Somewhere Between Cuzco and Puno, Peru - Protest, Day Two

I didn't exactly sleep as I would have in a bed, but I'm not someone who stays awake just because it's cold or there are people with rocks. I was tired, so I slept. I woke up every hour, looked at my Timex Indiglo watch, congratulated myself on insisting on Indiglo, and tried to find a new position to sleep in. My feet were numb and frozen. At 5:00 a.m. it was getting light and our compañeros decided that quiet time was over and started shouting to each other. Still tired, I stayed curled up and ignored them.

After a long while the sun rose up over the hill to our left and reached through the window to rest on us like a warm hand. It was a relief even though I knew that in two or three hours I'd be miserably hot. After a while I was warm all over except for my frozen feet. I dozed until 9:00 a.m. when it became impossible to even fake sleep. We were in the tiniest of towns, just a few houses along the road.

Everyone from our bus and our neighbor vehicles was up and about, walking around and up and down the road. Michael did some reconnaissance and came back to the bus with a six-pack of marble muffins and five mandarins. Apparently we had a bread truck and an orange truck among us. We sat outside on the railroad tracks beside the road to eat and feel the warmth of the sun. That's where everyone else was sitting. Locals mostly, but a very few gringos as well. Many of our fellow passengers were more than prepared. One family had spread out a blanket and appeared to be having a picnic.

After our brief meal I could no longer put off using the toilet on the bus. Despite the ayudante's warning yesterday that it was "solo orinario, nada mas" someone had done Number Two in there. But there was really no other choice for me, unless I wanted to join the dozens of men just peeing at random in the fields and front yards along the road. The bathroom was primitive even for a bus bathroom. The door didn't lock, the "toilet" emptied out directly under the bus, and there was no sink.

Later I sat on the tracks watching our stuff and wishing I had packed my toothbrush in my daypack instead of my main pack which was tucked away in the luggage hold, while Michael walked down the line of traffic to see if he could find the roadblock. He came back and reported that a huge tree had been dragged across the road and that the demonstrators were just kind of standing around. We were all pretty much just standing around.

There's an element of excitement to the story, what with the rock throwing and the fires and the trees blocking the road. I could probably tell it to sound dramatic and terrifying. But in reality it was kind of boring. I mean, we were all just sitting around waiting. Even the graffiti on the vehicles, "no TLC" and "viva el paro," and something about "toledo muerte san pablo" was small and washable and politely placed so as not to obscure the view of the driver. The only statement with some substance was the broken windows, but even those were limited to two to a bus.

After some time we went down to a little tienda/comedor where they'd promised Michael they'd have food in an hour. When we got there they were serving caldo de gallina (hen soup) but there was a slight delay because they only had so many bowls and spoons and we had to wait our turn. We were the only foreigners in the soup spot.

The proprietor asked where we were from, and when we told him Los Estados Unidos he asked, "Do you like this?" What a question. Yeah, we love it. It's great. I hate sleeping in a bed and brushing my teeth; this is much better. It wasn't really clear what he meant. Like, did we agree with the protest, or did we think this was a good method, or what?

"No entendemos," I started to say. ("We don't understand.") But Michael cut me off. "You can't say that," he told me. He turned back to the man and told him we didn't like the TLC, that we thought it was very bad. The man nodded, and someone gave me a bowl of soup, and then the conversation was pretty much over, at least as far as that man was concerned.

But over at the soup table it was far from over. Michael and I had a little argument. I felt that while I might know a bit about what the TLC/FTAA is, I really didn't have any idea what these particular people hoped to accomplish by blocking the road with rocks and trees. Michael felt that it would be abominable if people from the U.S., which invented the TLC in the first place, claimed not to know about it. I said I wanted to hear what the deal was from the people who were affected by it and that if you're talking you can't listen. Besides, it wasn't just the TLC, it was something to do with the upcoming Peruvian elections as well. And so on.

My bowl of soup contained a round item that I have never seen before on a chicken and am glad of. But Michael loves chicken so he investigated it, pulling the skin off until dark red-brown blood spilled into his mostly empty bowl. Whatever that thing was, he took a bite of it. I couldn't even watch. He said it tasted like chicken. But that was the end of our soup. We paid and got out of there, still arguing about whether or not he should have cut me off and whether or not I still could have asked the man for his point of view.

The day was pretty much shot, not that it was going to be a great day anyway. We spent most of it apart. There was no shade anywhere, but I found a flat wall to sit on and read (Lord of the Flies), and Michael roamed around at the front of the protest. Later he told me that while he was there shooting, some lady threw a rock at him. He says he caught the rock and showed it to her and then dropped it on the ground and she scowled at him. She should be glad I wasn't there.

Then later he approached some young people with a banner and asked if he could photograph them. They agreed. But while he was shooting, some other old lady came up and told him he wasn't to take photos. He said he'd gotten permission and she said she didn't care, that she was the one he needed permission from. Michael put the camera down and told her he wanted to understand what this was all about and asked her to tell him, but she refused and said if he tried to take any more pictures she'd throw a rock at his head, and she waved her slingshot for emphasis. She walked away calling him a stupid gringo amidst a shower of laughter.

So I guess this protest was a secret protest and no one's supposed to know what it's about or spread the protestors' message in any way. Like, ok, I guess when the tree gets moved, I'll just go back to my regular life and change absolutely nothing about my behavior or voting choices and tell absolutely no one about what's going on down in Peru so they can remain unenlightened and also do nothing. And seeing that the Peruvian press didn't bother to show up for this big event, it looks like the protesters are going to get their wish of keeping their message unheard. Good job. Not to mention the fact that those inconvenienced by the protestors were by and large the same people as those protesting. Our bus was full of the same bundle-carrying bowler hat wearing women as the ones marching up and down the road. So what then?

