Transportation impressions though Peru and Bolivia

I have been thinking about the interesting progression/deterioration of our overland bus travel over the last seven weeks and felt it was worth a blog post to document the evolution. It has kind of crept up on us with each new bus reservation. And even as I write this post, we are heading off to yet another bus station to reserve yet another bus trip, which will undoubtedly be another notch down in class, comfort and cleanliness.

I will start with a little background (which I am simply making up from my observations). There are hundreds of bus companies in Peru and Bolivia. It seems that if you can buy a bus, come up with a name for it, and decide a route you would like to take, you have a business plan. In every bus terminal there are at least 30 stalls selling tickets to three or four destinations each. All have photos of beautiful new buses, claiming their bus looks just like the photos. As you enter the station, you hear voices calling out city names, like auctioneers, beckoning you to their booths for the next departure.

If you take a look in the parking lot of any bus station, there are dozens of busses that all look similar. They are all painted in bright colours, with “Tourist Class” or something similar on them, and the name of the bus company. Most of them have two levels with more expensive seats on the bottom floor that recline and are more comfortable and upstairs seating for a reduced price. They all claim to have movies, music, air and even some with wifi. The sales people gloat endlessly about the features as if they actually exist.

Our first bus ride with Cruz del Sur, from Arequipa to Cuscu in Peru, was absolutely luxurious and I think we got completely spoiled as they delivered everything they promised, including leaving and arriving on time. But each ride since then has been a steadily declining experience. But somehow, the fact that it has been so slow, it is only now that I have realized just how low we have actually come!

Here is my theory: All of these buses (except Cruz Del Sur) must have had another life somewhere else in the world where there were standards of cleanliness and there were technicians that could fix all of the basic workings of the bus (like the ventilation system, televisions and toilets). When they were deemed unfit for use in their country of origin, they were shipped to Peru and Bolivia. They arrived here with broken windshields, TV screens that no longer work, unusable toilets and upholstery that had not seen a shampoo since Inca times. In other words, in perfect condition to begin service here!

On our first bus ride with a cracked windshield (we were in seats 1 and 2 to be able to see the view), we both wondered if the cracks were due to an external cause (rock or another bus hitting the windshield) or an internal cause (heads hitting the windshield from inside the bus). We tightened our seat belts and hoped for the best. Every bus we have travelled on so far has had cracked windshields!

If you recall, I raved about Cruz del Sur providing meals and drink service on our bus from Arequipa to Cusco. Well, in subsequent trips, and especially now that we are in Bolivia, the tides have changed dramatically. There is definitely food onboard, but not the kind that is served to you by a steward. You have seen the photos I have posted of the women here in their wide skirts and shawls full of babies or huge amounts of goods they are carrying from one place or another. Just imagine how much cooked chicken or ham, and other greasy packages of food can be hidden there? Once the bus leaves the station, the food appears, with everyone eating with his or her hands and using the upholstery for napkins.

And then there are the entrepreneurs boarding the bus at each stop, selling potato chips, jello in plastic cups with whipped topping, pop, plastic bags of white cheese in brine and assorted other messy snacks. Let your imagination go wild. The reality is much messier than you can imagine!

Initially each bus ride was booked with pre-selected seats, and baggage tags neatly stapled to them. At this point it is a free for all, with people standing in the aisles, bags thrown in the storage or wherever they will fit.

Which brings me to our bus ride from Copacabana to La Paz — the inspiration for this post.

When we got off the boat after our trip to Isla del Sol, we stopped in two bus company booths along the main drag. They were both bidding for our business calling out the special features of their sparkling tourist level buses to La Paz. The one that promised wifi got our business, even though we were quite sure that was not going to pan out. She quickly filled in our ticket voucher and sent us on our way with no seat selection and barely any idea of where we were to find the bus. Copacabana does not have a bus station, just lines of buses on the road out of town.

When the time came to find our bus, we did find an office with our bus company’s name on it and a growing number of people waiting for our bus. We managed to get seats together near the front of the (not nearly as sparkling as the photos) bus. The ticket taker even gave us a password for the wifi(that worked for about 15 minutes). So far so good.

But the fun began about an hour later. Traffic came to a halt in the middle of a town we had just entered. Was this a lunch break? Was there a police incident? For what seemed like ages, no one knew what was going on. Eventually, the driver and his wife who was travelling up front with him (This is a normal state of affairs. There are any number of passengers in the driver’s section of the bus sitting on the steps or the floor.) said a few sentences in Spanish (which we did not understand) and everyone filed out of the bus.

We could see our bus being ferried across.

