During the long hours of the night, only the low, steady hum of the engine is audible.
Sometimes an armchair is groaning beneath the ponderous movements of a sleeper, sometimes barely audible breathing or snoring or groaning. The bus moves along its course, almost silently, controlled by the (hopefully) alert eyes of the chauffeur, over mountains and passes, invisible in the darkness, along endless wide dead-straight roads.
Dead world
The first glimmers of morning appear almost unnoticed. I pull the curtain aside and look out the window with glued eyes. Night is still everywhere, and where the first light of dawn reaches, it seems even more menacing. But gradually, with the onset of day, the shadows change, fade, and pass away.
A dead world emerges, deserted, still at a good 4000 meters altitude, gray-green hills, but no tree, no shrub, only rocks and stones and pale green grass. The bus drives fast, winding along thousands of curves, along precipices, along rivers. But nowhere a sign of life. Dead world, as I said ...
Breakfast without coffee
But it takes quite a while before commotion sets in, the first curtains are pulled aside, then there's a huffing and coughing and clearing of the throat. Just like at home. According to the timetable, we've made it through the first half, but a look at Google Maps shows that the rest to Lima still drags on for quite a distance. Let's see. Punctually at eight, the nice lady attendant provides us with breakfast, but - oh God! - no coffee! How do I get through this day?
I wonder how often the lady performs this highly strenuous trip. She also sleeps in one of the seats at the very back, but is probably woken up every time someone uses the bathroom during the night. I'm sure we'll be pretty exhausted after the trip, but the gal may do the same trip again shortly afterwards, just in reverse. I will ask her if she is allowed some rest time like a decent stewardess (although that's not what they're called anymore). I have great doubts about it.
Nazca
And so the journey continues, Google Maps showing the course, the altitude app showing the altitude, and my muscles and bones showing the accumulated fatigue. Sometime after another few hours, the bus loses altitude, quite quickly in fact, one might probably smell the ocean outside the window. But it still takes quite a while until then.
We first reach Nazca, the plain with the famous sand drawings, which can only be recognized from high altitude and inspired von Däniken to his million dollar idea that aliens must have had their hand (or whatever) in the game. For me it is also the memory of an unforgettable flight with an ancient Cessna; this story has also been told elsewhere.
A brown, wet world
For a moment, the frightening thought arises whether the devastating rains could also have hit this area. That would be the end of the drawings once and for all. They have survived just because there is never any rain in this area. With climate change, however, this certainty is also called into question.
The first signs of the rains are seen just a few hours later. Bridges lead over brooks and rivers, which normally hardly contain any water. Now brown floods meander through narrow beds or even sometimes next to them, the bus has to drive slowly, even stop sometimes, so to speak, to catch breath for the passage over the flooded streets. And we are aware that this is nothing, NOTHING, compared to what is happening north of Lima.
Lima
The hours fade, eighteen in number have long since passed, then twenty, and only when the clock approaches 23 hours do we reach the suburbs of Lima.
The bus station is located as usual on the outskirts of the city. The cab brings the somewhat exhausted passenger to the specified address, the mind already busy with showers, eating something small and then just sleeping, we arrive at the address, and once again, good heavens, there is no hotel, no name.
We've been through this before, a long time ago in Montevideo, and once again I'm grateful to the cab driver that he doesn't just leave me in this inhospitable place, but takes me to another hotel.
It is indeed a rip-off place par excellence, the hotel owner (or whatever the guy is) grouchy, the room tiny and spartan and still costs 40 dollars. But I'm so tired, I just want a shower, something to eat, just ...
Mileage: 5803
Matching Song: Freur - Riders in the Night
And here the journey continues ... to the north of Peru
