Bus travels

February 8, 2008

Hold on tightly and don’t let go. Those are my words of advice for those traveling on the Equadorian bus system. Today it came in handy when the bus went from full speed to 0 in 5 seconds. Half the bus was flung half way down the corrider and only kept from falling because the sheer mass of people in the bus squished together like sardines and kept everyone upright. So that was my first bus accident. I didn’t actually know it was an accident at the time as there was no screeching, honking, or grinding of metal. It was only after the bus had stopped for about 10 minutes with cars going around us that we realized that something was up. Then when another bus stopped, let down it’s gangplank and people moved in mass from our bus to the other, we learned that an unfortunate Mercedes had crossed paths with our bus. The owner was on his cell phone and stomping around in what looked like a bit of a fit. So I followed the next exodus and got off the bus in the middle of the intersection and had to be hauled onto the other bus as the loading platform was about 3 feet from street level. Then the new bus continued on it’s way and everything carried on as normal.

The Valhalla Hostel had a very nice ring to it and came highly recommended by many travelers. It was owned by a Swedish couple who used it as a base for climbing tours up to the 18,000 ft summit of Volcan Cotopaxi. Serene and I weren't going to climb Cotopaxi, but we were headed for Volcan Ruminahui in the same area and thought it a good place to kip. We didn't have any specific directions as the road to access the hostel was unmarked, but I’d been given a little map drawn in red from the tour operator. It basically consisted of a line from quito, some slash marks for a toll stop, some squiggley lines for a bridge, and then a cluster of lines to signify an antennae field. Several times the ticket man came back to look at my drawing and converse with other bus patrons on the absurdity of it. There was much shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders. They had not heard of this hostel before. Then I was signaled to come forward, they thought we might be close, the antennaes rang a bell. But it was too soon, we surely had 30 minutes more, I said. But we had passed Machachi, “Hemos pasado Machachi” they said. “Did we cross the bridge?”, I asked. Nobody knew. “The antennas are close”, they said. I didn’t see any antennas. “We should stop”, they said. “No, not yet”, I said. “Yes, Yes”, they said. “No, no”, I said. Then I saw a yellow sign. It said Hostel Valhalla. “Stop, stop”, I said. The bus screeched to a halt in typical equadorian fashion and after a 20 min walk down an abandoned dirt road we found the hostel.