The bus company we booked with was called Senior De Los Milagros (lord of miracles). Jen joked that she hoped their name didn't reflect their operating policy when a man at the front asked for everyone's attention while he prayed for the safety of our journey. Thankfully, he wasn't an official representative of the bus company, and this was only the opening ploy in his effort to sell children's instructional materials (books about physics and chemistry!) for a dollar a workbook. His 20-minute harangue was just one of several examples we would suffer of the refined rhetorical art of the hard sell. (My favorite part was his descriptive portrait of the scam artist, and how we could rest assured that he wasn't one--"I'm a just an ordinary guy like you all, telling you what I think").
Though the bus was full when we embarked, another 25 or so people got on at the first stop out of town, filling the center isle. Some of them had brought buckets to sit on, but many just stood or, (as the old woman next to me) elected to sit on another passenger's armrest. Every time we passed a toll booth, everyone in the center aisle ducked so the police couldn't see them from the road. Even though Jen and I are pretty sure this practice of overloading the buses is illegal, we are also sure it's universal, and more or less overlooked. To what extent this compromises safety is unclear. Since sunset is around 5:30 or 6, it was dark for most of our journey there. On the way back I only saw one overturned bus husk. In any case, about two hours outside of town the toll checkpoints stopped along with the paved road.
Around 7pm, we arrived at Chivay, where the only other tourists on the bus decided to get off because they “didn't have a place in Cabanaconda”, the even smaller end-of-the-line 2 hours away where, incidentally, we didn't have a place to stay either. As we waited to go, more and more locals crammed on board, causing the existing passengers to yell “esta lleno!” (it's full!) and “vamanos! Estamos hambre!” (let's go! we're hungry!). Jen and I started to get out our headphones to listen to music when the priest across the aisle advised us that we should be careful with our bags because "they would rob us". We were touched that he used the tu form with us for his warning. I reasoned that, taking confessions, he would probably know, so we discretely tucked our things away.
Two hours later, as we pulled into the narrow streets of Cabanaconde, we noticed somewhere between 50 and 100 squatting men lining either side of the bus, apparently waiting. Even the large cities we've been in shut down early, so the sight of so many people out in such a small town confused and somewhat unsettled us; something was definitely afoot and we had no idea what.
The bus unloaded in the small main plaza, where there was only a small crowd waiting for the bus. We bee-lined for the hostel, not 30 steps away, and secured what turned out to be a very lovely room for 20 soles. Five minutes after we'd settled in our hostel, the mystery of the waiting men resolved itself. We heard a cacophonous homophony of trumpets playing a sort-of bugle call. I captured a little bit of it from the hostel window (before we went out and joined them):
Apparently we had arrived at the beginning of a celebration of the town's founding that lasts 4 days. Though much smaller and less elaborate than the festival in Cusco, the musicians and townspeople more than made up for it in vigor and enthusiasm. As we watched from the center of the plaza, the parade and dancers made 4 or 5 laps around us since the town is so small there apparently isn't really anywhere else to parade to.
We had oven fired pizzas in a neighboring hostel (pachamama ("mother earth" in Quechua)) where we were surprised to find a young Belgian waitress who spoke to us in fluent English, the neighboring table in French, and another couple that entered in German. We would find out later that Lib (the waitress) was the girlfriend of the young Peruvian proprietor (Louie). Lib speaks 6 languages, and Louie had been a hiking expedition guide for 7 years before establishing what is unquestionably the hippest and friendliest hostel in Cabanaconde. The pizzas took a little while since their pizza cook had left for the festival, but it was such a friendly and welcoming atmosphere that we didn't mind just relaxing. At around 11:30 we returned to our hostel and enjoyed a very restful sleep (at least, until dawn when the parade, with its 30 trumpets, 30 baritones, and 20 drummers, resumed where they had left off the night before--directly outside our window).
No comments:
Post a Comment