Heart of Darkness: The Bus to Puno

¨The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.*¨


* Additional fees apply. PeruTours LLC reserves the right to prevent said wheels from going around, esp. in conflicting strike zones and abandoned mountain passes. Passengers subject to severe abuse by drivers, operators, and owners, including, but not limited to unexplained delays, stall tactics, slack-jawed dimwittedness on the part of all operators, extortion, and physical assault.



When it comes to purchases in South America, caveat emptor, my friends. The one rule of customer service down here is that once your money is out of your hands, you will never, ever, get it back. Even though this is the status quo, we had the misfortune of choosing a bus company that took this mantra to the next level.



When purchasing a bus ticket, one would assume that the paid fare is to get you to your final destination. In this case, we wanted to get from Cuzco to Puno. Despite the ongoing farmers´strike that most operators said was blocking the roads, TourPeru was selling tickets that would get us to Puno. The ticket counter ladies said that given the strike, they would take alternate routes, and the trip would take about 12 hours instead of the normal 7. Fair enough, it was worth it to jump on the bus at the last minute.



The bus did not take an alternate route. Instead, the bus driver drove directly into the heart of the strike, a farming town called Combapata, just before the real epicenter of unrest, a town called Sicuani. Apparently, he thought it would be fine to take this route since he had come back from Puno to Cuzco the night before via the same way (of course, the only way he had achieved this was with a heavy police escort for a caravan of busses). Inferential reasoning was obviously not his strong suit, since even the day after, approaching Combapata we could see the very fresh remains of barely dismantled roadblocks, and indeed at the bridge before Combapata, the roadblocks that the police had barely removed the day before were once again up and running.



There was a lane that our bus could have gone through to cross the bridge, but like many other busses, we chose to wait by the side of the road because there were reports of a campesino gathering in the heart of Combapata. So, that was the first explanation of the delay. We didn´t want to drive through an ongoing protest. Fair enough, time to wait. After about 3 hours, being the impatient and pro-active American, I asked if there were any status updates. This time the bus driver responded that police had gone up the road, and he was waiting for them to come back to give another escort to all the busses that had been waiting. Locals however, had a much different take on things: They mentioned (directly to the bus driver) that there was no way the police were coming back that way--because the day before, the police escort was so abused by the mob, their cars were massively dented by thrown rocks, and even some police officers had been tagged in the head with rocks. So if we were truly waiting for the police, they weren´t comin.



Ok, so if we weren´t gonna go through the uprising, and the police weren´t coming, what were we waiting for? Apparently, we were waiting for the protest to escalate and come down to the bridge, because that´s exactly what happened. A tidal wave of protesters came down from town and to the bridge, and began to re-block the one remaining lane across the bridge. Forget your campus sit-in, this was some serious uprising activism. In minutes, they had covered the entire bridge with a mass of rocks 2 feet deep. That´s right, just with simple stones their blockade was almost a yard high.



This was when it became evident to all but the most retarded of observers (aka our bus driver) that there was no way in hell we would be passing through that road. Many busses immediately turned around, but not ours. Apparently we had entered the a la carte stage of bus service: escaping imminent danger was not included in our original fee. Our two clowns seemed perfectly content to just wait there by the bridge, almost inviting the protesters to start throwing rocks at other, shinier things, like parked TourPeru busses.



Earlier, several of the locals had specifically mentioned several not-so-bad alternative routes (remember, the ones that the ticket counter had already mentioned?), and in fact, we could see traffic moving on another road just up the hill. They confirmed that these roads were a) nicely paved, b) easy enough for large busses to pass through, and c) being used as we spoke by all the tour companies from that morning. The alternative was obvious, we needed to turn around and start going the other way. Even so, the bus driver and the collector wouldn´t budge. There was even a Peruvian on our bus who said he knew the way exactly, and could explain it well. The bus driver drooled a couple statements about not knowing the road, but the collector chalked up their delay now to needing confirmation from the boss. Aha, now it was becoming obvious that we were all being puppeted from afar. In either case, neither of the two jokers seemed capable of independent thought, so it was time to start pressuring them and the boss (via cell phone).



At this point I had entered a lucid state of Che Guevarra-like-activism, on behalf of the other passengers (gringos and Peruvians). Matt observed that my Spanish improved exponentially as my anger increased at the scum of the earth owner. At this point, I´ll break up the narrative to define a couple of the terms I used or encountered in my first discussions with the owner (before he hung up on me):

¨Secuestro¨: Kidnapping. In other words, if we weren´t going to advance, and we weren´t going to head back, we were effectively being held hostage on the bus on the side of the road.

¨Sin Reembolso¨: No Refunds. As in, the only way the owner would allow us to return to Cuzco would be if all of us gave up our right to a refund.

So, all the passengers were ready to return to Cuzco since it was obvious we weren´t going anywhere that night if the driver didn´t want to try the alternate route. But still, the driver was ready to wait until midnight, when he thought they could clear the bridge (his spatial reasoning skills were also subpar--no way would that bridge be cleared) and the busses could pass through. Never mind that even if they did, they´d still be heading to the even-worse hotspot of Sicuani.

