I just spent a week in the departmental capital, Huaraz. While the
week there was fun, coming back from Huaraz was the real adventure.
Our bus left at 1 pm, but Kendra (my site mate) and I both tried to
fit too much into the morning. After doing some shopping and getting
packed, I ate a hurried lunch (which I didn't have time to
finish...so I was obviously already in a bad mood). I got back to the
hostel just in time to pick up my stuff and run to the bus station so
that I could get there late. But I also realized that I needed to
use the bathroom, since I didn't want to poop my pants in the middle
of a 3 ½ hour bus ride. And after that I decided to read War and
Peace and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Unfortunately
Kendra had also done (too much) shopping in Huaraz so we needed to
rent a mule caravan to carry the stuff to the bus station. But since
we had no idea where, or if, we could rent those in Huaraz we decided
to take a taxi. After lugging bags down a couple streets we did find
a taxi which had to drive around town about three times to get us to
the bus station since there is road construction everywhere in Huaraz
right now.
This picture has absolutely nothing to do with my blog post today, but I felt like I shouldn't post something without pictures. Don't want to bore ya'll ;-) Btw, this is my host brother Mauricio, 7, and sister Daniela, 2.
Anyway, back to the story. When we finally arrived at the bus station in the taxi,
we saw a bus leaving. We of course took the precaution of crossing
our fingers, hoping it wasn't ours. Apparently we hadn't crossed our
fingers hard enough though, because it was our bus. After unloading
all of our stuff, paying the cab, and telling the people at the bus
station our dilemma (there wasn't another bus for 5 hours) they told
us we should just grab another cab and chase down the bus. Before we
had time to say, “Seriously?” they were already out front looking
to flag down a cab for us. They found one, explained to the cab
driver where the bus was going and we climbed in and started our car
chase (got to admit, kinda felt like I was in a movie if it wasn't
for the fact that the chase involved a station wagon taxi pursuing an
extremely slow dinosaur-esque bus to a soundtrack of uninspiring
Quechua music in the taxi). When we caught up to it after about 5
minutes (yeah, those buses never make good time) the taxi passed the
bus and pulled over along side the road so we could flag it down.
They stopped to pick us up and even let us put our bags down
underneath with the checked luggage. After the amazing service I
received from the employees of the Paraiso bus company I was
convinced that I would only use that bus line to go to Huallanca.
Granted its the only bus line so I already knew that, but nonetheless
I was still convinced ;-)
