Buses or Why We Left Peru

Buses in South America are an institution like trolley cars are in San Fransisco. The vary in comfort, price, and safety. In Ecuador they are cheap, designed for people under 5 feet tall, and a socially accepted form of suicide. They are just plain scary. Riding a bus in Ecuador is the only time I have ever seen two buses, a car, and a semi pass four abreast into a blind turn going down a mountain.

In Chile the buses are much more expensive and closer to riding in the economy cabin of a trans-Atlantic flight. When the bus driver exceeds the speed limit, a little red light flashes, a buzzer sounds, and the drivers name and a phone number appears on digital screen. This allows you to call and report him.

Peru is somewhere in between. The buses are comfortable and generally not to expensive. There is a speed limit, but the drivers often don´t obey it. Peru also doesn´t have many interstates. Most of its major roads are simply one or two lane highways that cuts through dozens of small villages. Imagine taking route 50 or 29 out of DC and way into the countryside. When it becomes a one or two lane road the speed drops. When it enters a little town, say Front Royal or Winchester, the speed drops even more. When we drive down these roads we slow down because we know that every small town cop would love to pull over the city slicker.

That doesn´t happen in Peru. Consequently, these buses don´t slow down when they barrel through no-name villages. Eventually, they hit someone. In our case it was a five year old boy. As our bus rounded a relatively blind bend in the road, a small village kid ran out across the street. Our bus driver saw and him, slammed on the breaks, and jerked the bus to the right. I noticed something was wrong when the bus began leaning at a 30 degree angle as the driver was fighting to keep us out of the ditch on the side of the road. Then came the crunch and Drew yelled. He had seen the kid running.

We looked out the window and the child was lying face down, not moving a bit. He only had one shoe. Immediately, the villagers began running to the child and the mother pushed her way through the crowd toward the kid. Then she did the one thing you never do. She picked the kid up by the shoulders and shook him. The she shook him again. If that kid had a neck or back injury it just became permanent. As you can image, the screaming was unearthly.

Fortunately, on our bus was a Korean medical student. He was already leaping off the bus when the mother began shaking her child. He got her to set him down and the future doctor began to check the child out. An ambulance and the police arrived quickly. The police and some villagers had to separate the mother from the bus driver. The Korean Doc assisted the EMTs, loaded the kid into the ambulance, and the climbed in after the kid. It was a good thing he did.

At the hospital the child was rushed into the emergency room. No one knew what to do. This wasn´t a major trauma center, just a small country hospital. There was no doctor and the nurses were not really trained for this. Again, the Korean took charge. He began cleaning and bandaging the child´s wounds, hooked him up to an IV, and checked for internal bleeding and broken bones. Amazingly, there were none!!! This kid just got hit buy a bus and didn´t sustain a single broken bone. However, there was some swelling of the brain and the Korean med student ordered him to be taken to Cuzco, the nearest major hospital.

While all of this was going on, everyone on the bus was in a state of shock. As soon as the accident happened, everyone was in tears. One girl was crying so hard that she bit through her own lip. It was chaos. The police decided that they needed to impound the bus and take its driver into protective custody. They thought the villagers might seek a little revenge, especially if the child died. Where the bus goes, so do the passengers. After several hours of sitting along the side of the road waiting for news about the boy and for the police to decide where to take the bus it looked like we would relocate to a police compound a few miles away.

The police and bus driver told us that this would likely mean that everyone would have to spend the night on the bus and hopefully, the police would work things out in the morning. Drew and I decided that we were pretty finished with Peru at this point. The police agreed that we could leave if we caught another bus. Luckily, Drew and I got the last two seats on a passing bus.

The Korean med student returned just as Drew and I were catching our new bus. Drew spoke with him quickly and found out that the kid was on his way to Cuzco and there was a good chance he would live. I check the news papers for Cuzco and the surrounding area so hopefully that means he survived. However, on the same day as this accident another bus accident killed 2 tourists and injured over a dozen.

Drew and I arrived in Puno, Peru later that night. We had a tour planned for the next day on Lake Titicaca. We took the tour, grabbed our bags, and got on the first bus heading toward Chile. Peru was a wonderful country and we both expect to return, but for now we are done.