Reading: Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon by Peter Lourie
Omnibus 105 has reached the elusive one-year mark and thus made the pilgrimage to the Tumbaco training center to spend a week together, debriefing ourselves on what exactly happened over the last year while servicing in Peace Corps. A high school reunion of sorts, most of the week was spent catching up with volunteers that we hadn’t seen since the ten weeks we spent together last April. In may also have included an inebriated talent show with prizes. But for many of us, the week long conference included something that is endemic to traveling in Latin America (and perhaps the rest of the developing world): excruciatingly long bus rides.
I suppose that the word “excruciatingly” should be used with a bit of caution. That is to say, it is hard to imagine that 18 hours over a span of two days, six buses and two taxis could offer any sort of enjoyment. Yet, traveling in this way can offer some of the most visceral experiences to be found, an intimate encounter with a country and culture.
There is, to my knowledge, no North American equivalent to public transportation in South America. It greets you with the tumult of hopping onto a crowded city bus as it barely bothers to stop of you, only to be squeezed and wedged into this vehicle built for 45 passengers but now carrying over 90. Jerking, accelerating, stopping, and honking, the driver weaves through congested streets seemingly unaware of lanes or traffic regulations. At the corner, men sell water to outstretched hands coming from passing windows. When a pause in the traffic presents itself, the vender quickly jumps on the shoulders of his companerio and begins to juggle water bottles. Cheap entertainment done for a quick sale.
These occupational performances come in all forms, in the afro-salsa beats of street musicians serenading commuters, to the indigenous kid singing catholic hymns out of tune before begging for your sueltos. Food, medicine, pirated music and movies, jewelry, and “teach yourself English” books all make their way onto the traveling bus market of immobile customers.
Traveling and the open road have long been romanticized in American culture. Some of our best novels have been written about the personal search for self-fulfillment and understanding while traveling the vast roadways that bisect the States. From Kerouc’s On the Road, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley to Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is something to be said for the journey, the solitude, and the freedom that comes with the hours spend traveling by car (or motorcycle, for those that are more inclined to Pirsig). Yet, these quests often stem form the desire to remove one’s self for a time, to enjoy the silence when first approaching the Rockies after hours spent in desolate prairies. It is, in many ways, our own contemporary version of a vision quest, an unwritten rite of passage. We road trip to escape and come back revived.
But there is a missing element to the way Americans have shaped their idealized notions of traveling. It’s what deters us from public transportation or if we must, to ride the metro with our headphones and ipod. We, though certainly not all, have lost touch with that human element of traveling, the one that causes you to strike up a conversation with the lady across the aisle on a late night flight or to chat freely with your waiter at a truck stop restaurant. And it is the element that makes traveling through Ecuador so fundamentally different.
Because there is no way to travel in Ecuador without some intimate form of human contact.
Sometimes it presents itself with the high school boy who believes that the reggaeton on his mp3 playing cell phone is better than the cumbia the driver is blasting over mangled speakers. More so, he believes that everyone one else on the bus agrees with him and that they are immune to the chaotic scuffle of the opposing beats. Or maybe he simply has not thought about what any of the 50 other passengers would like to listen to.
Other times intimate finds you on winding Andean roads, following a long evening of bad beer and unsanitary bus terminal food. After retching away your dignity on the side of the road, the next hour is spent trying to quell your queasiness as the ayudante presents you with a feeble marriage proposal: a mountain house and nights filled with salsa dancing. But you can’t get passed the lingering smell of vomit on your hands to refute his proposal with proper Spanish.
It comes with the same nauseated feeling, although this time not self-induced, while the child behind you chants gringa, gringa, gringa, only to be scolded by her mother, ya está borracha. You want to turn around and correct her, it’s only nine in the morning and you hadn’t been drinking, yet all you can do is rest your head on the seat in front of you and hope that the women in the seat next to you will be kind enough to open the window or at least wake you in time for your stop.
There are more pleasant times, the long conversations with perfect strangers, who invite you to their farms and their houses. The open arms welcoming of a country. They tell your stories of their land, the history of their family, the cultural nuances of their day-to-day lives. Physical boundaries no longer exist, the human body pouring over the line that once divided your seat from theirs.
But with the lifted boundaries, the pleasantries can dissolve. A woman spends a three-hour bus ride describing to you the horrors she experienced, as she and her husband were half hung by robbers in their house at night. When the bus comes to her stop, she blesses you, Dios le pague.
Occasionally, you have to will yourself to laugh as the woman with two small children sit down in the unoccupied seat next to you. As the oldest opens the conversation with a direct punch to your arm, his 23-year-old mother divulges her story, three children with three different fathers and all she wants is a visa to los Estados Unidos. Your eyes linger on a lover’s name tattooed across the knuckles of her fingers. Without pausing, she starts to breast-feed her youngest only to be violently disrupted by the other kid. Milk runs down your leg, squishing between the toes of your open sandals. As you near the terminal, the monster child opens a bottle of water, dumping it all over your lap. You are to be meeting a friend’s parents at their hotel in twenty minutes. The mother asks you for your number as you leave, hoping to grab a beer after she ditches her children with one of their fathers.
Then there is the man who proceeds to chug a six-pack of Budweiser while sitting in the seat across from you. Once finished, he pulls out his identification, points to the name of his hometown, and in broken English informs you that he is from the Galápagos. The next forty minutes pass in utter silence.
Some moments happen in slow motion over a span of days that fade into weeks only to turn into months and years. These are the common memories that fuse together after numerous treks through this beautiful country. From the dry, colorless highlands of the Andes, to the richly saturated greens as the roads weave their way down to the humid coastal planes. Perforated with poorly made straight-to-video action films, national music that put too much emphasis on the cowbell, and tussling chickens in the overhead bins, the scenery lingers with you. It’s what brings you back to the longer conversations with other wayward travelers and backpackers. It endures beyond the wafting smells of empanadas and chicharrón. And it provides the staggering backdrop to a host of experiences that could never be found anywhere else.
