Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The Hospedaje Santa Cruz keeps a running bill for guests, including room, laundry, drinks, etc. and presents you with a total at the end. It's nice not to have to worry about money every five minutes but it can be a shocker paying such a large bill at once. Then of course they didn't have change for us (we were owed about $7), so we had to wait while someone ran around town trying to find change somewhere else. But that's pretty much par for the course, and the staff was all very nice. I recommend the Santa Cruz highly.

The bus station was deserted. There were a few parked busses and a couple of dogs sleeping in the shade, but nothing else. Michael and I stood around foolishly for a while, trying to figure out what to do, who to ask, when we noticed that the terminal business seemed to be open, so we headed towards it. Once inside the narrow building, it all became clear - we had been in the station's back yard.

The other side was the bus station we have come to know and love - a chaotic jumble of bus-yellers ("Cuenca, Cuenca, Cuenca! ...Hola, Cuenca? Riobamba? Quito?") food and drink vendors, beggars, dogs, and passengers with bags big enough to carry a body in. Naturally there was a bus to Riobamba that was just about to leave. In the US, I would never just show up at a Greyhound station whenever I felt like traveling, but on this trip we've learned that for the most part there is always a bus.

We plan ahead if we're taking a very long distance or overnight bus, but if we're making a hop of between one and six hours, we just stroll on into the station whenever the mood strikes us and get rushed onto a waiting bus. It's very nice. There is a lot that I like about the bus culture here, that's been consistant among the hundreds of bus services available since Tijuana. My favorite is that except for the ultra-fancy busses, you can get off the bus whenever you want.

You never have to worry about hearing, "That's not a stop, ma'am. Sorry, but I can only open the doors at a bus stop. Against regulations." Live a couple of miles outside of town? Just knock on the driver's cabin when your house approaches and he'll let you right off. Having twice taken Greyhound from Boston to NYC and driven right past my apartment, knowing it was going to be another hour down to Port Authority, and another hour back on the subway, I can appreciate this deeply.

So anyway, we hopped right onto a Riobamba-bound bus and were off. The landscape along the road was chilling - grooved black hillsides sloping down into muddy, rocky roads and dried silt riverbeds. At times there was bright greenery, but a few yards later there would be more stark mud and rock. It was all so raw and painful looking. I assume there have been landslides recently.

We got to Riobamba in an hour and hopped off the bus into air pungent with immanent rain. We assumed we could get a bus to Alausí at the bus station across the street. But no. We were at the wrong bus station. Apparently fancy Riobamba has two bus stations.

So we had to pay a dollar for a taxi to take us to the other one. We were safely in the car when the rumbling thunder finally made good on its threats and the rain came pelting down. It was a real downpour and we shared some appreciative murmurs and nervous smiles with the taxi driver.

As in Quito, it costs ten cents to bring a vehicle (or maybe just a taxi, it wasn't clear) onto the bus station grounds. With the rain pouring down, we gladly handed over a dime so that the driver could pull into the station and park under the overhanging roof... right next to the bus we'd taken from Baños, still discharging our fellow passengers, the ones who knew what they were doing.

Inside the cavernous station we had to shout over the deafening roar of the rain pelting down on the high, corrugated metal roof. No one else seemed to be bothered by the sound, but I had never heard anything like it and found it a bit terrifying. We each paid ten cents to use the restroom and then shopped around until we found a 3:00 bus to Alausí.

After we'd chosen seats and settled in, we gradually realized that the murmurs of the couple in the next seat up had to do with us. Eventually they showed us that we were in their seats. We'd completely forgotten about the assigned seat business. So we got up and they took our seats. But they left their sleeping daughter in their old seats - our seats, according to our tickets. So the guy had to get up and retrieve his child and then we sat down in their seats and they sat down in our seats and it was not the least bit a ridiculous waste of time.

To be fair, they couldn't have known that we had each others' seats. They were probably figuring someone else would come along and kick them out of their seats, and the process would just continue unless they were safely in their own rightful seats. I guess we'll have to start paying attention to our tickets again.

Alausí is another small town, so we were able to walk to a hotel from the spot where the bus dropped us off. We chose a random one not in the Lonely Planet, and it was ok. The woman running the place was not especially friendly. After looking at the first room she showed us, we asked if there was a room with a window. "Donde?" she said in an exasperated voice. Lady, we don't know. It's your hotel. But we pointed towards the front, and she showed us a room with a window opening out onto the street. It had twin beds, but we took it anyway. Eleven dollars without bathroom.

Then we had some very bad Chinese food, and I had my first Inca Kola. You can get Inca Kola in New York - the greengrocer on our block in Spanish Harlem sells it, along with apple soda and other Latino faves. But after reading so much about it in other people's South America blogs, for some reason I wanted to wait until I was in Peru to try it. But today I felt like I'd put it off long enough and I didn't want to get all Donna Martin about it. It's just soda, after all. Sweet, sweet, pee-yellow, sweet, bubblegum flavored soda.

Back in Baños I had twisted my hair for the first time. It still feels new and different, but I didn't get a lot of looks in Baños. (One clue as to why no one cared could have been the backpacker kid we saw wearing a giant felt jester's hat.) But here in Alausí they must get fewer "unusual" looking people, because they really, really wanted to look at my hair.

We walked through a group of teenage girls who all stopped in their tracks and made no attempt to hide the fact that they were pointing out my hair to each other. But it was ok, because when I smiled at them, they all smiled back. I'm constantly staring at the indigenous ladies in their fedoras (though I hope I am a bit more subtle) so people are welcome to stare at my twists, as long as it's not that unfriendly, slack-jawed staring that we got in Honduras.

In the late afternoon, the fog poured down the mountains surrounding the town, and when we went for an evening walk down to the train tracks (hitting a couple of bakeries on the way) everything looked eerie draped in floating strands of mist, the miniscule drops of water glistening in the streetlight halos. It was cold. There was an outdoor church set up where the train tracks make a triangle. Every seat was full and there was a large standing room crowd in the streets and sidewalks. Probably to do with Semana Santa.

Back in our room later, we watched from our window over the street as the whole church assembly, a massive crowd, especially considering the size of the town, processed up the main street carrying a large, lighted statue of a saint. The statue was connected by extension cords back through the trailing crowd to a pickup truck carrying a generator. Progress was slow, as the crowd stopped every few buildings to scatter flower petals on the saint before moving on again. It was interesting to watch, and a good thing we'd figured out where in the hotel the windows might possibly be.

There are framed photos on the stairs in our hotel, indigenous ladies weaving, etc. There is also a photo of the famous train, the top of which is wall to wall gringos, wedged back to back and shoulder to shoulder. It looks frightening. We're hoping it's not that crowded tomorrow.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 236.25

 

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The Baños bus station in a quiet moment.

Train tracks, Alausí.

Fog pours into Alausí.

More fog, Alausí.

Alausí side street.

Shoeshine boys, Alausí.

Argh, clowns in Alausí too.

A photo of that photo of the top of the Devil's Nose train. Yikes.