Needless to say the passengers were rather peeved at this reversal in fortune (pun intended). I was steamed myself, and asked a few people who worked for the company what the hell was going on. I got three answers.

Answer 1: There is something wrong with the bus so we had to return to the station and change buses. Answer 2: There weren't enough people on the bus for this particular (large) bus, so we had to turn around and get a smaller bus. Answer 3: The bus we were on was only supposed to do night trips, and since this was a day bus, we had to return and change to a day bus.

Ahh the joy of shameless inefficiency, and the utilization of lies in the face of an uncomfortable situation. The only thing in common with the responses was that we had to change buses, which we did. We went from a reasonably nice and plush bus to a horrible piece of shit that had just arrived in Ayacucho from a 12 hour trip. Given the state of the roads in the area you think they'd do a bit of maintenance and upkeep before sending a bus out on another 12 hour grind, but instead they simply loaded us onto this bus that probably made 1972 proud and off we went.

Of course I was pissed. But I managed to calm myself by repeating how this is Peru, these things happen in Peru, they will always happen in Peru, and there's nothing I can do about it. Pretty much the same thoughts I had to repeat in my head when I had to deal with Italian bureacracy there as a student. Sort of my own "Serenity Now."

We do get going again, and all is well for approximately the next 7 hours. We chugged along the single lane, bumpy as hell dirt road through incredible scenery and quaint Quechan towns. Once my bones got used to the rattling and jarring from the road, I slipped into a contented state of staring out my window at a landscape like no other. Jagged ridges descending thousands and thousands of feet into ravines and narrow river valleys. High desert plains filled with catcus and scrubbrush. A cobalt blue river and rickety, exciting bridges. Dizzying, thousand plus foot drops over the road's edge into the precipice. I of course sat on the "shit your pants" side of the bus, my nose pressed against the window looking down to certain death should our bus hit a bad bump or collide into an oncoming vehicle (lots, and lots of blind turns on this eye-of-the-needle wide road).

Then our bus broke down. Transmission, two hours sitting on the side of the road watching three men try to fix whatever had busted. Luckily we broke down right near a village, meaning decent scenery and a place to stay that night if we couldn't get to Andahuaylas.

Two things happened of interest while waiting for the bus to get fixed. The immobile bus crowded the left half of the road, with the bus passengers sitting off on the right side of the road. A van came through this scene with a complete sense of abandon, not slowing down one mph, and struck a three year old girl who was a passenger on board with her father. The side of the van clipped her, sending her flying five feet into the ditch, where she landed against the far bank. The sound of collision was horrible, followed by sounds of all the Peruvians shouting at the driver in obscenties and exclamations to God. Perhaps those exclamations worked, because the girl turned out to be fine, just some scrapes and two bruises on her face.

Prior to this incident I had been in a state of reverie. Since I have 3.5 months to travel, I am in no hurry to get to any particular place. Yes I realize on this morning I had been rather annoyed at the two hours wasted by the "let's change the bus" fiasco. But at that point in time I wanted to get somewhere new, and going back to Ayacucho did not qualify. When our bus broke down I was indeed somewhere new, not in a particular new place, but somewhere new. That's all I was looking for, and when our bus broke down outside this town, I had found it. I stared over the ridge our road was set on, down onto the valley and into the setting sun and the mountains it framed. Life was good. I read my novel, ate some oranges, lounged and relaxed in carefree freedom.

That inner glow and peace was shattered when the van struck the little girl, but not fatally so since the girl turned out to be alright. The tension in the group of passengers, who were annoyed greatly at the bus breakdown since, as locals, they indeed had a particular place to be, was spiked hugely by the accident. But they too calmed down over time and we all settled into a patient wait for something to happen.

The next thing to happen, for me, was a group of 5 kids who were walking home from school (it was now about 6 pm, or when we should have arrived in Andahuaylas). They spotted me, the gringo, and beelined it. I was reading, noticed a shadow develop, and looked up to find myself in a semi circle of these young Quechuan kids. They peppered me with questions, I taught them some English, they taught me some Quechua (which, as an indigenous language, is completely different from Spanish). It was good fun. They wanted me to take their picture, which I did, and for some reason this made them really happy. All in all, it was enjoyable and helped pass the time.

