Features

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 13

Features

w nusimsi) rages 11, iq, if • A look at Swiss clocks, Page 20 • Motoring, Page 24

story

BRAD TATTERSFIELD

Colour photographs: loren Mclntyre

Belting along at 100 kilometres per hour on a potholed Ecuadorian gravel road, our bus driver propels his rattletrap machine past carts, cars and trucks with the courage, and some of the skill, of a seasoned Formula One driver. Dave, my travelling companion, and I watch terrified as we head toward a blind corner on the wrong side of the road, passing a car and ducking back in with no time to spare. Now we are on a straight, approaching another blind corner, as a car attempts to pass us. Our driver defiantly puts his foot down and both vehicles accelerate towards the bend side-by-side. We round the bend together. We open our eyes, exhale loudly and look round the bus. Amazingly, all the locals* stoic, blank expressions remain unchanged. How do people get used to this sort of thing? In other parts of South America, like Argentina and Chile, bus and train trips are efficiently run and uneventful. In those places, the Inter-city traveller can relax in air-conditioned, reclining, bump-less luxury and arrive at destinations feeling like a human being. But in the Andean countries — Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia — the untried "gringo” contemplating overland travel must usually be braced for a jarring, exhausting ordeal. The Andes is one of the world’s loftiest, most Impenetrable mountain ranges; building road and rail links there is difficult and expensive. It is remarkable that despite being saddled with subsistence or. primary product-based economies, the Andean countries have as many good lines of land transport as they do. Nevertheless, things are far from perfect Roads and railways are poorly maintained and frequently cut — the spectacular mountain railway from Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, to Guayaquil on the Pacific coast was badly

damaged by floods several years ago, part rebuilt, then washed out again early this year. The roads are usually metalled or, at best heavily potholed asphalt In the rugged highlands of central Peru, guerrillas play havoc with lines of communication. We spend two days in Huancayo, where Maoist "Senderoso lumlnoso” (“Shining Path”) guerrillas are particularly active. Here, roads and bridges are periodically blown up, travellers are held up and robbed, and the military are everywhere trying to keep order. Only a fortnight after we leave, the newly-elected mayor is murdered by the guerrillas. As we stand on the roadside waiting for our bus to Ayacucho, 240 km away, a storekeeper comes out taps us on the shoulder and hurriedly ushers us inside his shop. Apparently, it is dangerous for stand-out foreigners like ourselves to mill around in a bus queue. Later, on the bus, we fight for breathing space with a potpourri of people, luggage, dogs and chickens. With people jammed around us on all sides, sleep is impossible, although the locals manage to snore soundly in the most contorted positions. A particularly scrofulous individual shakes dirt from his sleeping blanket over Dave, infecting him with a dose of scabies which it takes a month to get rid of. . We bounce along the twisty, one-lane mountain road, passing white wooden crosses marking spots where other vehicles and their less fortunate occupants have gone over the side. A truck approaches from the other direction. To allow it past, the right side of our bus mounts the bank, tilting us alarmingly to the left as the truck inches alongside. Dawn breaks on a stark, beautiful desert landscape and we pass quaint adobe houses and colourfully dressed Indians. However, our overnight ordeal has left us much too shattered to enjoy it We arrived in Ayacucho

after 16 hours, at an average speed of 15 kilometres per hour. Another journey, by train from La Paz in Bolivia t_> Antofagasta in northern Chile, tops the discomfort ratings. Our "firstclass" carriage has wooden seats and a hole in a cubicle floor for a privy. Scheduled to take 27 hours, our train lumbers slowly over the lifeless, desolate “altl-

