Ce samedi matin, nous avons quitte Copacabana en Bolivie pour rejoindre Cusco, berceau de la civilisation Inca au Perou. Notre trajet d'une 10aine d heures etait une aventure a lui tout seul. Pq? Oui les paysages etaient fantastiques mais le clou du spectacle ne se deroulait pas a l'exterieur mais bien a l'interieur du bus!!! Les Boliviens/Peruviens ont redefini le standard semi-cama (=semi-lit). En Argentine/Chili, c'est un bus confortable avec tout le necessaire pour se reposer et se detendre durant le trajet. En Bolivie/Perou c'est un moyen de transport ne connaissant pas le mot maintenance et qui est multi-usage: Certains l'utilisent pour transporter leur poules jusqu'a la ville voisine, d'autres pour faire passer la frontiere a de gros paquets au contenu "douteux" (que meme la police ignore apres avoir recu un petit sponsoring). Aussi, tout au long du trajet, des marchands ambulants montent dans le bus pour vendre leur produits. Les peruviens sont tres creatifs a ce niveau la: des truites frites, des boissons de toutes les couleurs, des vetements en tous genres. A un moment donne, une dame d'un certain age est rentree dans bus avec son gros sac typique peruvien multicolore qui etait plus large que l'allee centrale du bus. Elle a bouscule la moitie des passagers asssis sur son chemin pour finalement s'arreter et poser son sac sur la seule place encore libre du bus: juste devant Pops, bien entendu! Elle a alors ouvert le sac pour sortir sa machette de boucher, debiter une chevre ou un mouton et nourrir la populace locale du bus. Nous en etions bouche bee! Ensuite, apres avoir servi tout le monde, y compris le chauffeur qui evidemment lui ne payait pas, elle est redescendue au milieu de nul part pour continuer son petit business dans un autre bus. Une autre caracteristique locale est que les 3/4 des passagers sont des "clandestins" qui ne montent pas aux arrets prevus dans les differentes gares mais quelques centaines de metres plus loin en donnant un petit pourboire au chauffeur...
Comme vous pouvez donc le constater a la lecture de ces quelques lignes, nous ne nous sommes pas embete sur ce trajet....
Experiencing Bolivian/Peruvian buses.... part 2
You may remember our adventure from La Paz to Copacabana and it's wonderful hours spent crossing the border.. here's part 2 of rigind Bolivian/Peruvian buses...
Saturday morning, we left Copacabana to start our journey to the beautiful town of Cuzco. The journey in itself was an adventure and hence its own blog entry! Of course, the landscapes are beautiful, but the best of the adventure was not taking place outside but INSIDE the bus! The bolivians and Peruvians have simply redefined the standards of semi-cama buses (semi-cama = half-bed). In Chile and Argentina, a semi-cama is like a business class with everything one needs to relax and rest while paying a reasonable price. Here, it is a mean of transport that knows no maintenance and can be used for almost anything: some transport their chickens to sell in another town's market, other to transport huge bags un suspiciously packed goods (and then have to beg the police not to open them and sponsor them with a little bill here and there), and last, but not least: it's a big business place for the numerous people that hop on and off the bus and sell all kinds of things: Fried trout, gelly, weird juices, clothes, blankets...
The funniest was when a fairly mature woman came on board with a huge peruvian bag in her back, bumping all the passengers as she went to finally drop her bag on the only seat left available on the bus: right in front of Pops' seat, of course! Then, she starts unpacking this huge thing, gets a gigantic butcher knife out and starts hammering away... she had some kind of barbequeued (spelling?) lamb in this bag and she starting cutting pieces and selling to all the locals in the bus. They seemed to really enjoy munching away on the bones... and we just sat there with our eyes and mouth wide open: not even in Asia had we ever seen such thing!
Another characteristic of Peruvian/Bolivian buses is that most people don't travel with tickets: the bus goes to the designated bus stations, but only limited amount of people actually get in. Then once it goes out of the bus terminal, it stops 100 m down the road and just about anywhere on the road for more people ot hop on and they, of course, do not need to purchase an official ticket. A bill for the driver will earn them a seat at a fraction of the price we paid...
As you can imagine, it was not a very boring trip!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment