Buses and Other Stuff

About buses in South America:

Bus schedules are not so much schedules as a rough idea. You can take a 9.5 hour ride that is only 9 hours or a 4.5 hour ride that is 5 hours. Only a few people buy tickets at the station and ride to the next station. People literally get on 2 blocks from the station and all along the route. A guy we’ll call the second collects the money from people as they get on. The rest of the time he rides up front with the driver. Many of the drivers and seconds eat constantly from station to station. They eat fruit salads, doughnut holes, Chinese food, empanadas, chips, etc. Even when driving down hill through the mountains you will see the driver steering with his knee while scarfing food.

Some of the food they eat comes from vendors who jump on and off of the bus selling tons of things including, but not limited to:

Cures for everything from stomach problems to infertility

Potato, plantain, and other chips

Sandwiches

Pop, juice, and water

Candy bars

Empanadas

Tamales

Soy milk

Ice cream – both cones and bars

Pirated CDs with nearly 100 MP3s ($1.00)

There are many such forms of entertainment on the buses here.

Luckily, we took our last bus today. By all accounts the bus we were trying to catch came down the road between 10:30 and 11:15, had nice seats and was more direct from Banos to Quito. We were early. At 9:50 we were at the road. At 11:30 we gave up and took a bus we could have taken over an hour earlier. The trip was 3.5 hours and there were at least 12 separate vendors on and off of the bus in that time. Some of them are really like bad infomercials, but people actually buy the cure all crap.

Popcorn woes:

Since we crossed the border into Ecuador we have not been able to find our popcorn snacks. Corn Corn everywhere and not a bag of popped to buy.

Enough of that:

Tomorrow we are doing a Quito tour set up by Jorge here at our hotel in Quito. He arranged for a private tour in a little car for us.

Saturday we tour our way to the market town of Octavalo which is supposed to be the best market in South America. Get your orders in now!

We found an 85% cacao chocolate at the market here that is great. It is also a single source, organic, and sustainable product.

More tomorrow.....