If I know what the deal is and I'm down for the cause, I'll sit out on that road for a week. But if you won't tell me, if I have to wait till I can access Google to find out why I was sitting out there all night and day, well... I don't have a lot of sympathy any more. Especially if I know that that's what you're going to do with power when you get some, throw rocks and call names and laugh.

It was late in the day when Michael found me and we made up. The gringos all seemed to have gathered at a restaurant some yards behind the bus and we decided to check the place out. It was large and attractive but had run completely out of food. However, they'd called someone and were having supplies brought in by motorcycle, so they could promise us chicken or steak in half an hour. Starving by then, we happily waited.

Unfortunately, there was no water in the bathroom, so my desperate desire to wash my filthy hands went unfulfilled and Michael and I shared a handi-wipe from Ittsa bus-cama. How much better this situation would have been for us if we'd been on a bus-cama! The reclining seats, the blankets, the snacks! Ah well. Food was coming soon.

We waited for our food and amused ourselves watching the group of middle-aged foreign women trying to explain to the bartender how to make a shandy. "I think a pisco sour would be easier," he tried to tell them, in English, but they wanted shandies. Or, some of them did. Some of them wanted red wine. All Michael and I wanted was some chicken, and we kept our eyes on the kitchen, eagerly awaiting the sight of steaming plates coming out onto the counter.

Instead we saw traffic start moving. The line of trucks and busses in front of the plate-glass restaurant window began moving forward and all the gringos in the place jumped up in a panic. Michael threw down money for his beer, saying if the protest wasn't over we'd be back. The large group of ladies was still all in a frenzy trying to pay for their undrunk shandies and wine when Michael and I tore out of the place and ran out to the road.

Traffic had stopped again but everything was all out of place. We ran in front of the muzzles of huge trucks and down the road, panting and looking desperately for our bus which was no longer where it had been. We were afraid that at any moment the traffic would start up again and if we weren't crushed under some bus's wheels we'd miss our own bus for good and be stranded in this little town of power-drunk rock throwers with their mysterious agenda and hatred of gringos.

There it was - our bus, finally. Michael pounded on the door. It was immediately opened and we climbed up and took our seats in sweaty relief. And then sat there for another half hour. We thought sadly of the food we'd ordered that we'd never seen. If only it had come sooner and we could have asked for it to go. We were tempted to run back and try to accomplish that, but there was just no way of knowing when traffic would start moving again and it wasn't worth the risk. We ate another couple of dry, bland muffins.

When traffic moved again, the other passengers made us leave our windshield seats. "Piedras," they kept saying. ("Stones.") They made us move to seats in the middle of the bus. "Cierran las cortinas!" a woman said, and everyone closed the curtains at their windows. I ended up in the seat next to the broken window, in the aisle seat, with Michael across from me. The window seat next to me was covered with chunks of glass.

We rolled slowly down the road, following the vehicle in front of us. It was not the familiar truck that had been there all night, but big San Cristobal bus. We peeked from behind the curtains furtively, sometimes growing bolder and sometimes ducking back as the sounds outside changed. The minutes trickled by like the sweat rolling down my back. With the windows closed and the curtains drawn, the bus was stuffy and fetid with the mingled smells of we the unwashed, and the badly abused orinario. For half an hour we crept along.

Michael used the time to show the photos on his camera to the little boy sharing his seat. When we began to pick up speed and the curtains were opened, I heard him giving photography lessons. I have to marvel yet again at how this man who entered Tijuana with nothing more than "cervesa," "por favor," and "gracias" can now tell little kids how the best time for taking photographs is in the afternoons when the light is golden.

At some unseen signal, the other passengers told us we could reclaim our seats, which we did with relief. Everything was much better with a view. It was 6:00 p.m., twenty-five hours after we'd hit the first line of stones in the road. And the rocks continued. Traffic wove all over the road avoiding more lines and patches of large and small rocks.

We left the main road and drove for a long time on a narrow dirt side road, where people came out of their houses to stare at this huge bus where it clearly did not belong. Back on the main road, the road was still not clear. The rocks went on well after dark.

At some point the rocks ended and our bus pulled over to switch drivers. The new driver was a maniac and I was more afraid of his driving than I'd been through the whole protest. We arrived in Juliaca at 9:00 p.m. Juliaca is so very close to Puno, and I thought we were almost there. But no. We sat and sat, despite our fellow passengers' feet pounding on the floor and shouts of "VAMOS!" Michael jumped off the bus and bought a plate of greasy fries from a nearby vendor, which we scarfed down so fast that I felt ill afterwards. And still we sat there.

Then we had to change busses. All of us. For crying out loud. Our new bus was already occupied, so we all had to squeeze in among the existing passengers. I ended up next to a large indigenous lady who chose to leave her bundle in front of my seat so that I had to twist my legs into the aisle to accommodate it.

The lady across from me carried on three different shrieking conversations into her cell phone, earrings swaying, tiny brown bowler hat wobbling. Between conversations she barked at Michael to pass the cell phone to her daughter a row behind.

And then, hungry, numb, and filthy, just thirty-two hours after we'd left Cuzco, we were in Puno. The most delayed six-hour trip I've ever experienced.

HOURS ON THE BUS (Normal): 297.5

HOURS ON THE BUS (Delayed by protests): 26