Finally the people trying to fix the bus gave up, and called a van to come pick us up. This van probably legally seats 10 people, and we managed to fit 17. Imagine me, the 6 foot tall gringo smashed in with 14 other people (3 were in the front bench seat). It was 2.5 hours of legcramp misery until we finally reached Andahuaylas, at approximately 9 pm or 3-4 hours late. I was a mess with fatigue, but happy that I had experienced a part of Peru (towns forgotten by time, landscapes built by time, and me not caring a whit about time) that 99.9% of tourists to Peru do not experience. If you travel to Peru and don't go through tiny indigenous villages, experience bus breakdowns, and encounter merry inefficiency, well then you haven't really been to Peru.

And all this was in day one of the two day trip to Cusco. The second day, yesterday, was more or less unexceptional, with the exception of a fire out the exhaust pipe that took 15 minutes to put out. Somehow after all this I arrived safe and sound in one of the highest cities on earth, a lofty 11,500 feet in elevation, or a height that makes our Mile High City look rather insignificant.

Last night as I laid down in bed, exhausted still from the long bus ride and head muddy from the altitude, I noticed all the really strange things about my hostel room. I think it was the surreal novel "Catch 22", which I am reading currently, that attuned my brain to the oddity of my surroundings. So I decided to describe the room in my journal.

"I'm sitting in bed, in one of the oddest rooms I have ever had the pleasure(?) of staying in. The room has three real walls, which means the fourth wall is indeed not real. It's made of thin plywood and it stops 1 foot from the ceiling. It partitions myself and my room from the hallway, meaning I get to hear anything and everything "outside" as if it was in here. To my left is a chest of drawers sunken into one of the three real walls, as if the wall was slowly digesting it. The walls themselves are a pale yellow color, which looks even more pale under the dim single light I have, although the entire situation is helped by the happy goldenrod color that someone decided to hapazhardly splash about on some parts of the walls. On the wall behind me is a rather large window you cannot open, probably because it opens up into the next room and doing so would annoy those particular neighbors. Rooms with no windows tend to be pretty depressing, so at least I do have a window to a certain extent. The door to my room is also made of plywood, and I assume since it is on the fake wall the builders were interested in maintaining the plywood motif. The lock is a slim side bolt that looks about as sturdy as Calista Flockheart. The aformentioned sole light glows a very dim florescent white, which combines with the walls to make me feel like I am in a morgue or Agent Scully's forensic lab.

Last, but not least, are the two spiders which are keeping me company."

Moral of the story, $3 per night rooms are probably not going to be too luxurious. But damn am I saving money!

Getting to Ayacucho is certainly one of the more memorable travel experiences of my life. I took the overnight bus, with company named Ormeno which I had heard good things of. What I ended up experiencing was nothing near what I had imagined.

I got to the station at about 845 pm, about 15 minutes early to be on the safe side. I look around the bus for the luggage compartment - there was none. Great, so me and all my stuff have to fit on the bus. But that's ok right, I mean how many people go from Ica (on the coast) to Ayacucho, a provincial town way up in the Andes? And better yet, how many people make that trip on a 9 pm bus on a Tuesday night? Well my assumptions couldnt have been more off base, as this bus had 40 seats and about 50 people who made the trip. I fortunately had a seat booked, so I was not one of the unlucky ones sitting in the aisle or in the stairwell. Unfortunately I had to find a way to stow my stuff, as the overhead compartment was too small for me to get my main backpack into.

Remember how I had mentioned being the center of attention while in the market in Lima? Multiply that by 1000. Here's me, the giant gringo (relative to them) who has a backpack that won't fit in the overhead bin, and is somehow figuring out how he and his giant pack and his daypack are all going to fit into one crunched in seat. The bus was only 3/4 full when I got on it, and every single one stared at the lone gringo who was making an ass of himself. Not helping any was the fact that my seat was in the very back corner, next to four Peruvians who were already there.

I decided there was no way I'd fit there, and that I would just stand and wait till the bus was about to leave to find two empty seats next to eachother. 9 pm arrives, I sit down on one seat and put my crap on the other, and expect us to happily shove off on our trip. Nope. We waited another 15 minutes as the bus driver continually kept filling seats. I'm sure you can guess what happens next... me having to move as I was sitting in someone's seat. Then me having to move again. And then again. Talk about making a dumbass out of yourself in front of 50 people, who already think you're crazy to begin with for going to their town, as you have to get up repeatedly and say lo siento and look like a moron dragging your bags down the aisle yet again.

I finally had worked my way all the way up to the first row, where luckily two empty seats still remained. I took them, and amazingly we finally set off. I thought I was on easy street and started to relax. Yea, wrong. We stop at another town about an hour into the ride, at about 11 pm and let even more people onto the bus. There was a huge mob outside all shouting at the ticket seller. Most of them made it on, meaning lucky me had to put his big pack at his feet, where I spent the next 8 hours attempting about 35 different leg positions to get comfortable as my feet were blocked from the floor. Not exactly a real great way to get some sleep.

