Bus Rides

Traveling on the cheap, as we are, means a ton of bus rides to get where we are going...Going all the way from Mexico to Panama you see a ton of different buses, and you start getting used to the shitty chicken buses, or being packed in like a sardine. But it is never easy to get on city buses that are jam packed with your giant pack and not make a scene...I would rather take a taxi!

The longest bus ride we took in Central America was about 10 hours, but here in South America, that is a small-distance ride. The countries are bigger and the buses have longer to travel, so getting used to 15-16 hour-plus bus rides (and usually overnight!) is not going to be easy.
Especially when taking a ride on a bus here is the exact equivalent of trying to sleep in a meat locker. I am not joking! They blast the air conditioning so much that it is just so uncomfortable. And we even come prepared-we change into long pants and bring a sweatshirt and socks. Last night, it wasn't enough...Instead of sleeping comfortably and waking up at your next destination- you go into hypothermia and just lay there shivering.

Not to mention that other interesting things happen on the bus rides. Take last nights' 9 hour ride, for example. First, the bus leaves late-and there were only 9 passengers...Then, about 30 minutes into the ride, the lady and young guy in the front of the bus turn around and ask Adrian if we saw a furry creature running around our feet?! What the Heck?! The bus lights are all off at this point, and all I can hear is Adrian say "A raton?" and I immediately start to get a bit grossed out. I have just been riding on a bus with a rat or a mouse crawling around my feet?! Yuck!! So Adrian gets out a flashlight and we start looking around our feet, and about the same time- I hear the translation- "You think it's a hamster?" A hamster?! This must be what they call mice in Colombia...So after some scuffle and looking around-the thing crawls by my feet and the young guy dives under the seat in the dark and catches it. It really was a hamster! A cute little orange and white guy!! What the hell was it doing on the bus?! This guy picked it up and asked all the passengers if they lost a hamster...No one had...So the two proceeded to put him in a purse for safe keeping, and feed him a cooked potato...He seemed pretty content in there. I had no idea what they were going to do with it but I just figured they would keep it as a pet. So after we watched the little guy eat the potato and wonder why he was on the bus, they decided to tie the purse closed and put it in the overhead compartment until we arrived. Needless to say the hamster chewed through the purse and is back loose in the bus somewhere, now in the overhead compartments! Good stuff...

We fall back asleep after we caught the hamster and wake up for the 2am rest stop. I go to the bathroom and come out, waiting for the bus to get going. I am standing outside the bus talking to this Australian guy we are traveling with, and we notice that Adrian is talking to some locals and has a little crowd gathered around him...We were so amused watching this scene-at 2 am, this little restaraunt in the middle of nowhere was packed and jumping and Adrian managed to enrapture a group of locals with who knows what...And we were sort of sleepy and wondering what he was doing. It was a really cool scene from afar- you could see them all asking questions, and every minute a new person would come over to hear what was going on-and there is Adrian in the middle, waving his arms around telling some story...So it turns out he was just buying a snack, and starting talking to the restaraunt owner, who asked about his trip, and they all got so curious about him, and us and they were asking him all sorts of questions. They were just so excited to talk to him, you could see it-it was cool. I think the Colombians are so far the friendliest people in all the countries I've been to. And I also think that they are really excited to see tourists in their country, after years of travelers avoiding the country because of the previous dangers.

To top it all off, on our second leg of the bus trip today-the bus broke down! Let's hope my first bus break-down is also my last...I slept for most of the time and only noticed when they turned off the bus and therefore the AC slowly died out and I had to strip off all the layers I had put on. One interesting point, I didn't hear anyone complain about the holdup (or maybe it's just because I was sleeping), but everyone just patiently sat and waited, knowing that they were trying to fix the bus. I'm not sure if that happened at home people would idly sit and wait like that...

So those are just some random thoughts about bus travel...It's weird, even though you may sleep alot, and are just sitting there-taking a bus ride really wipes you out! Time for bed...