What we could see once off the bus was that we were at the edge of a raging body of water and, one by one, the vehicles were being loaded on barges (no larger than the size of the bus) to cross it — but no passengers were allowed. So how do we get across and how to we meet up with our bus on the other side? We saw some of the passengers buying tickets at a ticket booth and were getting on small boats to get to the other side. There was a lot of confusion and consternation from all of the tourists on the bus. Finally, we too bought tickets and got on a small boat which took us to the other side.

All of us on a small ferry boat

The other side was a big place and we wandered around trying to remember what the people on our bus looked like so that we could figure out where to wait for our bus that was floating precariously on a barge half submerged halfway across the river. We could see it in the distance and could see where the dock was for the barges, but were not sure if we were to wait in the town or at the barge dock. A bit nerve wracking, but somehow, after so many months of travel, as unbelievable as it may sound, we were quite calm.

Our bus finally coming down the street for us!

Eventually as is always the case, it all worked out and the people gathering around us started to look more or less familiar. Our bus did finally appear and we all got back on and eventually arrived at our destination — La Paz where a rowdy festival was in full swing. And the adventure was not over yet.

The bus stopped at the side of the road, outside the bus station and reluctantly everyone filed off the bus. None of us really knew where we were. There were other South American tourists on the bus who had expected to be dropped off in the centre of town. The driver and his wife had no intention of driving to the centre of town, where we all wanted to be, so off we went to fetch our untagged bags.

Unbeknownst to us, the backpacking section of town where our hostel was located was the centre of the festival’s beer garden/street discoteque, and the first couple cabs we hailed were not interested in driving anywhere near the area. After a bit of panic, not understanding why no one would take us to where we needed to go, a lovely local women directed us to walk up the hill to a street going in the other direction where we would have a better chance of convincing a cab to stop for us.

This worked and the cab driver was able to drop us about two blocks from our final destination. The street in front of us was filled with costumed women, beer in one hand, dancing to blaring music. We wheeled our bags through confetti, spilled beer, and general street party grunge till we got to the door of the Hostal Milton where we would be spending the night.

It had been a very long day and it looked like it would be a long night of street noise, but we had made it to La Paz in one piece with all of our belongings…feeling thankful.

Drawings from 400 and 650 AD, mummies from 200 AD and Pyrimids from 500 AD all in one place

The lovely staff at the Hostal Tambo Colorado in Pisco, not only organized our tours while we were there but they also took care of our transfer to the bus station and our tickets to Nasca which was the next destination on our itinerary.

Accommodations in Nasca, from everything we had heard, were very basic so we decided to create a short list and take our chances. It is a small town and we figured it would be easy to walk from one to the other once we got there. We let our guard down a bit and were not prepared for the swarm of hotel reps and cab drivers that met our bus.

Out of the din of cab drivers calling out their fares, came a voice in perfect English. We looked in that direction and met for the first time, Juan Carlos (Carlos for short), a very kind and helpful man who took great care of us for our two days in Nasca. We also had the good luck to find a last minute deal on expedia for the only decent hotel in town, Casa Andina. So in quick order, we were settled and getting organized for yet another unique Peruvian experience.

The town of Nasca is unremarkable in every way. But the surrounding area is remarkable in EVERY way. Everywhere you move some dirt or sand around within 15 or 20 km in this desert landscape, you will either come up with 1000-year-old ruins of the Nascan civilization, or completely preserved mummies with hair teeth and skin in place. And if you fly over the area you will see the famous Nasca lines that archeologists have been trying to figure out since they were first discovered by the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe in 1927.

For most, a visit to Nasca includes a flight over the lines and a quick exit out of town. Since we have nothing but time, we decided to stay two days and see what we could see. We spent our first afternoon and evening visiting several tour companies and figuring out a game plan.

First problem when we woke up the next morning was that Nasca was fogged in. Hum, we thought. Good thing we have two days. No use taking a flight over the lines if we couldn’t see anything. So we headed back in the direction of the tour companies and the bus station. That’s when we bumped into Carlos again. He took us over to his office and within a few minutes we had a whole day planned.

Getting to know Carlos that day was as interesting as the places he took us to and the amazing things we saw. He had done so many things in his life and worked so many different jobs, and lived in so many places that he had a depth of knowledge that was astounding. And, lucky for us, he had spent several years in the US and could share it with us in almost perfect English.

We first went to the Cahuachi Pyramids archeological site, which was a major ceremonial center of the Nasca civilization from approximately 1-500 AD. The construction of the pyramids was all adobe bricks which have withstood the test of time. There are dozens of pyramids throughout the site, but only one has been completely uncovered and reassembled. A second pyramid is being uncovered now by an archeological team from Italy. From the discoveries here and in other sites nearby, archeologists and historians believe that it was the Nasca civilization that created the figures etched into the flat desert landscape not too far away, known as the Nasca Lines. Designs on pottery and woven cloth found in excavations resemble those found etched into the ground. But how did they create them and why? Who were they creating them for since they can only be seen from the sky? There are many theories, and I will let you read more about it here.