Somehow I made it though, no exciting climax like a highway robbery. The bus had no bathroom though, so we had to stop about 5 times for people to go run into the rocky areas around the road to duck and pee. I never felt so immersed in the local culture as when I stood 10 feet from my fellow bus compatriots as we pissed into the damn cold Andean night.

I am currently at an oasis. A real, live oasis. This very well might be one of the strangest places I have ever been too. As I sit here and type this, I can look out the window to my left and see a giant sand mountain, towering about 1000 feet over the little town of Huacachina, where I have spent the last three days going on dune buggy rides and doing crazy sandboarding (though not nearly as cool as snowboarding, I am sad to admit). Huacachina is a tiny town situated next to a natural miniature lake, surrounded by palm trees and big golden sand dunes. When I arrived here I seriously thought I had stepped out of South America and into the Sahara: if you imagine in your head what an oasis would look like, this would probably fit the picture perfectly. I normally don't gush on about the places I go to, I'm more interested in writing about weird stories or the people, but this place is trippy.

Tonight though I am getting on a bus to head to Ayachuco, which is smack dab in the middle of the Andes. My guidebook says only about 500 tourists come there each month, which makes it even more cool in my book. As the required bit to freak out my parents, Ayachuco was the main center for the Shining Path, the terrorist group that in the 1980s and 1990s fought a civil war against the Peruvian government. Happily (from the perspective of my personal wellbeing), today the entire movement is gone and tourists like me can go there without fear of ending up in a bad Russel Crowe movie about kidnapped and ransomed gringos. Apparently near Ayachuco is a field with these catcuses, which once during their lifetime, right before they die, sprout a 50 foot tall flower. So I might check that out for the novelty value.

Being white, and thus in the majority ethnic group in the United States you are not really used to being the one who is different than everybody else. So when that moment comes it is rather striking: for the first time in your life, everyone is looking at you because you are different. Yesterday we went to Lima's black market for some shopping, and the way the Peruvians reacted when I walked past them, I almost felt like a walking circus act. Nearly every one stared. It's one of those feelings you will never really get at home, even a white person in a black or Latino neighborhood, or vice versa, does not match the level of curiosity that you encounter when you travel somewhere like Latin America (and I assume, Asia and Africa as well).

As far as the black market, it was rather nice seeing all these Robin Hood stall owners who sell pirated or counterfeit popular goods on an everyday basis and make a decent living off of it. "Adidas" jackets were about $8. Playstation 2 games for $2 apiece. Anything you could ever want, from shoes to electronics was in this market (it was really more of a mall than a market, it was covered and had 3 stories). On one hand, not many people, myself included, really enjoy the fact that US-European culture has so dominated countries as far away and culturally rich as Peru, but if the local shopkeeps can make a buck off of our cultural expansion, more power to them.

I have read and read so much about Lima, and everything told me: be careful. It's known as one of the most dangerous cities in South America (probably in the world), so being on your guard is a must. Of course, if you have been travelling since 9 pm the previous day, and it's now 8 pm the day later, fatigue might infringe on one's better judgement.

I left for the San Francisco airport at 9 pm on Tuesday and got into Lima at 8 pm Wednesday. Long, long trip involving 3 airports and 3 separate planes. So here I am in Lima. Being that this is the southern hemisphere and the seasons are reversed, it was completely dark outside by the time I arrived. This, I think to myself, is not to my advantage. I had been worried about the taxi ride necessary to get me from the airport to my hostel, as there are many many stories of cab drivers who assault their customers, or drive somewhere and dump off their customer and make away with that person's belongings.

So wanting to avoid these unpleasant scenarios, I called my hostel and tried to arrange for them to pick me up. They had such a service, but their driver was gone for the night. I was basically on my own, meaning I had to go out and find my own taxi. Finding them is no problem, as once you get into the main lobby of the airport you're literally mobbed with catcalls of cab drivers trying to get you to hop in their cab rather than the taxi of their competitors. I avoid this scene and go outside to where the taxis are all parked.

A couple guys walked up to me offering their services. I didn't like the feel one guy gave off, so I talked with the other one. I made sure to check his documentation, he seemed legit. We settled on a price up front, another common sense thing that you are always told to do. We walked to his cab, and I checked that out to make sure it has all the right stickers on it. It appeared to have them, but given all that I had read about cabbies in Lima, I was still very hesistant. I finally decided to go with him, since if I didn't pick somebody I wouldn't be going anywhere. I was tired and wanted to get to my hostal, have a beer, and get some sleep.

