Slow travel. You don't get much slower than the bus. Or atleast by fossil fuel power standards. I have only vague plans for walking or cycling around the world, and they battle hard against my slothy nature. For now the bus remains a close friend, but the kind of friend who will annoy you constantly, be a pain in the lower back but always there for you and willing to go to the ends of the earth for you.
Soon to reach my hundredth town on my recent trip, many of the connections between these places have been made by the humble reliable bus. After a while one journey becomes much like the last, I slouch into the chair and settle into a trance like state as I watch the world slip by.
Then I got on an Ecuadorian bus, the differences are minor in the grand scheme of things but the experience left an endearing impression on me.
As I left the Colombian border I fell in with three other travellers on the way to Quito and Otavalo. With all the travelling I've been doing I've become a bit blasé about security and things going wrong. I usually just roll with it. However I was travelling with an older German lady that absolutely disrupted my chill attitude, she seemed to treat every interaction with suspicion and weary of everything, “don't put your bag under the bus it will get stolen”, “children will crawl under the seats and rummage through your bags'', I did in fact move my bag from the hold to the bus when we stopped at a checkpoint and my bag got searched. This was quite lucky as a local did have his bag stolen from the hold, and tried to start a fight with the driver. The lady had instilled a quiet paranoia in me and I was wary like she was, she’d said she hated Ecuador and her friend had convinced her to give it another go in the small hippy town of Vilcabamba. People's experiences and recommendations are important and it took a few days for that wary feeling to dissipate and perhaps I did change my behaviour slightly for Ecuador, less night buses and a keener eye on my belongings. However I couldn't disagree more with the lady. I loved Ecuador for its varied terrain and landscapes, its distinct culture and epic scenery, and much of this can be experienced through the humble bus.
The aisle of the bus is a catwalk for peddlers, preachers, comics, clowns and motivational speakers. If a person in London tried this the passengers would bury their heads into their phones and ignore the bravery and perseverance of the performers. In Ecuador people listen, laugh and clap and often tip these rogues who jump from bus to bus performing their comedy preaching their beliefs or politics. In these moments I’d wished for fluency in Spanish to share in the collective experience with the other passengers. I still struggle to get through a hostel check in without stumbling my words or miss understanding something, a conversation I have every few days. So trying to understand someone speaking through a tinny speaker over the chunky sound of a diesel engine and the pervasive horns of the adjacent traffic is a little beyond my meagre Duolingo Spanish studies.
A bus journey is ultimately boring and whoever said “it's about the journey not the destination” hasn't spent 30 hours on a bus with diarrhoea, in that case all one can think of is the destination. I find the best way to kill boredom on a long journey is by sleeping, listening to music and podcasts or eating. I usually forget to buy something before embarking and then end up buying petrol station snacks several hours in. Ecuador has a slightly different system, the food comes to you, the bus stops at a traffic light the doors open to a procession of peddlers who tussle with each other to be in prime position with their drinks slung over their backs, the snacks stacked, baked items in hampers or even full meals and they shuffle down the aisle selling to a trapped market. Then shuffle back to the front and depart the bus a few kilometres from their shop. I wonder if they jump on a bus in the opposite direction or have to slog back with their wears to where they started.
My favourites are the people who sell ice-cream running with cones between their fingers transacting through the small latched windows. Running back and stowing any unsold back into the freezer ready to try again. Admittedly I didn't buy much, a drink here and there and on my final bus to the border with Colombia I was feeling really peckish and some legend came on selling papi pollo (fried chicken and chips), i was at a miss what to do with the chicken bone after I was done, I tried to slip it into a small bin that I'm pretty sure was an ashtray.
Noise cancelling headphones are a must on the Ecuadorian bus. Music might blare over the crackly speakers or movies play incessantly on autoplay. At 10 am a movie comes on while travellers irrespective of age or preferences will be witnessing Predator ripping out spines, Liam Neeson battling ice roads and foes, or Clifford the big red dog. A pet peeve is my seat neighbour watching a soap opera or tik tok on full volume for all to hear. Each time it happens a silent rage bubbles up and I endeavour to buy a ton of cheap earphones and throw them at people, there are literally people coming on the buses to sell headphones and usb cables for a few dollars.
Night buses are my friend and foe, my cheap ass rejoices in the savings of travelling and sleeping and the body hates that no sleep actually occurs. I remember those first buses of my trip, my body used to nights slept on a mattress contouring to my form, a dark and silent room. Months later now the churtling of the old diesel engine is my lullaby, the decrepit suspension is my rockabye, the dusty spongy seats are still terrible but my body drifts into sleep sometimes fleetingly or some halfway place neither awake or asleep, in a trance of lucid imagination, you jolt awake and hope beyond all hope that a few hours have drifted by and not just ten minutes, and then blearily opening up Google maps to see roughly how much more non sleep you can attempt.
I left Ecuador on a long 24 hour journey onwards to Colombia, as I transitioned on to the Colombian side to jump onto another night bus. It lacked the peddlers and preachers, the coach may be a little more comfortable and a little more secure for my bag. I settle in for the long road to Cali from the border, ready for another attempt at sleeping on the night bus and as drowsiness closes in the bus pulls up on the side of the road and drivers take a hit of cocaine and we’re on our way again but I’m wide awake unable to sleep, debating whether I’d rather my driver to drowsy or high. Either way it's best not to sit near the front, it's better to not know.