Colombia: Twenty-One Hours to Medellin
By Lauren Quinn

The bus was not moving.

And I don’t mean inching, creeping along, lurching whip-lash necks, and the screaming brakes that all Latin American buses seem to have. I mean, this baby was stopped, stopped dead, and something in the way the driver turned off the ignition, threw off his seatbelt, and along with the attendant exited the cab told me we wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.

For the last half-hour we passengers had been pulling the Velcroed curtains as far apart as they’d go and smashing our heads against the tinted windows to try and look out. With the bus door now open and the air conditioning off, people began to make their bumping exit down the narrow aisle. Con-permiso-ing my way with them, I stepped off the bus and into the blazing Colombian afternoon.

The line of cars, trucks, vans and buses stretched as far as you could see, winding along the two-lane mountain highway in an infinitely long queue that probably stretched all the way back to the Bogota bus station we’d left four hours earlier. Drivers hunched over steering wheels and hung arms out of open windows; passengers stood in the shade along the side of the road; truck drivers leaned against bumpers and smoked, talking to one another; kids cried or chased each other around the stopped vehicles, narrowly missing the few cars that zipped past in other direction. I dug through my shoulder bag, finding my crumbled cigarette pack. Not a smoker at home, I’d forgotten to pack a lighter. So I stood there, outside of the knot of other passengers, an unlit cigarette hanging stupidly from my lips.
            
It didn’t take long for someone to notice—being the only gringa in the lot took care of the being noticed part. A middle-aged man with rough hands and a soft face flicked his lighter and extended the precarious flame my way.

“Gracias,” I smiled shyly.

“Donde es?” he inquired.

“Los Estados Unidos.”

He gave me the polite smile I’d become accustomed to. “Y esta sola?” I nodded.

He gestured towards the line of stopped vehicles and rattled off what I guessed was an explanation; two years of stoned, half-assed high-school Spanish and a pocket phrase book had really not prepared me for full linguistic immersion. I thought I caught something about the military. After about a minute of talking, he turned back to me and perhaps noticing the blank, glazed-over look in my eyes trailed off. I smiled apologetically. He nodded a few times, exhaled some smoke, and said kindly, “Pero, no te preocupes.”

I was excited—this was a phrase I knew, actually the first one I’d learned my first night in Bogota. I’d wound up curled in one of the maze of hammocks that hung in a room of the house-converted-bar I’d ventured to with a half-Gypsy German girl I’d met at the hostel. Gorgeous, outgoing and fluent in Spanish, she’d attracted a small crowd of boys that she was gracefully turning-down; one of the would-be suitors discovered I spoke virtually no Spanish and commenced a little alcohol-induced lesson. The lesson consisted of one phrase, one “you need to know for Colombia,” he explained in broken English that was still light-years beyond my Spanish. “No te preocupes,” he said slowly, exaggerating every stretch and bend of the mouth. I repeated. “Don’t worry!” he exclaimed, patting me on the shoulder and returning his attention to the German goddess in the next hammock.

I smiled happily at my fellow bus rider. “No te preocupes,” I repeated with more fluency and ease than I’d mustered with anything in the virtually one-way conversation. Yes, I wouldn’t worry; I was stranded on a mountain roadside in the sticks of Colombia, but I had good company, and surely we’d make it to Medellin before nightfall.

Two hours later, the traffic began to move.

I was sitting slumped over on the road's dirt shoulder. It had been a sweaty, cigarette-filled two hours, going between the stuffy bus and the powerful sun, nibbling at my dwindling food stash. Yet, with the sound of an engine starting somewhere up ahead, we were all revived from an aching boredom and began to scurry around elatedly. There was shouting, joyful shouting, mothers calling to their children, hands banging the hoods and roofs of cars. Cars began moving with doors still open, passengers half inside. I stubbed out my cigarette and hustled inside the bus.

The bus started moving while people were still standing, making their ways back down the aisle. A few staggered, grabbing the seat backs to steady themselves, others dove agilely back into their seats.

The bus rolled forward two car lengths before screeching to a stop.

We groaned.

Forty-five minutes later after painstakingly creeping forward one car length at a time, excited voices from the front of the bus signaled our forthcoming release to the open road. We flayed our curtains apart and peered out; the mystery of our nearly four hour delay revealed itself before us.  Three young men dressed in military fatigues donned AK47s and scowls as they stood before a makeshift wooden road block. The one presumably in charge was leaning over the rolled-down driver-side window of a stopped car, thumbing through some papers. He handed them back to the driver and signaled the others to move the roadblock. The car slowly rolled past.

The bus eased forward, finally at the checkpoint. Our driver and the officer in charge shook hands, exchanged what sounded like a few pleasantries; and we were waved through.  A few passengers clapped.

***

Flickering cabin lights awoke me. We inched our way along a massive gravel parking lot of a cafeteria rest stop. Groggy passengers started shuffling, gathering belongings and moving down the aisle as the bus was still lurching foward. The driver hollered that we’d be stopping for 30 minutes. Seven hours into the supposed 'eight-to-ten-hour ride', we were just now reaching our half-way stop.

I made a mad-dash for the restroom. After hours of side-of-the-road pit stops and the stinky bus toilet you had to balance over as the bus bounced along, a stationary toilet was a welcomed luxury. It was the typical Latin American public bathroom, and I knew the drill: pay a couple centavos for a piece of napkin paper meticulously cut into about three square inch pieces, squat above the seatless bowl, place the used paper in the overflowing waste basket (quite ripe in the evening air), and stumble over to the sink to wait for the one faucet that worked. Wiping my wet hands on my pant leg, I decided to try my luck at the cafeteria.

The road-side cafeteria is a tricky thing for a vegan. After attempting to sneak peaks at the selection around the shoulders and torsos of the others waiting, I finally made my way to the front of the line. My eye met an array of steaming, heat-lamp withered chunks of meat. I pointed to a dish of lumpy brown slop. “The beans are with meat or no?” I asked in choppy, hopeful Spanish. The man in the stained smock answered sharply, “Con carne!” Then, pointing at a few limp noodles drowning pathetically in a runny soup that was perhaps intended to be cheese sauce, “Spaghetti, vegetarian,” he said.  I nodded.

Page 1 of 2   Next Page

All contents copyright ©2008 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.