Busses Are What Makes You A Real Traveler

Imagine getting on a bus with a bunch of strangers you can't communicate with and getting stranded in the middle of the Andes Mountains with 8 hours left of the 22 total. Well thats what happened to me on my way to Cuzco, Peru. First I almost missed my bus from Ayacucho. It was leaving at 7 AM and I must have not heard my alarm on my watch and woke up at 6:30. I freaked. I knew that I had to make that bus because the rest of the next week sorta depended on it. Thankfully I packed everything the night before so I could just get dressed and leave. There were no cabs outside so I started running. Previously the night before I walked the route to make sure I could get there in enough time and that I wouldn't require a cab. That helped tremendously because I knew the route and the amount of time it would take me to walk it. But I still chose to run most of it just because I didn't want to get left behind. Hell for all I knew if all the locals were on the bus why would they wait for one lowely Gringo? I did manage to get there with plenty of time to spare.

The first leg was supposed to take 10 hours. Amazingly it only took 8. When I got there I had 2 hours to kill so I just walked around the city. The bus basically left on time. I had a bad feeling about getting on that bus just because of the way it looked. The seats weren't in the best of shape and it just looked like it had been around for a long time. You don't really sleep on a bus completely. Its like a dream almost. You fall asleep for a bit and then wake up not knowing where you are it and if you are any closer than you were before you fell asleep. Combine that with the most curvy, bumpiest gravel roads you can imagine and you've got a hell of a bus ride. We made our first stop around 10 for the bano (bathroom), and snacks. At around 11:45 PM I was suddenly awoken by people running by me to get out of the bus. "Cuzco", I asked? "No" he said. Then I noticed a lot of black smoke comming through the bus and the bus struggling to start. I got up and got out just before the driver opened the engine cover located next to him by the seat, and saw massive amounts of smoke and steam come out. At first I thought he poured water on it to cool down the engine. But then after he tried starting it and nothing happened I knew we were in for a long night or even the next day. I'm assuming the radiator blew. We stayed outside for sometime while the driver and everyone else tried calling the bus people. I couldn't understand them but I'm sure it was nothing but profanity.

After about 30 minutes it had gotten rather cold. I'd say it was easily in the 40's. The bus driver had turned the lights off but put a cone well behind the bus so no one would hit us and a bucket some feet ahead too. At that time I decided that I could either stand there and freeze my ass off or get inside and be somewhat warm. The factor was that there were guard rails on the side of the cliff and the bus was in gear so it would have to take a lot of force for a vehicle coming up the hill to hit us and push us off the cliff. I woke up around 6 with nothing but people yelling. It was rather comical to hear all the old ladies yelling and pounding on the windows. Even though I wasn't freaking out I couldn't help but wonder how long we might be there. I knew that the worst case scenerio would be 11 PM or so when the next scheduled bus would come through. Then it would depend on if that bus had room for the 30 of us or so that needed to get on. Thankfully around 7 a bus from another company came to pick us up. Im assuming it was send there by my bus company because it was completely empty. 5 hours later and we were finally in Cuzco. I've been on a lot of crazy bus rides in many countries but given the unusual circumstances this one takes the cake. I come to find out later that a couple from the UK that are doing the Junket were pulled off by gun point and ordered to lay on the ground during their bus ride from Lima to Cuzco. Thankfully the worst that happened was cash and a passport being taken. Now that is a bus ride.