So I go to get in his back seat, and the guy tells me "No no, you don't want your stuff there, put it in the trunk where it is more safe. Some people break the windows of cars parked in traffic or at street lights and open the door and take all your stuff. Trunk is more secure." Seemed like good logical advice, so in the trunk went my stuff. I went and sat in the front seat, and off we went into Lima.

Things got weird when he asked me for money so he could get gas. I have never once had this happen to me, it's a cab ride so you pay at the end, right? I said as much, but he said no, no, this is Peru, if a taxi needs gas on the way to the destination, the customer pays as part of the cab fare. So I said fine, and gave him 30 soles (the Peruvian currency, 30 soles is roughly $10), which was the original fare we agreed upon. We stopped at a gas station, filled up, and went on our way again.

Then things got worse. He says, where is the rest of my money. I had no clue what he was talking about, I already gave him the 30 soles that was the original price. I said as much, and he replied, "No, the original price was 30 dollars. Not 30 soles. It costs 30 dollars to get from the airport to Barranco (the neighborhood I was staying in)." At this point in time I knew that I was getting fucked. From the research I did, virtually every source said the average cab fare from the airport to Barranco was 30 soles or 10 dollars (people use both currencies here). And here this guy says he wants 20 more dollars from me.

I tell him no, we agreed on a price. He continues arguing with me, and at this point we are driving through some shady, dark, deserted streets. Lima is not a pleasant city for the most part, and on this ride I saw the most part. We argue and argue, taxing my knowledge of Spanish, and eventually I am just saying "no!" to his demands. Then he mentions that if I do not give him the money, he will use his cell phone and call the police and tell them I am refusing to pay the fare. His voice and the way he talked had gone from pleasant at the start of the ride to a demeanor that was now rather threatening. It was a "you will pay, or else" message he was now sending.

Yikes - major fear entering my body. I was flipped the fuck out at this point. For all I know the "police" could show up rather than the police, or to put it another way, he could call 5 of his friends to come and beat the crap outta me and take my stuff. Or he could call and the real police could show up, only maybe they would be crooked cops that he knows, or hell maybe even he doesn't know them but they turn out to be police who see a tourist in a vulnerable position and decide to take advantage of him. From my vantage point, him calling anybody to come into our argument seemed like an action that would put me at a distinct disadvantage. And I already was at a big disadvantage to begin with.

In this position, the cab driver has all the power. He has the phone, he has the car, and my stuff is in his trunk. I could get out and run, if I was expecting bodily harm to come to me, but ditching all your possessions so you could run through downtown Lima, lost and after dark, is not a good option.

So he keeps repeating that if I give him 30 dollars (suddenly the price had rose, remember that I was only 20 dollars short, according to him, originally?) that he would get me to Barranco. The entire time I am trying to calculate my options, in my very tired and stressed out head. I decide that I would go ahead and pay him, as playing along would probably be the only way I get out of this shitty scenario with my stuff in hand and my body unharmed. This is another thing you always read: just go along and do whatever they tell you if they have the upper hand, the consequences of not doing so could be a lot worse than simply losing out on some money.

I did not have that much cash on me, so we had to go to an ATM. I was really wary of getting out of the car at this point, what if he simply drove away with my bags? But I took out the money he wanted, and he waited. Thank god. I get back in the cab, and we set off. I can tell we are actually going to Barranco because we keep following signs pointed in that direction. At this point I can tell that I would get to my hostel. I should have been relieved, but the only things going through my mind was anger and fear, knowing that this guy had just fucked me, but that there was nothing I could do about it.

About 20 minutes later we got to the hostel, and I walked in, bags in hand, and $40 lighter. Considering all the rather worse alternatives, getting scammed for $30 is not so bad. And I guess I get a good story out of it. Sorry Mom. Don't have a heart attack, I definitely learned some lessons that I will put to use next time. So hopefully there won't be one.

This is a rough approximation of my route through these four countries.  If I actually go this way with no detours I'll be shocked.  Hopefully my detour isn't a kidnapping by a coca farmer, right?  Don't worry Mom.  Anyways, I will be starting in Lima and heading to Cuzco, which will start off the circuit.  Once I get back to Lima I'll be flying up to Chiclayo, or somewhere else in the north of Peru, and work my way south to Lima again.  Red lines are bus trips, orange are flights.  I'm trying to keep the number of flights down, but I'm guessing I'll be taking 5-7 during the trip.  Airplanes > buses.

Map of South America, with my area highlighted: