November 7, 2010
Tuesday, November 3rd Hanna, Chris, and I headed for Lima. Hanna needed to go to the U.S. Embassy to renew her passport and she needed a traveling buddy. We decided to take the bus back to Lima with Chris. When would we have another chance to ride the bus to Lima? Or the time? Who knew? Here in Peru we live by Nike’s moto:Just do it.
We sat in our front row seats of the bus, enough snacks to last us a week and enough clothes to last us about a day sat above us. The bus attendant lady stood up to make an announcement.
“Welcome, we are glad to have you on Transmar. This trip is expected to be about 18 hours, we will be serving lunch soon. There is a bathroom on this bus, only to be used for urinating…”
Other things were said. We were surprised to hear that they would be serving us lunch A few minutes after the announcement the poo hit the fan, almost literally. The smell of a freshly used bathroom began to permeate the bus. Seconds later the bus attendant walked purposefully up to the front of the bus and said something to the bus assistant. She then made her way, perturbed, towards the back of the bus. Five seconds later she came rapidly down the aisle to speak with the bus attendant one more time. This time the bus attendant accompanied her to the back of the bus.
By this time I was quite curious. I turned back to see what was happening and saw the two of them pointing fingers and speaking forcefully to a person inside of the bathroom. The next thing we know the bus workers and their “criminal” were walking to the front of the bus. The bus driver proceeded to pull into a gas station.
Some curious travelers asked the bus attendant what was going on.
The crime: “He defecated in the bathroom.”
There was obviously no protection of privacy. Although, the smell pretty much informed everyone of what was going on.
For the next 10 minutes the poor guy was humiliated as the passengers snickered and watched him clean the bathroom. With the bathroom and bus smelling fresh as spring we were on our way.
The rest of the bus trip went like this:
` *Lunch served in little aluminum tuperware.
*Awesome popcorn.
*Jackie Chan movie in Spanish
*Conking out from the “altitude sickness drugs” (really high dosage of benedryl).
*Beautiful green rolling hills sprinkeled with thatched roof houses.
*More conking out from drugs.
*Jagged cliffs with rushing river next to the road.
*Waterfalls
*Pit stop in Tingo Maria-50 centimos to use the bathroom.
*Another meal in an aluminum tuperware.
*More yummy popcorn.
*Another movie in Spanish.
*Winding roads.
*Guy vomiting from bus-sickness behind us.
*Freezing.
*Finally arriving in Lima.
The bus ride was an adventure. I’m glad I did it, and I’m even more glad I didn’t throw up. Gross.
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