Getting to Cusco

Here´s a tip for the traveller between Nazca and Cusco. Don´t accept a window seat when access to the aisle and the onboard toilet of your jumbo bus is blocked by a Peruvian apparently capable of sleeping for the entire 14-hour journey.

The seats recline a long way back, which is fine if everyone is laid back sleeping. When you are apparently the only person on the bus still awake, your bladder is bursting, to exit you have to climb over a complete stranger and the seats in front are almost horizontal, panic is not far away. To make things more challenging I was wearing tramping boots. It´s the easiest way to carry them.

Miraculously I managed to swing one leg over my companion without touching him - and then I found that the aisle was a lower level than the floor of the seating area so my questing foot found only air. Any observer at his point would have been forgiven for thinking that I was attempting to rape an innocent Peruano. The only way forward was to try and ´jump´ the few last inches.

It was not the success I wanted, but the collision elicited merely a couple of protesting grunts before Pedro van Winkle resumed his slumbers. And I was now in the aisle and only kicked two stray legs on my way to el baño in the rear of the bus.

Nature´s call satisfied, the problem was how to get back into my seat. I seriously considered standing until daylight when I supposed (incorrectly as it turned out) that Pedro would awake. Fortunately at this moment the passenger in front of Pedro awoke, took in the stuation with commendable promptness and raised the back of his seat to the upright position. I could now step over a pair of knees with no danger of unwanted contact and resume my own quest for slumber.

I don´t know why I found it so difficult to sleep. The seats were significantly more comfortable that those in the economy section of an aircraft. True, it was rather cold, but not terribly so, and a blanket was provided. So I remember much more of the overnight journey than I would have wished.

One episode stands out. We had set off on good, sealed highways, but at some stage the route switched to unpaved roads. These were slower, but not too bad. All around it was pitch dark unless a road sign glowed in the headlights. Then the lights of a settlement appeared. The route took us through this little town. Although it boasted street lighting the streets were innocent of any bitumen and, indeed, were one continuous pothole held together by shreds of original road surface.

Our multi-wheeled monster crawled through the treacherous, narrow streets with great care. In one lane near the centre small groups of people were huddled round little tables. I thought that the bus must be about to stop and these were hawkers hoping to sell snacks to the travellers. But no, our 21st century chariot ground on until the buildings were left behind and it was safe to move up into 2nd gear. I checked my watch. It was about midnight. I wonder what the villagers were doing in the street at that hour.