From S. Wales to S. America!
28th Jul 2007 - 29th Jul 200745 hours of Travel Hell! Some people say that the joy of travel is not so much in the destination but the journey itself. Sometimes I agree with that sentiment. Not today. We`ve just completed a marathon 45 hour journey through 3 countries. I`m tired. I smell. I`m spotty. I should explain the journey..... We wake up on Saturday morning at 9:05am exactly. By `exactly` I mean exactly 5 minutes after our bus had left for Tumbes on the Ecuadorian border. I have invisible pixies standing on my shoulders holding small but effective jack-hammers against my temples. Kirsty isn`t going to win any beauty contests this morning either. We stagger out of bed, stuff everything in our packs and head for the bus office in the hope of catching the next bus. We do get the next bus (costing us another whole day`s budget!) It`s hot, the aircon doesn`t work and we have the two front seats upstairs. The seats in front of the window where the curtain is missing. For 2 hours we sit there at the mercy of the sun slowly cooking with the last vestiges of fluid in my body (a salt/alcohol mixture) squirting out through my pores. On arrival at Tumbes we find ourselves with an hour to kill. The mototaxi/Tuk Tuk driver employed by the bus company offers to take us to a nearby restaurant. We really need a cold drink and accept his offer. The driver says it isn`t far. After ten minutes of bone-shaking, ear-splitting wind-in-our-face travel I ask him how mush further. 20 minutes. I didn`t have the energy to strangle him so I told him to take us to a restaurant NEAR HERE! He did. I asked the waiter for a menu. He grunted and walked off. We look around and come to the conclusion that this restaurant isn`t actually open yet. I`m losing the plot at this point. After finally getting the driver to take us back to the bus depot we have only a couple of minutes to grab an ice-cream and a bottle of water before being herded onto the bus. Once again we are out of luck. We have got the two front seats again, this time right underneath the only speaker for the DVD system which is turned up loud for the people at the back of the bus. It`s a Dolph Lundgren action movie dubbed into Spanish. There`s lots of Automatic gunfire in the movie. My head explodes. We cross the Peru/Ecuador border with relative ease despite about twenty locals pushing in front of our perfectly orderly queue. Despite being a long distance coach our our driver stops every couple of kilometres to pick up and drop off locals which means that the aisle of the coach is always full which in turn means that every five minutes I get somebody`s rear end shoved in my face as people sqeeze by each other. By this point I`ve slipped into such a grim mood That I make a list of things that annoy me about travelling. Here it is.... 1. TAXI DRIVERS - Fake ones and ones that saimply don`t know where they`re going! (see diary entry for 21-23 july) 2. OVERCROWDED BUSES - When there are no seats left and the people in the aisle are turning blue the bus is FULL! 3. QUEUEING - People just pushing past you all the time and if you push back you feel like a gringo bully. 4. TUK TUK/MOTOTAXI DRIVERS - Whether it`s South East Asia or South America, these people have their own agenda. Ask for the bus terminal, they take you to their brother`s restaurant, ask for a restaurant and they take you to a fake jewellery shop for `bargains`. These people are vermin. 5. BEING SHORT-CHANGED - 4 Times this has happened to us (3 times in Colombia on the first day!). 3 times by women working in bus station cafes. As soon as you challenge them they cough up the extra and smile. Devious! 6. RESTAURANT TOUTS - The ones in Procuradores (`gringo alley`) in Cuzco are the worst. I had four touts sticking restaurant menus up my nose and one whispering in my ear,"You wanna buy cocaine?". 7. TRAVEL AGENTS/HOSTEL TOUTS - "Yes, it`s a `full cama` bus with reclining seats and aircon." "Yes, there`s 24 hour hot water in the room." Big fat lies. 8. SOUTH AMERICAN WIRING - I plugged in a bedside lamp in Uruguay and the wall socket exploded leaving black scorch marks on my fingers. Numerous shocks from poorly wired showers. I`ve had so much electricity through my body on this trip I could probably light a bulb just by holding it! Ah, rant over. I feel better having got that off my chest. Where was I? We arrive in Guayquil in the early evening and have to wait until 11pm for the night bus to Quito. Night buses in Equador are supposed to be dangerous due to the risk of being hijacked. After a couple of hours on the Quito night bus I actually started wishing we would be hijacked because the driver was a lunatic. Sunday morning we arrive in Quito and immediately hop on another bus bound for the Ecuador/Colombia border (5 hrs). We crossed the border on foot and caught the afternoon bus to Armenia (14 hours). South America has a rich history in motorsport. Fangio, Piquet, Senna and Montoya to name but a few. Now I know how they produce such legends. They take promising young racing drivers and give them an apprenticeship with the Colombian bus companies. For 14 hours I was in a state of terror. The coach driver drove like he was in a VW Golf GTI in a supermarket carpark in the early hours. His aim seemed to be to keep the vehicle rev-counter above the red line in every gear. I`d know when a corner was coming by the screaming engine note as the driver dropped a couple of gears ready to power throught the apex. I swear we were on two wheels on at least three occasions. I kept turning, speechless with terror, to Kirsty but as usual she was asleep. Finally we arrived in Armenia and caught a local bus to here. Salento. We are staying at the `Plantation House` in Salento. It`s perfect. I`m writing this sat on the verandah of a cottage overlooking an incredibly lush green valley. The sun is out and I have lots of beautifully coloured butterflies for company. The only sounds are the rustling of leaves on the breeze and the occasional, distant cock crowing. I can see huge birds of prey circling in the valley. I feel totally relaxed. So there is my point (finally!). Sometimes travelling is all about the destination.
|
| 1227 Words | This page has been read 68 times | View Printable Version |