Fear, Anxiety and Altitude...
We left Nazca for Cuzco two days ago, caught a 14 hour night bus through the mountains. I had the most anxious afternoon leading up to that bus ride.
Firstly we went on a plane ride over the Nazca lines in the morning. It was quite interesting to watch those mysterious lines cast in the desert, but I did feel somewhat queasy afterwards. Luckily I postphoned breakfast till afterwards, as I'm sure it would have come back out otherwise.
After the flight, the tour guide took us to a bus company to buy tickets to our next destination. Originally I had decided against taking the direct route from Nazca to Cuzco, and wanted to go to Arequipa first, and from there either catch another bus to Cuzco or take a flight. Reason being I read a post on the Lonely Planet online forum describing the horrors of that bus ride: very windy roads, everyone throwing up, one girl looking as if she's going to die.. I decided that there is no way I was going to put myself through that torture. So it was strange when I found myself convinced by the ticket seller that the bus ride is really not that bad, and bought the tickets. Thinking back, maybe I was still dizzy from the plane ride and couldn't think carefully.
So I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying. Went for a late lunch with my friend after we checked 0ut of the hostel, and this time my friend made the mistake of drinking a whole glass of sugary water that came with our cheap meal. All the guidebooks recommend against drinking non-bottled water in most of South America, so it was his turn to panic afterwards.
To further increase my anxiety, Cuzco is one of the highest cities in South America, with an altitude of 3326m above sea level. I've heard several first hand accounts of people feeling very ill and throwing up continuously upon arrival (some in Cuzco and some in La Paz, which is even higher), so my fears about the bus ride and the arrival were not exactly unfounded.
Anyway, later that afternoon, after we have purchased the ticket, I heard from the other friend (the chatty one, who left us briefly to fast track to Peru last week and beat us to Cuzco by one day) that his bus ride was bumpy but he was okay. He said that for the 14 hours he was thrown from one side of his seat to the other.. almost non-stopfor most of the trip... (yeah.. more comforting thoughts..)
So, like everything in life, you have to face your fears when there's no way out.. ( well, apart from buying another bus and plane ticket, which, for my shoestring budget is not really an option) So, at 7:20pm, we gingerly went back to the hotel to get a taxi to the Cruz De Sur bus terminal. I asked the reception guy how much it will cost and he said 3 soles, but I managed to bargain down to 2 soles because I remembered that on the way here it only costed 1 sole, even though it was a different bus terminal (it´s a small town, so it can´t be that far away I gathered). So the reception guy asked the guy next to him to drive us, and we put our luggage in the car, got in, told the driver to go to Cruz De Sur. He started the car, drove about 15 metres, turned around the corner, drove another 15 metres, and asked "bus to Cuzco?", we said "yes", and then he stopped the car. We looked outside, saw the sign and that's when we realised the bus terminal was only 3 minutes walk away from the hotel. Ha... Speechless as we were, we paid the driver, who was a little embarrassed as well, and decided to check our maps more carefully next time and to add this to our list of funny incidents..
We got to the terminal before 7:30pm, as advised by the booking agent, for the 8pm bus. From previous experiences they ask you to arrive early for to check in the luggage and to slowly get into the bus. (Once we were body searched by two police officers before getting on the bus from Ecuador to Peru, another time we were finger printed and filmed on video tape) However this time we got to the bus stop and there were no sign of the bus, or any other passenger. Only the ticketing officer is there. With our poor Spanish and her little English, she assured us to wait and the bus will come. We foolishly thought everyone else heard or saw the same internet reports and decided not to take the route, and we were the only ones booked on the bus. However, at 8:00 on the dot, a Cruz De Sur bus appeared around the street corner and turned into the terminal. Arrhh.. so the bus actually came all the way from Lima, and everyone else on the bus had already been through an 8 hour journey. The bus was fully packed, except for the two seats for two of us, and although it was supposed to be a semi sleeper (semi-cama) bus, it looked more like an ordinary bus with not that much leg room and the seats only go back a little bit further. My friend and I were both a little dissappointed as we've grown accustomed to some very comfy semi sleeper and sleeper buses already, and had expected more. Cruz De Sur is widely recognised as the best bus company in Peru, and our ticket has been the most expensive bus ticket we have bought so far ($40US).
After all the anxieties, the worries and expectations, the bus ride became a bit of an anti-climax :) Luckily. For the whole 14 hours we were continuously turning corners and mostly ascending upwards, so it was no wonder that many people got sick doing the same route. We were very lucky to have two very cautious bus drivers who drove extremely slowly for the entire time, making careful turns around each corner so that although I could see each turn from my window and felt it a little bit, it was in no way as bad as it could have been, or how I had feared. We also didn´t get thrown from one side of our seat to the other as described by our friend. But I still didn't feel that well, even though the turns were done gently, the continous motion still made me a bit car sick so I resolved to sleep as much as possible. It turned out okay, I was still in one piece after the trip, just slightly queasy. My friend thought the whole trip was fine and he had worried for nothing. Oh forgot to mention, the landscape along the way was amazing.. in the start of the trip at night we were slowly going up these mountains and you can see the silhoute of all the surrounding mountains pretty close by and changing after each turn, lit up by the moonlight. It was somewhat surreal and I felt like we are driving along a moonscape. Sometimes we were driving really close to the cliffs, and other times buses or trucks drove narrowly past us on the narrow roads. It was quite a memorable trip, unfortunately too dark to capture on camera...
Upon arriving in Cuzco, I spent about a day and half sleeping and getting over the altitude sickness. It made me dizzy, at times wanting to throw up, and feeling especially worse after a meal. Climbing a set of stairs set my heart pumping like mad.. but today I felt much better, and hopefully will be in a good form to do a day tour around the Sacret Valley tomorrow. Lots of market shopping awaits!
posted by Susan @ 2:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home