Arequipa and beyond

Sometimes I hate traveling by bus. In fact, if I don’t travel by bus for a very long time I will probably be happy. This is how I found myself on a long distance bus twice within 36 hours. I had been doing a lot of travel by bus lately.

My return into Peru was uneventful as it had been when I entered (although this time I didn’t have a Canadian to talk too). Instead I helped some random guy pay his late fees for staying past his visa and then the bastard didn’t stick around to pay me back. Well I hope he pays it forward, because karma has been nice to him....but this post isn’t about that. Not really.

My trip from Puno had an unexpected surprise, the first time I had the VIP beds in the bus. Typically the buses down here have two floors. The top floor is for us cheap mochileros (backpackers) who need to get from A to B. The bottom floor is supposed to have deluxe beds. With more angle so that it’s just like sleeping in your bed at home...

And while it was nice, it certainly wasn’t super comfortable. Especially when I started getting feverish. But at least I had a funny Israeli guy trying to chat to me in his slightly limited English. He kept saying he was going to go home and practice his English. And I had to admit, it was 1000 times better than my Hebrew. Though he did seem surprised that the only word I knew in Hebrew was ‘shalom’. He said typically people only knew the curse words. Well they are more fun, sometimes!

Eventually though, sleep won out. Or rather as much sleep as you can get when you can’t really rotate or move in your seat comfortably and without effort. Thus another night of rough sleep. I seriously am missing my bed in Canada. While it might not feel as nice as the bed felt after my 36 km walk, it will probably feel similar. Perhaps with more giddy happiness to be with my own germs again.

My new Israeli friend and his three friends decided that we should share a taxi together and head to a hostel called Wild Rover. We managed to fit in that taxi the equivalent of six 70 litre bags, four Israelis, one Canadian, one Peruvian, and one golf bag. I have never been so squished and yet entertained in my life. I felt like I was living out a dream of “how many clowns can you fit in a clown car” joke.

Upon arrival, I got myself a bed and I crawled into it. Exhaustion doing it’s work in no time.

I woke up a few hours later, with no where near enough sleep. But somehow my internal clock was telling me to go and see the sights. Which ended up being a restaurant serving food from Istanbul. Which meant I had the falafel wrap and a salad. It was delicious. It felt like such a strange find considering that I had been talking to my Israeli friend about hummus and Israeli food the night before. I couldn’t help but think what his opinion of my falafel would have been.

I wandered around the town for a bit in search of new pants. My previous pair, although a wonderful blood red, somehow weren’t the greatest travel pants. While they did have pockets (always necessary) they got crumpled too easy and stretched out too much. Hoping to find a second hand store (which proved unsuccessful) I started to realize just how dirty my white t-shirt from Colombia had become. Thus, I somehow ended up shopping for a whole new wardrobe. I returned to the hostel with a lighter wallet, but a new button down shirt, t-shirt, and jeans. All for about $60. Not too shabby.

And sunglasses to boot!

At the same time, I made another realization. I didn’t really want to spend my final days alone in Arequipa. Even though I could have gone to Colca Canyon, supposedly deeper than the Grand Canyon in the US, I opted that I just couldn’t leave Peru without a few more days with the My Small Help crew.

Thus once again the next morning I found myself at a bus station waiting for my bus. I bought a ticket with Flores to get to Cusco. Now I had taken a Flores bus before, and wasn’t exactly blown away. But I figured that I was out of other options. With only a few days left before I needed to be in Lima and a booked flight to get to Lima from Cusco, I decided to take the day trip.

And it was excruciating. WIth a planned departure of 12:30pm, our bus showed up at 12:45. We left the terminal at 1:00pm. We left Arequipa at 1:20pm. Not the best start. And between Arequipa and Cusco we picked up every Peruvian along the way. Including all their baggage. The bonus was that this also included ladies selling food, although nothing that would really suit a vegetarian or vegan. But all the same, the other passengers could tame their hunger.

Although I passed the first ways asleep on the window, I did manage to catch the last bit of one of the weirdest sci-fi movies I have seen. With English actors and a spanish dub. Classic. If I never see an alien pop out of two conjoined men and crab walk, I will be happy. I’m not quite sure the sort of taste in movies the Latin Americans have. I have seen some weird ass movies on buses here. The next one, though not so weird, had to do with the war in the Middle East. Not exactly uplifting.

The next one though, to pass the time (which had definitely dragged on and we were no where near our original time plan of arriving at 10pm in Cusco) was one I had seen before. A movie about several men who escape a concentration camp in Siberia during the Stalin years and walk to India. I spent some time talking to the woman sitting next to me who is a nurse in a city outside of Cusco but her family is from Arequipa. She was just visiting her boys. We talked about the alcoholism here and the violence. It was a lovely chat, but I was too pissed off and exhausted to really keep the conversation going for too long and eventually we passed the time in silence. Watching the film.

When it ended, we were stuck listening to the menu title’s music for about 1 hour. Which by the time we reached yet ANOTHER cities terminal, the whole bus was yelling at the bus driver and crew to change the movie. Which they thankfully did. By this time it was 9:30pm and still 2.5 hours outside of Cusco. Thus in the final moments of this “blissful” trip, we watched Immortals. A movie which is trying to be a Greek Hero story and 300 at the same time. And somehow both succeeding and failing. Though the blood splatters were spectacular.

At nearly 11:40pm we finally arrived in Cusco. I hopped into a cab and was taken to Kokopeli hostel. While I probably could have called Leander and stayed with her in her new apartment, I figured it was probably a tad late. I quickly went to the nearest open restaurant to scarf down some food to deal with the “tiger in my stomach” as they said in Nicaragua and then off to bed.

The next morning I went to see if Leander was home so I could see her, but alas, no luck. I instead had my breakfast at MuseToo in San Blas and enjoyed the tranquility and acoustic Spanish songs. I also apparently attracted the attention of some fellow Canadians who were visiting the city. I was reading Bill Brysons “A Short History of Nearly Everything” and laughed at one of the witty geology jokes (I promise you it was actually funny). Then had to explain to the group all about it. Which clearly means that I laughed and everyone else looked bemused by me.

I returned to the hostel to pay my bill and grab my things before I headed to the terminal for buses to Urubamba. Instead I found a bus that took me all the way to Ollantaytambo. I was on my way to my home away from home once again.