TRAVEL. SOUTH AMERICA

How I Became a Legend on a Bus Trip in Peru

The curves of the mountain road tossed us like a Spanish galleon caught on a raging sea

You never know what to expect when you’re traveling by bus in Peru. If you’re lucky, the bus is late. If you’re unlucky, the bus never comes at all.

When you get out into the rural areas, there aren’t any stations. Instead, a crowd will gather by the highway. They come from places you can’t imagine and have led lives you wouldn’t believe.

Some of them seem to come from other planets. They’re wrapped in colorful shawls, and if you look closely, you might see the beautiful, large eyes of a baby peeking out from beneath the folds.

Some carry chickens.

Waiting by the highway, a bus will come roaring up out of a cloud of dust, and the crowd begins to run. They scramble for the door, hoping to get a seat. Most of the time you end up standing or sitting in the aisle.

Traveling by bus in the mountains is like sailing on a raging sea. Mountain roads twist and turn as they navigate the rugged landscape. On one side there is a sheer wall of rock. On the other side, there is a cliff dropping away into the abyss.

The driver’s got a schedule to keep and he hurtles down the mountain at terrifying speed. The bus pitches and rolls as it goes around the corners. You’re thrown back and forth, you must not succumb to nausea or else everyone will.

It’s amazing how fast a double-decker bus can go around a corner without flipping over. The bus drivers in Peru get a lot closer to tipping speed than I ever could.

The movie Inception is right when it talks about “the kick.” When you feel like you’re flipping over, you wake up instantly. Even if you manage to fall asleep on a mountain bus ride, chances are you’ll be startled awake dozens of times, certain that the bus is about to capsize. When it doesn’t you’re at first mildly disappointed, then annoyed, then relieved.

If you watch enough local TV, you’ll see stories about buses tumbling off a corner and rolling down a cliff. It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens often enough so you know the odds are higher than they should be.

Maybe twice a week it happens. There are lots of buses, but still…

On one trip, I was returning to Lima from Huaraz in a mountain bus. The driver must have had a wedding to get to because he was driving like a madman.

I couldn’t even come close to sleeping, I was too busy trying to keep from smashing into the windows as the bus threw me from left to right. There I was, suppressing exclamations of distress, while everyone else snored loudly.

They were getting thrown from window to window as well, it just didn’t bother them. They snored right through it.

Snore, snore, SMACK, snore, snore, SMACK, snore, snore…

In the overhead compartment of the seat in front of me, the passenger had placed his briefcase. I couldn’t sleep, and the briefcase became a stable focus point that allowed me to orient on center.

I noticed that with every turn, the briefcase slipped off the bin a little more. Slowly, slowly, slowly, it crept towards the edge.

The man who owned the briefcase was sound asleep in his seat. His head was slumped forward in the way that some people can sleep on a bus. It looked more uncomfortable than anything I could imagine.

Unfortunately, the position of his body meant that, if the briefcase fell, it would land right on the guy’s neck. Depending on how heavy the briefcase was, perhaps it would kill him?

I decided to take pity on the guy. I tapped him on the shoulder. He gave me a bleary, confused, and rather irritated look.

“Hey, your briefcase is about to fall,” I said.

I expected him to pull the briefcase down and put it in the compartment at his feet. Instead, he looked up, then he reached up and pushed the briefcase back into position.

These are the behaviors that annoy me.

He hadn’t fixed anything, he’d just delayed the inevitable.

My irritation grew.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the briefcase had slid toward the edge once again. So, once again, I reached forward and tapped the guy on the shoulder.

He gave me the same bleary, confused, and somewhat furious look.

“Your briefcase,” I said. Part of me thought maybe this time he’d get it. Maybe this time he’d recognize that he’d placed the briefcase in an untenable position.

See buddy, your solution isn’t working. Are you ready to listen to reason?

I watched, hoping he’d pull the briefcase down to avoid getting rudely awakened every five minutes.

But of course, he didn’t. Once again he just reached up and pushed the briefcase back into the bin. This time when he went back to sleep, he pushed himself back into his seat, mouth open, snoring loudly.

Now I was angry.

“Fine,” I thought, “I tried to help you but you keep being an idiot. Maybe having that briefcase fall on your head will teach you a lesson!”

Resolved not to wake him, I settled back to watch the briefcase. Sure enough, within a few seconds, with every turn of the bus, the briefcase began to creep towards the edge.

It took a surprisingly long time. Just as it took more force than I anticipated to topple the bus, it took more force to topple the briefcase.

It took so long, in fact, that my irritation began to ebb. Several times I considered waking the guy and alerting him to the fact that the briefcase was about to bang him on the head. But I stopped myself. “This guy deserves it!”

When the briefcase was more than halfway out into the aisle, it finally began to teeter. Still, it took two more turns before the briefcase was eventually dislodged.

As I watched the heavy item fell, I realized I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. At the last second, I reached forward on either side of the seat and caught the briefcase an instant before it hit the sleeping man.

There was a cheer.

I looked to my left and this very old guy in a ragged suit who had stumbled drunkenly onto the bus and slept for the whole journey had seen my miraculous catch. He was clapping his hands and offering a garbled celebration of my achievement.

He was my only witness.

Right then, the man in the seat in front of me woke up. He probably found it odd to find his briefcase apparently floating in front of him, my arms on either side.

“Your briefcase fell and I caught it,” I said. I was mildly worried that he might conclude that I was trying to steal from him. It’s always awkward when you find yourself in a scenario that’s nearly impossible to explain.

“This isn’t what it looks like, in fact, I’m not sure what it looks like!”

He didn’t look at me. Instead, he gathered up the briefcase and finally put it under the seat in front of him.

We made it to Lima without any further difficulties.

Getting off the bus, the drunk guy who had witnessed my catch kept looking at me with unconcealed admiration. He was smiling and clapping and letting loose a torrent of incomprehensible praise. This guy idolized me.

Too bad everyone else thought he was crazy.

To this day that guy probably tells that story to his drunk friends. They’re probably sick of hearing it. They probably don’t believe it’s true.

Maybe someday I’ll go back to Lima and arrange to catch falling briefcases on every corner until I hear someone exclaim, “THERE! DID YOU SEE IT? I TOLD YOU SO!”

A wise man doesn’t lament the fact that he is only a minor legend. A wise man is grateful that he’s any kind of legend at all.

Read more about my adventures in Peru and a story with a Shaman.

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