South America is amazing. Horrible buses, rock strewn roads, llamas, tanned skin, crazy elevations, humongous mountains, beautiful scenery, and lots of people, most of them the nicest you will meet, many of them wanting to sell you something. Anything.
My last couple of days were awesome and adventurous. I explored arequipa and then hopped on a local/company bus to Lima. There are numerous companies in Peru that offer various levels of service throughout the country. For example Cruz del Sur offers Luxury, Deluxe Luxury, and Ultra Luxury lines which really equate to perhaps Amtrak's Economy and Business class. In SA, however, everyone is competing for their customers, rather than the U.S' poorly funded, poorly maintained sole train service. I took Orteno which is usually pretty reputable. This was the ghost bus from hell. Smelly seats, no legroom (the bulk head was 2 inches from my knees) and no bathroom-- just 40 Peruvians and me. It left at 10pm, an hour late, and as we rumbled slowly down the street the front door from the aisle to the driver's seat kept slamming into the driver- bang, bang. With one hand I could see him steering the beast, and with the other he kept shoving the door back into place. It was a losing proposition.
The window behind me was out of it's slot and created the loudest ratting noise I've ever heard. The curtains didn't close all the way, so I was forced to watch our disturbingly weavy progress down the narrow roads. Now the car head lights pointing directly towards us, now 90 degrees away. Mildly terrifying to put it lightly. Every 2 hours we would stop to take on new customers and take a pee break, whereupon the bus would try to leave after 5 minutes without half its passengers, the people who were on the bus yelling PASAJE PASAJE! To the driver, who apparently didn't really care how many people had to run after the departing bus.
At 10 in the morning after stopping for an hour at a roadside food joint where one of the waiters was about 50 and looked like Elvis if Elvis had brown skin no paunch and was Peruvian, we broke down in the middle of the coastal desert. After tinkering for an hour with a couple of wrenches the bus driver finally resorted to the big guns. Out came a piece of string and a foot long wire. To my utmost surprise, it didn't work.
A passing bus stopped and everyone filed on, leaving the driver and helper dangling a string into the engine, prying with the wire and generally cursing in spanish. We finally arrived at 3pm, seventeen hours after departure, on a completely different busline company. From Lima I took a taxi to the airport, haggling the driver down from 30 dollars to 22 soles (5 dollars). From there I hung out for a few hours, then took a flight to Ft. Worth, Texas. As soon as I hit the U.S I noticed a preponderance of fat people and a disturbing lack of empanada stands. These two things are obviously inextricable linked. I treated myself to a coffee, which I haven't had in a month, then, with the heart rate up, I flew on to Las Vegas, then to Phoenix, then on to Colorado Springs where my arms finally got really tired, and my friend Sydney picked me up (THANK YOU!). And so I have returned.
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