Carlos then took us to  the Chauchilla Cemetery, a very eerie place that we still can’t get our heads around. The Nasca people, like the Egyptians, buried their dead after preserving them in mummy form. The dead were cleaned and placed in a fetal position, wrapped in cotton and cloth and buried facing east to be able to see their sun god in the next life. They were buried with beautifully painted pottery and other artifacts from life. Due to the desert climate and their methods of preservation, many mummies have been found completely intact. We visited a cemetery where several mummies are still (supposedly) exactly where they have been since Nasca times. These photos are not for the weak of heart. I am still having nightmares!

(We later visited the Museo Antonini that further documents all this with beautiful pottery and additional mummies that have been set up in the museum and in the beautiful garden in the back of the museum.)

On the way back to Nasca, Carlos stopped at a field of cacti to show us something we had never seen before. The cacti had a white powdery fungus growing on them. Ends up, under this fungus is an insect called cochineal from which the red coloured dye carmine is derived. He pressed some of the insect eggs between his fingers and instantly they were red in colour. This natural dye historically used to colour fabrics is now used for cosmetics amongst other things.

When Carlos discovered that we had not yet organized a flight over the lines, he called his contact at the airport to be sure we got seats in the smallest plane. Just Marc and I and two pilots. He said it would be easier for us to see the lines and to hear the pilots as they described what we were seeing.

A taxi picked us up at 7:25 AM the next morning and we made our way to the airport. Shortly after 9:00 am we were in the air. Or at least our bodies were in the air. If you ask Marc, he would say his stomach was still on the ground. The plane was very small and we were doing loops so that both of us could see the ancient geoglyphs below us. Both of us were trying to take photos, see what was going on, and concentrate on not losing our cookies in the process. I did better than Marc, but we were both glad to be on terra firma again 30 minutes later.

Truth be told, they are quite hard to see, and in the few seconds you have to figure out what you are seeing and then take a picture of it without barfing, our photographic results are not stellar. But I have found some images on the internet along with the best of our shots to give you an idea of what the lines look like if you are looking down upon them from above. We can tell you first hand that they do exist. What we cannot verify is who or how they were made, or how they still exist after so many centuries. It is a mystery, which made the experience that much more exciting.

Carlos picked us up at the airport and brought us back to our hotel and we saw him a couple more times before we left. He came to see us at our hotel to bid us a final goodbye and to pass on information for our stay in Arequipa. He even arranged for someone to be at the bus station in Arequipa to guide us to a safe taxi. We felt like we had really made a friend, and I guess the best way we can thank him is to let you know that there is an amazing tour guide named Carlos in Nasca who will show you an amazing time. Juan Carlos Rojas can be reached at juancarlos3891@hotmail.com.

Rainbows, ceramic Churches, retablos and prickly pears in Ayacucho and beyond.

We landed in Ayacucho just after a short sun shower, and we were welcomed to the gem of Peru’s central highlands with a beautiful rainbow as we deplaned. Within 15 minutes, we had been transported into another century. Our cab dropped us off at the front gate of Hostal Marquez de Valdelirios, a beautiful Colonial home converted into a hostal (hotels are called all sorts of names here and Hostal usually is a basic hotel with single, double and matrimonial rooms, with or without private bath). We were greeted by our host and taken through a hallway into a beautiful square courtyard of rooms. We chose our matrimonial (sounds so honeymoon like!) room, settled in, and got ready to walk the six blocks to the Plaza des Armas.

 

 I must mention, we were the only guests. You see, Ayacucho is off the beaten tourist track, although it kept us occupied and amazed for four full days.

It is rare to be somewhere that is almost untouched by globalization. Sure there is Internet, and electricity, even hot water most of the time. You can get a pizza (not a good one) and there are bank machines. But the people, outside of the main square, still live very simply. Since they are not used to tourists, and most do not earn their living from tourism, we walked among them as if invisible. Even though we, of course, look very different than they do, they had no particular use for us. On one hand, it made it hard for us to really connect with them, but on the other hand, it allowed us a chance to peek into their lives for a few days and explore this geographically, politically, archeologically and artistically incredible place.

Lets get a few facts out of the way to give you a bit of perspective.

Politically: This city and District of Huamanga were hijacked in the 1980s by Shining Path terrorists who claimed the city as their base and cut it off from Peru and the rest of the world for much of the past 2 decades. This horrible blemish on their history is over now and they have returned to a normal political framework.

