Thursday, May 25, 2006

Once we'd eaten cuy, it was time to get out of Cuzco. Michael and I checked out of the Suecia II around 11:00 and had one last lunch in town, at a place across the street called Manos Limeños where the Italian owner was so talkative that we spent much longer on lunch than we had planned. But he was a very nice man and pleasingly enthusiastic about my Italian half. Also the food was good. Anyway, by the time we got out to the bus station it was almost 1:00 p.m.

The first bus company we tried was Ormeño, which we'd heard good things about. The woman behind the counter said there were no busses going out to Puno today due to the protests, but that we could get a luxury bus tonight at ten. Well, we didn't necessarily believe her. Because it's become clear that any answer that a bus company or travel agency representative gives you is true only for that company.

For example: Ask the Cruz del Sur guy if there is a bus-cama from Nazca to Cuzco and he will say no no no. But what he really means is there is no Cruz del Sur bus-cama from Nazca to Cuzco. And as we know, there is a Civa bus-cama to Cuzco. But why should he tell you that? He doesn't want to send you to Civa. He wants you to buy a Cruz del Sur ticket. Ok, fair enough. We don't expect anyone to send us to a competing company. But on the other hand, if you can't give us what we ask for we're going to say thank you and then look around until we get exactly what we want, or find out for sure that it doesn't exist.

And in our case today, it did exist. Kind of. We bought tickets to Puno from some kid at some random counter. For a trip of merely six hours we didn't need a fancy bus. We were feeling so smug about finding tickets to Puno that we forgot the other side of rule, the one that says if a travel agent or bus company representative is trying to sell you a ticket, he will never, ever admit to anything that might stop you from buying it. The kid assured us there would be no problems with any type of protests, so we handed over our twenty soles each.

Then we met a hotel tout, a sweet older woman who was dismayed when she heard we were going to Puno. She told us it wasn't possible, that the roads were blocked, we'd never get through. Well, sweet as she was, since the next words out of her mouth were, "I have a nice hotel..." we had our doubts about her too. Look, we've been jerked around a lot in Cuzco, and learned to take everything with a grain of salt. And to count our change and our laundry items very carefully.

We went back to the kid. Yes, yes, the roads were open. The bus was leaving at 2:00. And if we couldn't get to Puno, we wanted to know, what would happen? Well, we'd come back to Cuzco. And what would happen to our money? (I couldn't quite figure out how to say "will we get our money back?") The response was an extremely long and incomprehensible speech that pretty much told us our money would not be returned to us.

The bus station was full of the usual shouting. "Lima, Lima, Liiiima!" from competing companies. There was plenty of "Puno, Puno, Puuuuno!" in there too. Michael talked to a few gringos who were just arriving from Puno. One group said they'd been stopped for nine hours, but they thought the road was now open. Someone said rocks had been thrown. Out in the parking lot we saw that some of the busses had some halfhearted anti TLC messages scrawled on them.

We'd already paid our money, six whole dollars each, which in backpackerworld is a lot. We decided to be on the bus if it indeed left, and see what happened. I moved some of the multitude of leftover Inca granola bars from my backpack to my daypack. And we bought some more water. You know, provisions in case of a siege. It was all kind of exciting actually. It's not like we were in a hurry.

The bus was grubby but we had great seats, the very front of the top deck of the bus, right on top of the driver. Plenty of legroom and the whole windshield in front of us, obscured by nothing but the scripted (and sadly, inapt) word "Royal" and a lot of smudges. The road was two smooth lanes of dark asphalt. I slept through the first two hours of the ride. I vaguely woke during the frenzy of "Pan! Amiga, aqui, pan!" from passengers clamoring to buy bread in the "bread town" just past Tipón, the "cuy town," but as usual I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Finally the requisite sleeptime was over and I woke up for real just in time to see the first roadblocks. Someone had placed a line of rocks across half of the road. The rocks were not especially large, but they were too large to drive over. Our bus had to creep around them, slipping from lane to lane. And around some more, and some more. Some of the rocks were in neat rows and some were simply scattered. No people were around, and no traffic came from the other direction, there were just the rocks. Until finally we came to a long line of traffic at a standstill and took our place at the end. The engine went off. We sat there. There was no announcement or explanation of any kind.

There was lots to see for the foreigner. We were in a small, peaceful looking farming village of sturdy mud-brick houses. Kids were driving home thick-furred cows or standing at the edge of the road and staring, and adults, the women all in cardigans and traditional long skirts and petticoats and bowler hats, stood around in clumps chatting. Many of the drivers of the vehicles in front of us (mostly trucks) had gotten out to chat and mingle and pee into the bleached golden grasses off the side of the road.

We sat there for a long time and then as inexplicably as we'd stopped, the line of traffic up ahead started up again, and in our turn we were able to roll slowly forward again. Slowly we picked our way around more half-roadblocks, sometimes driving in the wrong lane. Once the driver misjudged the width of the road as he swerved around some rocks and blew a tire. We didn't stop until the next roadblock, where he and his assistant changed the enormous tire in the middle of the stopped traffic. We stopped for short periods twice more. A few halfhearted rocks were thrown. It was getting dark. As the air cooled, the windows slowly became fogged with condensation.

At the next major roadblock, the protestors had lit a fire. It was only a small fire, but the orange glow shifting weirdly beyond the smeary wet windshield was somewhat unnerving. We had not yet felt afraid, and still were not afraid, but the fire was something new. We stayed at this stop for at least two hours. It was very unclear what was happening. What did the protesters want, exactly, and why had we been able to pass the other roadblocks, but not this one?

I fell asleep. There was nothing else to do. I was bored. And hungry. And although I'd already pulled on my Capilene and my fleece and my pink alpaca hat, I was cold. We stayed there until 2:00 a.m., when the bus's engine suddenly came to life and we were moving again. This time when the thrown rocks hit our bus there was a tinkling of broken glass. Still we moved slowly. The driver had no choice. There were still rocks across the road, and traffic in front of us.

Not long after that we stopped again. This time when the engine stopped, there was a feeling of finality to it, a deeper quiet that we'd experienced before. I sighed. It was all getting a little tiresome. Michael and I ate a couple of Inca granola bars and curled up to sleep, shivering. It was unbelievably cold on that bus. Everyone else was prepared with blankets, which they'd pulled out way back when the bus was still stifling hot, but we had nothing like that. But at least we were not riding in the back of an open truck, like the guys ahead of us.

 

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The end of a long line of stopped traffic, our first connection with the protest.

Protesters.

Another stop.

Rocks in the road.

Protesters.

Protesters with fire.

More protesters.

After the condensation started forming.