Another bus tale

May 1, 2008

The bus slowed gradually as if changing gears, but then came to a stop and moved no more. The engine was turned off and there we sat, 45 minutes north of Shell on the road to Quito.

“Hay un rumba”, a toothless lady slurred through her gums. She smiled at me knowingly and nodded her head. It was 8:44am.

I pulled out my Spanish dictionary and looked the word up. RUMBA: dance or music it said. That couldn’t be it.

“Una rumba?” I asked the man in the third seat.

“Si, el suelo se cayo”. “Yes, the ground fell down.”

That sounded more like a landslide. I looked at the word below rumba and found RUMBO: course or direction, was the definition. Maybe it meant something like the land had changed directions. I didn’t think RAMBO would be in my dictionary and closed it.

People were getting out of their cars in the line of vehicles ahead of us and milling about. I stood up out of my seat and strained to see ahead, but nothing was visible beyond the bend in the road. I noticed some movement outside my window in the trees above the bus and saw two birds with bright yellow bands on their tail feathers fly into long woven nests hanging high up in the tree.

“There are four land slides”, the toothless lady said and grinned at me. “There is equipment coming at 10am to clean it up.” I looked at my trusty travel clock, a Christmas gift from my sister-in-law Laura. It was 9:40am.

“It will take two hours to clear the road”, was the next report, as a large excavator on a flatbed truck and a bulldozer rumbled by at 9:50am.

An hour later and we still had not moved. I decided to venture out. Cars and trucks were turning around now. Some people were off loading in groups and walking with all their belongings up the road.

“There are seven landslides”, the toothless lady reported. “Very far”, she said.

I decided to go anyways. The bus driver was no where to be seen. Luckily I only had a small back pack and my computer bag. I slung both bags over my shoulder and headed up the road.

There were vendors out now selling their wares. Green mesh bags of mandarins for 1$ or home made potato chips for .50 cents. A man on a bicycle with a striped parasol offered “Mote”, a concotion of a type of large boiled corn with an onion salsa and plaintain chips. He scooped the mixture into a small yellow bag, plunged a tiny plastic fork in , and handed the lot to you for .50 cents.

Ten minutes up the road I came apon the second tunnel in a string of 6 between Shell and Banos. The tunnels had been put in when the road was improved to help avoid the precipitous drop offs and frequent land slides that caused so many accidents and delays on the treacherous path through the mountains. The old dirt road still existed turning off to the left and skirting along the cliffs above the Rio Pastaza. I spoke with a lady there who claimed there were nine landslides. “Very far”, she said.

Groups of families and a few cars were traveling on the old road. A touring bike rolled by going the opposite direction with panniers packed full. I noticed his shoes and lower legs were covered in mud. He must have crossed the land slides. A “camioneta”, a pick up truck with a tarp covering and bench seats in the bed drove wouth with about twenty passengers piled in. The five at the back of the truck sat on the tail gate and sides of the bed, muddy shoes and trousers hanging out. “were people crossing the slide and picking up trucks on the other side?”, I wondered.

I decided to take the old road and see what I could see. Ten minutes later I turned around to see a bus coming up behind me. It was bus number 500 of the San Francisco fleet. That was my bus. When the bus pulled up alongside me I asked the driver whre he was going. “mas adelante”, “further ahead”, was the reply. I hopped back on the bus.

Soon we came apon the town of Rio Verde, named for the clear green waters of the river that flowed past the town before dumping into the muddy Pastaza below. The bus pulled over and parked. There was a police car blocking further progress on the old road. A long line of vehicles was strung up the ramp where the old road met the new one. Several San Francisco buses were in the pile up. One could tell the road had been blocked for awhile because this bus line ran every half hour from Shell, and I counted five San Francisco buses ahead of ours before the trail of vehicles disappeared into the next tunnel.

I got off the bus again and spoke with a lady who was a passenger on my bus. She was from Shell and her husband was in the military as an orhodontist. She was a doctor and was making her way to Quito with her two children to see her husband who had just had back surgery at the military hospital.

“No es rumba”, she said, “Es derrumbe”. I finally had my Spanish word and quickly looked it up. DERRUMBE: collapse; landslide. Even the word sounded like it’s meaning and I could just envision the boiling mass of mud as it cascaded and rumbled down a hillside.

I was not to see the mudslide on this trip however. At 2:30pm bus # 500 turned around and headed back to Shell. It had been 4 ½ hours since the work team had arrived to clear a path through the mud and they did not know if they would finish today, or even tomorrow. I arrived back in Shell an hour later, 7 ½ hours after I left that morning. The kicker to my fruitless journey was that I had been required to pay my return fare back to a town I didn’t want to return to!

The road did clear that night between seven and eight and I was able to get to Quito the next day. The land slides were all concentrated between the third and fifth tunnels and had swept across the roads and into homes on the other side. Mud was easily five feet deep in places. I counted about 7 slides, but it was hard to tell through the steamy windows of the bus where one slide finished and another began. Deep scars cut through the dense jungle foliage marking black trails down the mountain through the sea of green. In places the moist soil and green grass, ferns, flowers, and palms had all doubled over on itself, as if someone had carved into the very flesh of the earth and pinned back its skin to see the heart below.