Religion: Ayacucho is famous for its 33 Roman Catholic churches, which represent one for each year of Jesus’ life.

History/ Archeological relevance: Archeological sites documenting human settlements more than 15,000 years old have been found in this region. From 500 to 900 CE, the region became occupied by the Huari Culture (Wari), which became known as the first expansionist empire based in the Andes before the Incas.

Architecture: Ayacucho has more of its colonial architecture intact than almost any other city in Peru.

Artistically: The city claims to be the largest producer of Peruvian popular art (artesanía), including the renowned retablos (a beautifully painted wooden box that opens up to a intricate three dimensional scene carved from wood and painted in minute detail), archeological ceramic churches (absolutely amazingly cute), and whimsical red-clay figurines one sees all over Peru, and at this point, all over the world.

I could go on, but I will bore you and you can Google the rest. But really, can you believe all of this? And hardly anyone has been here. And I didn’t even mention that the surrounding countryside is gorgeous. A 12 hour day of touring through it to visit archeological digs, waterfalls, and churches was scenic every single minute. Not one stretch of blandness as we climbed from 10,000 ft to 15,750 ft . Which by the way was the altitude more or less that we reached when climbing to the Annapurna Sanctuary a year ago. Luckily, this time, we were driving! But not without the help of mouthfuls of coca leaves to help us through the pounding in our chests.

I intimated in my last post that arriving in Ayacucho was like entering a beautifully carved retablo. The centre of town is so charming, you have to pinch yourself to be sure you are not in a dream. Every tree is pruned, every pot is filled with flowering plants, everywhere you look there is a beautiful stone church. While the city people are dressed in western clothes, everyone else is dressed in indigenous attire. The women are dressed in wide puffy skirts (usually simply patterned) to just under the knee with tights (or something like tights) underneath. They all wear long sleeved buttoned jackets and wide brimmed leather hats. Heavy boots complete the outfit. Most have a large woven colourful blanket full of goods or a baby wrapped on their back. The men too, wear a wide brimmed leather hat and dark jacket and pants. Their skin is dark and weathered and their smiles are warm but missing a tooth or two.

Life’s pace is slow out of necessity. It is hard to do anything fast at 10,000 feet! And anyway, what is the rush? Our walk back and forth from our hostal to the Plaza des Armas, had us puffing each time. But it did not stop us from exploring the town and the surroundings.

On our first night in town, there happened to be a festival of some sort, and we were able to see and watch costumed dancers in the square, and listen to local music. We spent the next day visiting churches and planning our excursions.

Our first day trip outside of Ayacucho took us to the tiny pueblo of Quinua where most of the ceramic churches and retablos are made by local artisans. We hopped on a combi (local mini bus) and we were let off at the outskirts of town. With the aid of our guidebook we were able to visit several artists’ studios and even peek into their workshops. Surprisingly, we found the town almost deserted, and many of the shops closed. We met another tourist who was on the search for retablos and ceramic churches. He complained that the local artists had no idea how to market themselves and he was very frustrated at the lack of access. We learned later that many artists had relocated to Lima or even Ayacucho where a new artisan market had opened. Progress and modernization is a complex concept. On one hand, it was a very special experience for us to see even the few studios still open, and explore the primitive surroundings. But the writing is on the wall. The possibility of this experience is almost over.

We walked back to the spot where we had been dropped off and took another combi to the Wari archaeological complex. We spent the next two hours walking through one of the oldest urban walled centres in the Americas, dating to around 600 A.D. We were without a guide or anyone to explain anything to us in English (the norm for our trip so far!), so we simply wandered through the site trying to imagine what each area represented.

We were alone among the ruins with only the wild prickly pair cacti and grasshoppers chirping to keep us company. The fruit in all states of ripeness from green to yellow to pink to ruby red filled the archeological complex with sweetness as we huffed and puffed our way through, stopping often to catch our breath and snap a photo or two.

As we exited the complex we stopped at the side of the road where a local farmer was selling fruit. After a few words and a few hand gestures, he graciously pealed prickly pear after prickly pear for us with his bare hands, motioning to us how to grab each end of the pealed fruit so as not to get any of the nasty tiny thorns in our fingers. As we popped the pealed prickly pear after prickly pear into our mouths, we had to admit this was the perfect end to a wonderful day. We hopped onto the next combi, which delivered us back to Ayacucho exhausted and exhilarated!

The next day we had a full 12 hours planned, so we needed our sleep. Our mini bus was to pick us up at 5:30 am for what proved to be another very exciting day in the District of Huamanga.