Early this morning, around 12:40am, I caught my bus for Cuzco, running just a little bit late. I had to wake up the woman who had put her stuff on my seat and heave my possessions and myself into my seat over all her stuff. And so there I sat, in seat 29. My birthdate. But what was to pass was a long night of dozing in and out of consciousness and trying to hold off disrupting those around me with a visit to the washroom. Thank you 7L jug of water (p.s. the Japanese woman from my tour yesterday took a photo of my water jug, which I thought rather hilarious at the time).
I felt really ill though all evening. Like my stomach was doing backflips. And this didn’t help, because the road to Cuzco is through the mountains and the road zig zag through them. By this morning, I was spending half of my time staring out the window and breathing just to get through the nausea. Once we were about 1.5 hours outside of Cuzco, our bus stopped.
There had been a landslide across the road. So we all piled out to take an inventory of the damage. I’m writing this from the bus, still waiting to cross the road. It took nearly 4 hours but we finally have a rough ramp that has enabled smaller vehicles go across as the locals and other travelers stand outside the bus onlooking and generally being in the way.
During these four hours we had to pass the time somehow. At first, it was through conversation. After all a digger had arrived and was making some headway. We talked about our lives back home, our travels, and even other travelers we’ve met along the way. Then after about 1.5 hours passed, two of us decided to walk around the landslide, by the river to see what was going on on that side. As we debated going around, we noticed two bodies though on the ground.
We asked a fellow onlooker and he said they were two drunk men who fell into the river. Which looked to have Class IV rapids and gigantic rocks. Not the sort of river I’d want to go for a swim in, if you know what I mean. The first one was placed in the grey blanket covering the two of them and taken around the other side. The other was being smacked by some helpful women trying to rouse him out of his boozy unconsciousness. He finally came around, to which I felt a huge relief. Although it was textbook “don’t do this in case of emergency” action. They heaved him up, waved his limp arm around, and slapped his face. None of this “pinching his shoulders and shouting” and not moving the spine incase he had a head injury. But he appeared to have survived. He was moving and breathing.
After our departure to the other side, I seriously questioned leaving with all my bags like a number of other travelers. Apparently there was a town two hours away by foot, about the same time roughly it would have taken to wait for the ramp to be created. I opted to wait. I didn’t like the idea of leaving behind transportation that at least had food and water. I also don’t have more than 5 soles to my name. Dollars, yes. Soles, no.
In the end, the girls from Huacachina and I played Shithead on the side of the road. This is a card game that I picked up in Guatemala. We even borrowed one of the “tables” from the bus to use for a clean surface. We garnered a lot of attention playing cards on the sdie of the road, but frankly boredom was a worse fate. Alexander, a Peruvian, decided to join us. Or rather I should say, he spent a great deal of time trying to chat us up. Talking about how he played poker. And eventually he asked to join our game. He did.
Finally, at nearly 6:00pm, I am writing to say that we are easing ourself onto the other side of the road. FINALLY! We all cheered our appreciation. Especially after some tense moments when our bus was stranded beside two GIANT boulders. Just about ready to depart once more after a check that all the wheels were functional. Only 1.5 hours away from Cuzco. I hope that this is the end of my drama today.
Now at 6:28pm, I find myself heading towards Cuzco. Finally. What a Good Friday this has been...
No comments:
Post a Comment