MÁNCORA

Last weekend my friend Melinda and I made the trek to Máncora, Perú. Now, when you buy the bus tickets they tell you that it is direct and has two meals and will take 16 hours. We arrived at the bus terminal via taxi and bought our tickets which were 70 soles each...aka $25 for a trip that would cost much more in the states and wouldn't include food.

Well, we boarded the bus which was full...the first floor is only 6 seat and they are full 180 degree beds and cost a lot more, so of course we had bought tickets to ride above in the regular seats that recline a little bit. We began our journey without problems at 6pm, well of course the bus schedule was running on peruvian time so it left at 6pm instead of 5:15pm like the tickets said. However, things quickly changed as we realized the air was going to be an issue. It would be smothering hot, hot hot hot to the point of perspiration, and immediately it would kick on and be 30 below and your sweat would freeze to your body thus making for a quite interesting experience. On top of this there was a woman behind us who took it upon herself to smoke her pipe as we made this 16 hours journey. She also snored something fierce.

As we struggled to sleep throughout the night Melinda discovered she really had to pee. Well, there is one bathroom on the bus on the first floor that is for peeing only. So, Melinda tells me she's going to go down to use this bathroom and I tell her, "Yeah, good luck with that." Melinda goes down and comes right back up to tell me that the door is locked and but she's not sure that there is actually anyone in the bathroom.

Well, I go down to investigate as Melinda struggles to avoid wetting herself. Now mind you that Melinda is having a hard time at this point, she's stressed out, tired, annoyed, and has to pee. Well I go down and the door won't open either so I give it quite the tug and it comes flying open towards me and I go flying into the wall which felt really good, you can just imagine.

Then, I go ahead and take a moment to relieve myself and so I enter the cubic foot that was the bathroom and close door behind me, latch the door and the light comes on...Then, I finish attempt to open the door and suddenly realize I can't and begin to panic as I think about how much I don't want to be stuck in this disgusting excuse of a bathroom. So I give it a full shoulder thrust and it goes flying open and I spill out onto the floor of the bathroom and fight my way back up the stairs and signal for Melinda to come down to use it...

Melinda comes down and doesn't want to have the door closed, instead she thinks it'd be a good idea for me to stand outside and hold the door shut as the bus tumbles through the "highway" that we were on. So I'm holding the door and a good jolt comes along and knocks me down and the door goes flying open and Melinda screams from the toilet and we both bust out laughing...this was at about 3 in the morning so we made a bit of a scene I do believe...Oh well.

Then as morning dawned on us, we had stopped and I woke up and asked the nice angsty teen across the what had happened and she told me that the bus had broken down and that we were going to get to wait in the middle of nowhere for a different bus to come.

Well I took advantage of this time to get off the bus and stretch my legs and found something that resembled a gas station and I asked if I could buy "recargas" for my cell phone, basically credit for my prepaid cell phone that I use here and the guy out front just laughed at me and replied with a, "No amigo, acá no." Well...a bus finally came and it was actually less comfortable than the first one so we enjoyed that for the last 4 hours of the trip. :)

We finally arrived after a whopping 19 hours on the bus!
I am tired of typing so I am going to just put up pictures now!