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| Scene from a public bus, Guayaquil |
I suppose that the word “excruciatingly” should be used with a bit of caution. That is to say, it is hard to imagine that 18 hours over a span of two days, six buses and two taxis could offer any sort of enjoyment. Yet, traveling in this way can offer some of the most visceral experiences to be found, an intimate encounter with a country and culture.
There is, to my knowledge, no North American equivalent to public transportation in South America. It greets you with the tumult of hopping onto a crowded city bus as it barely bothers to stop of you, only to be squeezed and wedged into this vehicle built for 45 passengers but now carrying over 90. Jerking, accelerating, stopping, and honking, the driver weaves through congested streets seemingly unaware of lanes or traffic regulations. At the corner, men sell water to outstretched hands coming from passing windows. When a pause in the traffic presents itself, the vender quickly jumps on the shoulders of his companerio and begins to juggle water bottles. Cheap entertainment done for a quick sale.
These occupational performances come in all forms, in the afro-salsa beats of street musicians serenading commuters, to the indigenous kid singing catholic hymns out of tune before begging for your sueltos. Food, medicine, pirated music and movies, jewelry, and “teach yourself English” books all make their way onto the traveling bus market of immobile customers.
Traveling and the open road have long been romanticized in American culture. Some of our best novels have been written about the personal search for self-fulfillment and understanding while traveling the vast roadways that bisect the States. From Kerouc’s On the Road, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley to Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is something to be said for the journey, the solitude, and the freedom that comes with the hours spend traveling by car (or motorcycle, for those that are more inclined to Pirsig). Yet, these quests often stem form the desire to remove one’s self for a time, to enjoy the silence when first approaching the Rockies after hours spent in desolate prairies. It is, in many ways, our own contemporary version of a vision quest, an unwritten rite of passage. We road trip to escape and come back revived.
But there is a missing element to the way Americans have shaped their idealized notions of traveling. It’s what deters us from public transportation or if we must, to ride the metro with our headphones and ipod. We, though certainly not all, have lost touch with that human element of traveling, the one that causes you to strike up a conversation with the lady across the aisle on a late night flight or to chat freely with your waiter at a truck stop restaurant. And it is the element that makes traveling through Ecuador so fundamentally different.
Because there is no way to travel in Ecuador without some intimate form of human contact.
Sometimes it presents itself with the high school boy who believes that the reggaeton on his mp3 playing cell phone is better than the cumbia the driver is blasting over mangled speakers. More so, he believes that everyone one else on the bus agrees with him and that they are immune to the chaotic scuffle of the opposing beats. Or maybe he simply has not thought about what any of the 50 other passengers would like to listen to.
Other times intimate finds you on winding Andean roads, following a long evening of bad beer and unsanitary bus terminal food. After retching away your dignity on the side of the road, the next hour is spent trying to quell your queasiness as the ayudante presents you with a feeble marriage proposal: a mountain house and nights filled with salsa dancing. But you can’t get passed the lingering smell of vomit on your hands to refute his proposal with proper Spanish.
It comes with the same nauseated feeling, although this time not self-induced, while the child behind you chants gringa, gringa, gringa, only to be scolded by her mother, ya está borracha. You want to turn around and correct her, it’s only nine in the morning and you hadn’t been drinking, yet all you can do is rest your head on the seat in front of you and hope that the women in the seat next to you will be kind enough to open the window or at least wake you in time for your stop.
There are more pleasant times, the long conversations with perfect strangers, who invite you to their farms and their houses. The open arms welcoming of a country. They tell your stories of their land, the history of their family, the cultural nuances of their day-to-day lives. Physical boundaries no longer exist, the human body pouring over the line that once divided your seat from theirs.
But with the lifted boundaries, the pleasantries can dissolve. A woman spends a three-hour bus ride describing to you the horrors she experienced, as she and her husband were half hung by robbers in their house at night. When the bus comes to her stop, she blesses you, Dios le pague.
Occasionally, you have to will yourself to laugh as the woman with two small children sit down in the unoccupied seat next to you. As the oldest opens the conversation with a direct punch to your arm, his 23-year-old mother divulges her story, three children with three different fathers and all she wants is a visa to los Estados Unidos. Your eyes linger on a lover’s name tattooed across the knuckles of her fingers. Without pausing, she starts to breast-feed her youngest only to be violently disrupted by the other kid. Milk runs down your leg, squishing between the toes of your open sandals. As you near the terminal, the monster child opens a bottle of water, dumping it all over your lap. You are to be meeting a friend’s parents at their hotel in twenty minutes. The mother asks you for your number as you leave, hoping to grab a beer after she ditches her children with one of their fathers.
Then there is the man who proceeds to chug a six-pack of Budweiser while sitting in the seat across from you. Once finished, he pulls out his identification, points to the name of his hometown, and in broken English informs you that he is from the Galápagos. The next forty minutes pass in utter silence.
Some moments happen in slow motion over a span of days that fade into weeks only to turn into months and years. These are the common memories that fuse together after numerous treks through this beautiful country. From the dry, colorless highlands of the Andes, to the richly saturated greens as the roads weave their way down to the humid coastal planes. Perforated with poorly made straight-to-video action films, national music that put too much emphasis on the cowbell, and tussling chickens in the overhead bins, the scenery lingers with you. It’s what brings you back to the longer conversations with other wayward travelers and backpackers. It endures beyond the wafting smells of empanadas and chicharrón. And it provides the staggering backdrop to a host of experiences that could never be found anywhere else.
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