43. Aqua Verde, Peru

43.

Aqua Verde, Peru:

A miserable assortment of cheap concrete-block buildings and wooden shacks.

Since I have no ticket OUT of Peru, I expect to have trouble with the border police-- but they pass me through with the greatest of ease.

A taxi from the border drops me at the wrong end of town, so I hike a mile in the noonday sun, and am not in the best of moods when I reach the bus terminal.

I have a “thru ticket” to Lima, but the station people claim there will be no seat available on a bus until next week.

I raise hell until they put me on a Lima-bound bus late in the afternoon—but good grief, what a seat they put me in! They sure do get their revenge! I am next to the toilet in the back of the bus and sitting in the seat beside me are a fat lady and her three children.

As soon as the bus starts moving, the toilet starts overflowing and people keep coming back to be sick in it. Every time the bus takes a curve the lady squashes me against the toilet door.

There is no fresh air—the windows have been sealed shut and the bus is jammed with women and crying infants.

Twenty-plus hours of this torture and the bus rolls into Lima. I fool them all and stumble off the bus alive!

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