On the bus, siempre and other fairytales

Tuesday November 25, 2008

An 18 hour bus ride is enough to make any man want to chain smoke or kill himself. I decided on the former and thought I was quite clever by killing two birds with one stone. At times of extreme boredom or stress, or maybe just for the pleasure of the Nicotine buzz I’m not sure why everyone doesn’t smoke, but I can understand why they spend so much time trying to stop kids from trying a cigarette. They are addicting, and I have become addicted by choice, when they are of use, and they have their uses. But enough about my most recently acquired drug habit. Smoking is of course filthy, but also (contrary to what non-smokers will tell you) very cool. With a sad goodbye to Valeria and Marco, armed with a pack of Lucky Strikes to combat our soon to be shrinking stomachs due to the absence of Abuelita’s delicious cooking we boarded the coach for what would have normally been a 12 hour ride placing us in Popayan at 6am but, due to one of many frequent landslides we were being rerouted on the 18+ hour tour!

I can’t say enough about the lack of respect for human life that every bus driver in Colombia seems to have in spades. I often catch myself wondering which side of the road they legally drive on down here, or maybe conventionally is a more appropriate word. Blind corner? Two long trucks already taking it? Let’s pass anyway we’ve got momentum on our side and as we all know busses are all about low gear ratios not high rpm.

To exacerbate the situation as we career like a bunch of escaped convicts along what I’m sure is the world’s windiest road if that exists in the Guinness World book of records, there are people walking along the shoulder in the dark with none of the reflective clothing my mom would have made me wear if I was riding my bike at dusk or night. On a particularly hairy corner that we took at 79km’h instead of the recommended 30, I saw, quite clearly, the face of a young boy about 18-24 inches away from my window as our headlights shone on his face, which was a picture of indifferent tranquility. I surmised that he was blissfully ignorant of the dangers, mentally unstable, or suicidal. Then I saw a whole family walking down the road with little niños and I realized that the Colombians are just nuts.

In between my attempted murder by intervals of freezing and thawing via a rough AC operator, I was forced to make two trips to the WC. They were remarkably reminiscent of the last time I peed on every surface within 180 degrees of my perilous position and yet somehow my jeans emerged unscathed. Four sleeping pills, half a pack of smokes, several bottles of water, the most delicious bowl of soup ever and we arrived in Popayan blinking like a couple of nocturnal koalas aroused in the noon-day sun.

A brief assault on Popayan on foot, combined with the lingering effects of the sleeping agents we consumed with gusto on the bus left me with cloudy vision and Barnes fiending for a coffee like Iron Paws for a Trits™. A brief aside:

I have a friend named; well let’s call him Umberto, who, like Barnes and me, is a major fat kid. He might even take the cake (pun intended) when it comes to this category. The main differentiating factor of all fat kids is not the amount they can eat, but their behaviour induced by extreme hunger (By extreme hunger I do not meal the sort of hunger, naturally, that people who are really starving for nutrients feel. Rather, I am referring to the desire to eat that is so strong is drowns out all other senses and rationalism that said individual might otherwise have had). I have seen this friend smash plates, sweep glasses off tables, shout loudly in public places, push old ladies and shove small children out of the way in a fit of FKI (Fat Kidding It). I’ve seen him shake ex-NFL players named Slade like they were a doll named Suzy, I’ve witness him scream for all to hear: “I AM THE HUNGRIEST MAN IN THIS RESTAURANT” when his food wasn’t served first. I once watched him snap a door off its hinges because, in his fit of blind rage, he deduced that there was someone eating more than their share of a can of Pringles on the other side. This man is the kind of man who would fight a bull bare handed while wearing red, a mother bear trying to protect her cubs, or Chuck Norris if it meant even a chance at enjoying a Trits™ (the world’s most delicious ice cream sandwich made with a succulent bed of soft serve vanilla ice cream super cooled into a solid puck gently being caressed on either side by graham wafer cookies and topped with a drizzling of high quality – probably Swiss – chocolate fudge), ice cold Cola, or a triple stack of Pringles.
While I would go so far as to call this person my best friend and often my better half, I have watched first had as a fit of FKI overcame him and the food lust filled his eyes. At the time I believe I had foolishly won a best-of-seven series (you understand) game of rock/paper/scissors for the remaining share of Pringles. One can never be sure when the food-lust will overcome a true Fat Kid but these are the risks we all assume when we decide to befriend such a person; or perhaps it is fate that brought the two of us together many years ago, we may never know. Nevertheless, in the blink of an eye, this usually well tempered and gentle individual turned on me with all the vehemence usually reserved for arch enemies (such as Eduardo) and all left me only one option: to flee (with my recently won Pringles, of course). It was a full 3 days that I roamed the streets and slept for an hour at a time where I could before I felt it was safe to return to the embrace of our friendship. Lesson learned, like I said we all take risks in this life, all we can do it mitigate them as well as we can and take what comes head on like a man – even if that means fleeing like a scrawny street dog (named Fleabag) after losing a scrap.

So you can see we needed to find a cafe before Barnes went ape on some poor villager…

Popayan is a university town. It follows that there are a lot of young people around at all times which gives the city a lively feel. There are also lots of people everywhere so I have thoroughly enjoyed people watching as people watch Barnes. According to the local old man on the corner near our apartment, the last time Popayan enjoyed the presence of a 6’3” blonde gringo with a ponytail was just before the heavy rains came in June of 1991. So it’s understandable that everyone gawks, hell I can’t blame them. I often find myself staring at the pony tail that my compañero has recently decided to wear full time. It is more or less the same look I often find him directing towards my gregariously hairy upper lip – a smile playing across his features and a cheeky wink or blink (depending on the amount of sunlight) waiting just off stage in his eyes. Intimate moment, ahem.

Delayed by yet another Tierra del Romba (landslide) we are holed up in some cafe on the whitewashed streets of Popayan’s colonial district people watching, getting high on sugar and caffeine, passing time telling and re-telling stories back and forth like kids on a teeter-totter, and grooving to Eyna and other such lounge artists while dreaming of our next near death experience that will commence at 1am and the possibility of finding a mountain Sherpa in Ecuador with whom to drink Yagé and enter the Andean jungle for three or four wild yet nondescript days.