Bus Rides

I figured I should mention my various bus rides a bit. I´ve been spending lots of time in buses as they are the cheapest way of getting around (in Ecuador you pay about a dollar per hour of travel). Although cheap, they are definitely not the most comfortable way to travel. In addition to uncomfortable seats and always being seated behind a person who insists on reclining their seat so far back that their head is practically in my lap, there is always outrageously loud music or outrageously loud audio from a horrible American movie. Always so loud that even with my IPOD turned up all the way, I still can´t block it out.

I´ve seen more movies staring either Jean Claude Van Dam or The Rock in the last couple weeks than I have previously in my entire life. Despite being horrible movies, I do like to use the movies as a bit of a Spanish lesson as they are dubbed over with Spanish dialogue. At first I struggled to follow along with the rapid dialogue, but now it is almost just like watching the movie in English. Although, even with these horrible movies, much is lost in the translation to Spanish.

One requirement to be a bus driver must be to be clinically insane. Many of the roads in the Andes are very poor with lots of potholes and more than 1000 meter drops without guardrails. This doesn´t make the drivers go at a safe speed however and they frequently overtake other slower vehicles on blind turns at excessive speeds. I was told by one Ecuadorian that bus fatalities are the second leading cause of death in Ecuador behind cancer. Not sure if this is true or not, but the way these guys drive it certainly wouldn´t surprise me. Despite these tactics, theoretically to speed up the journey, I have yet to arrive at any destination on time.

Another part of bus travel has been the police check points. I never quite understand how they work because sometimes the bus is waved through and other times we have to pull over. Police board the bus and sometimes just scan the crowd, looking for suspicious people I suppose, or ask people to get off the bus. Here is where it gets interesting. Sometimes the gringos are singled out and searched thoroughly and other times the gringos are completely ignored and only locals are searched. Despite knowing that my papers are in order and that I don´t have anything illegal with me, I am always very nervous going through this process. I have this image of some corrupt police officer pulling some contraband out and saying he found it in my bag. Thankfully this scenario has not played out.

Despite these checkpoints, which are supposed to make road travel safer, they almost leave me feeling less secure. Most of these checkpoints are looking for weapons. Every time I have been asked to get off the bus, nobody actually checks the inside of the bus. So say I had a gun with me, all I would have to do was leave it at my seat and it wouldn´t be found. Also, a couple of times I have had my bag scanned with a metal detector and when it goes off I have only been asked what was inside. I tell them that I have a camera and some books in my bag and they simply say ¨Bueno¨and go on to the next person.

With all of these shortcomings in the process, I was once forced to remove my pants. It was the night bus from Guayaquil to Quito at about 230am and both of us gringos on the bus were asked for our passports. I explained to the first officer that my passport was in a hidden pocket on the inside of my pants and that I would need to remove my pants to show it to him. He just waved me along and told me to get back on the bus. As I was climbing back on, another officer came up behind me and asked to see my passport. I tried explaining the same thing to him, but unfortunately he made me get it out. So I removed my pants on the side of the road in front of about 20 onlookers (plus all the other people still on the bus), I am sure they all loved the experience, and removed my passport for the officer. He looked at it for a total of about 1.5 seconds, never checked my entry stamp, and handed it back to me.

Fun fun.