piano,” the huge highland plain which covers much of Bolivia. It stops frequently and finally* breaks down in the middle of nowhere on the afternoon of the second day, causing a six-hour delay while another train was summoned from the nearest town up the line. We reach the Chilean border in the early evening, and here the South American passion for document checking comes infuriatingly into its own. All 300 passengers are unloaded and made to huddle outside in the bitterly cold night wind for four hours while guards painstakingly check our passports. We finally reach Antofagasta after 48 hours — 21 hours late — in a state of zomblfied stupor. It is possible to get to most substantial towns in the Andean countries by air. Why, then, take buses and trains? This is a question we ponder often, but we realise we chose correctly. You can only start to see how a place like Peru ticks by getting amongst its people in a village market, at a grubby restaurant, or on a train. Public transport in the Andes is cheap and widely used, and all social classes can be seen on it, from barrel-chested Indian women dressed in hats and colourful clothes and, invariably, saddled with babies, to young men in open-necked shirts singing loudly to ever-present radio music. Being crowded together forces people into conversation, and despite our limited Spanish we have some of our best chats with the locals on buses and trains. The harsher realities of life in the Andes are only too evident on public transport Although education is theoretically compulsory in Peru, most poorer children work as soon as they are able. At every bus stop, at all hours of the day and night, hordes of children mill around hawking fruit, sweets or bread. Each bus stop also has shoeshine boys who pester everyone, whether they are wearing shoes, sneakers or sandals. Another traveller we meet is a victim of some clever trickery from one boy. Our friend agrees to pay 3 intis (about 25 cents) to have his shoes polished. The boy does this, then nonchalantly paints some bright yellow lacquer on to his shoes. Our friend complains, but the boy holds up a bottle of removing solvent, smiles and says “20 intis.” Our Indignant friends refuses to pay, but later spends two hours scraping the stuff off his shoes. A stop at a northern Peruvian customs post is also a good demonstration of native ingenuity. The guards, who are after contraband smugglers, make everyone get off the bus, unload and inspect every piece of luggage, make us wait an hourihen repeat the whole process. the

meantime, we watch bemused as people sneak parcels in and out of bus windows while the guards’ backs are turned. If they are seen, a discreet backhander is passed and the offender keeps his goods. Andean border crossings are rarely uneventful. On the Ecuador/Peru border, the Peruvian guards blatantly ask us for money in lieu of our bags being opened up and searched. Crossing from Peru to Bolivia we have to pay a US$2O bribe because the border officials insist we have overstayed our 30-day visa, when in fact we have stayed exactly 30 days. Police document checks are a regular occurrence on most journeys, probably to justify their heavy presence in even the most remote areas. The Western traveller must also be constantly wary of thieves, who are especially active in Peru. Here we chain our bags to roof-racks and hide valuables in zip-pockets inside our clothes — excessive precautions maybe, but we aren’t robbed. Most other foreigners we meet have been. But then, there is the scenery. A highlight is riding on the roof of the “autoferro,” a bus mounted on rail tracks, south from Quito. Here we pass through green, densely populated countryside and towering mountains like Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, Egmont-shaped volcanoes more than 5500 metres high. A week later, we enjoy a bus journey which descends more than 2500 metres in a day from mountains, through dusty hamlets perched on crags and dense jungle to a coastal plain, where we pass huge banana plantations and shantytowns housing pickers and their families. After three weeks on the fogshrouded Peruvian coastal desert, parts of which have not seen rain for hundreds of years, we take a train from Lima to La Oroya Andes. The highest passenger railway in the world, the line climbs from near sea level ; to 4759 m. To ascend the sheer valleys, which are like giant clefts in the in the rock, the line zig-zags up the rock face; the train runs forward, then backwards up each section. Oxygen bags are sold to relieve the altitude sickenss (“soroche") which lays low many passengers. Some weeks later we bus round Lake Titicaca, the huge Inland sea between Peru and Bolivia; We see Indians poling their reed boats around the lakeshore. Some of them live on floating reed islands. Cattle graze among the reeds, often wading wel into the lake. In the distance, beyond the royal blue water, the Andean peaks nudge above the clouds. Those are some of the nicer sights. And, ultimately, it is those, rather than the discom-v fort, that you remember. f