Again, the drivers didn´t do a single thing until the bus driver authorized them. So there we were, stranded. This is when a mysterious woman, who I will call the Woman in White (W.I.W.) showed up. Somehow, she had the owner on speed dial, and when confronted about how she was making these calls to the owner, she simply stated she was another passenger who also wanted to get to Puno. When pressed, she said she was friends with the owner. It was quickly evident, though, that she pulled more weight than even the fare collector and driver--they were listening to her. In her role as ¨fellow passenger,¨ facing a junta of angry passenger representatives (me for the gringos, a Peruvian, a Colombian, and a rather expressive Brazilian), she miraculously persuaded the owner to order the drivers to take the alternate route...for another 20 soles above the already inflated price. By this time it was dark. I had already mentioned the alternate route to the owner over the phone before, to which his first reply was to demand another 30.

Ok, long story short, the bus wouldn´t move unless every passenger paid more, and the passengers weren´t about to pay more without any guarantee of arriving where we paid to go. So we demanded to pay 10 first, and 10 on arrival. Our ¨fellow passenger¨was opposed to this very reasonable consumer demand, which is when I outed her as a sneaky, lying secret agent who had been working in cahoots with the owner all along. This was also when I realized despite my most eloquent and impassioned efforts, that this was the set up all along--that the entire afternoon was spent setting us up to be cold, impatient, and ready to pay more for where we needed to go.

¨Extorcion¨: Extortion, as in getting a bus full of passengers to agree to pay to anything, if it meant not staying on the side of the road in the mountains with angry campesinos nearby.

¨Mentirosa¨: Liar, as in the W.I.W. who had pretended to be one of us and then turned out to be quite the double agent. I loathe her with every ounce of my being, and hope she comes down with Rickets.

Now the W.I.W. (who I will now refer to as the M.I.W.--Mentirosa in White) had collected a fair amount of the first 10 soles to get the bus moving, but several indignant souls refused to pay more, including some Peruvians and the Colombian. You would think that with a majority of the cash in hand, the bus might have just gotten moving, but no. The owner would not authorize movement for a penny less than what he had extorted, out of every one of us. So the bus remained still, with the drivers claiming ignorance and the M.I.W. pathetically pleading for the refusers to ¨be decent¨and pay up. Finally, the Brazilian out of frustration paid for the remaining hold-outs, and after 8 or 10 hours of waiting, the bus started moving again.

The driver didn´t know the road, so we took quite a bit of time to make our way back toward the first town--an all night ride. At dawn, the rabble-rousing started again. M.I.W. started trying to collect the remaining 10 from everyone, but many of us had of course only agreed to the first 10 just to get the bus moving again. At collection point 2 at least we had options to get off the bus or something.

This is where the Police got involved. When the group refused to pay (again), M.I.W. ordered the bus to stop, and we started all over again. Only this time, the fiery Brazilian left the bus and brought a policeman on board so that we could explain our predicament and the extortion that had happened the night before. They of course pretended to be on our side and said that the bus would move ahead and that we´d reach our destinations without paying a penny more, but as soon as we moved past them, anything they said was disregarded. In fact, M.I.W. was still trying to collect from the hold-outs across from the police outpost.

Finally, the older group of tourists up front paid up for the hold-outs again just to make it to Puno in time for their tour. With all the proper money in hand, the bus got moving again. Until we stopped outside of Puno to pick up a mysterious passenger.

It was the owner! He got on board the bus to personally harass all the hold-outs, even though they had already been paid for! This guy was pure scum. He started threatening the Colombian hold-out (Andres, a young guy who I really admired for his eloquence and backbone), and Andres stood his ground, gladly wanting the Police to get involved once we got to Puno. At this time, I took my opportunity to tell this guy off too:

¨Sin Verguenza¨ : Shameless. A less vulgar version of what I really wanted to call the guy.

¨Cobarde¨: Coward. As in, I told the owner that I was glad he came on board, becauseI was about to think he was a coward for screwing us from afar. At least now he had the gall to get on board the bus to screw us.

There were several other things I told him, but like Will Ferrell at the end of Old School, I kind of blacked out. Maybe Matt remembers.

Ok, so we reach Puno after 22 hours. Pity, we were just short of breaking the 24 hour mark for the bus ride. Oh wait, how about we reach the remaining 2 hours with a group visit to the Puno police station? Yes, at the very end of the trip, after so much abuse from the owner, as Andres the Colombian was trying to get his bags to be free of these leeches, the owner actually punched him in the face! (they had tried to prevent all of us from getting our bags to prolong our hassle, but one of the Brits screamed at the baggage guys to back off--it was awesome).

So, in solidarity with Andres, and to lodge a protest with the Tourism agency, about 16 gringos walked across town to the Puno tourist police to support Andres and tell off the owner. They collected written statements, took our fingerprints, assured us justice would be done, and didn´t do a damn thing.

The dawn of the bus ride, by the way, was gorgeous.