Colombia: Twenty-One Hours to Medellin (cont.)

Armed with a heaping plate of white rice and French fries, I made my way over to a vacant picnic table. I smiled at the two children gawking shamelessly at the spectacle of a 5’10” tattooed gringa with approximately three cups of rice pyramided on her tray, and dug into my long over-due dinner. The rice was crunchy and coldly damp; I tried my luck on the French fries.

I gave up on the fries with about fifteen minutes left in our break.  I wandered over to the edge of the open-air shack, crunching gravel under my sneakers, and indulged in another appetite-killing cigarette. The night was warm, unlike the freezing rainy nights I had experienced in Bogota, and when I went further into the parking lot, away from the lights and buzzing of the cafeteria, it was oddly peaceful. The moon and stars cast a soft blue light on the semi-trucks that whizzed past every couple minutes.

When our bus let off a reverberating blow of its horn and slid its doors back open, I was the first to reboard. “Senor,” I asked the driver politely, “how many hours more?” He replied with a booming, good-natured laugh.
“To know is impossible.” Then he added as I made my way back to my seat, “Pero no te preocupes.”

Of course. How could I have forgotten?

***

The cabin lights stuttered on again. I checked my watch; about two hours had passed. We were slowing down, bumping along yet another parking lot. I peered out the window into an open lot and saw roadside shrubbery and a small lighted building buzzing a few hundred feet away. Perhaps we had some mechanical problem. I parted the Velcroed curtains and squinted out. The attendant had taken his uniform off and was disbursing the passengers’ luggage in a heap. Seeing my oversized backpack sadly slumped over, I hustled out of the cabin.

Passengers were digging through the heap to retrieve their bags, some stumbling through the night towards the ramshackle rest stop. The attendant, now in his undershirt, had rolled out a cot in the compartment where the luggage had been. He laid down, an arm under his head, and lit a cigarette. Again, it didn’t appear as though we’d be leaving anytime soon. I picked up my bag and stood there awkwardly.

“Habla espanol?” a woman asked me. “No.” She began an explanation that consisted of a few English words and a lot of gesturing. “Here,” she pointed at the parking lot, “5,” she illustrated with five outstretched fingers and pointed to her watchless wrist. She pointed to the rest stop, “for,” she folded her hands and tilted her head to depict sleeping. “Yes?” I nodded. “Gracias, senora.” She smiled. I waited for her to add a signature “no te preocupes,” but she turned and walked towards the glowing structure across the lot.

I stood there for a few moments, debating my course of action.  Screw it, I decided. We’re already stopped, so I may as well save a night’s accommodation cost and just sleep on the bus. I figured I was exhausted enough to pass out sin problem. Balancing my mammoth pack and my day bag, I staggered back on to the bus.

A few other passengers had had my same idea. Three twenty-somethings were chatting, laughing softly. I made my way towards the back and settled into a spot as good as any, lifted the seat arms, opened the windows as far as they’d slide, adjusted my pack to make a reasonable pillow, and closed my eyes.

Fifteen sweaty, contorted minutes later I was gathering my bags and heading towards the building. From inside the building resembled a bar more than anything else. Half-broken picnic tables were populated by a few passengers, some chatting employees, and a slumped-over gentlemen of indeterminate origin. I approached the counter and asked for a room.

A young girl with a foul mouth and a short skirt grabbed the last remaining key off a series of bent nails and curtly escorted me around the corner, down a concrete hallway to my room. “Wakeup, 5,” the girl announced, taking my crumbled bills and shutting the door behind her.

Covered in roadside grime and sweat but too tired to shower, I peeled off my clothes and collapsed into the bed.

Bam, bam, bam. I groaned, rolled over. Bam, bam, bam. I turned on the light and yelled, “Si, si.” My four and a half hours of sleep had passed like twenty minutes.

I quickly put my ripe and now wrinkled clothes back on. Hoisting my pack over my shoulder, I shimmied through the narrow doorway and staggered back to the bar.

Far from the sleepy, glum scene I’d encountered earlier, the cafeteria/bar was crawling with activity. The picnic tables were filled with truck drivers, families, screaming babies, running children, bus drivers, attendants, and passengers. The surrounding lot was a labyrinth of trucks, cars and buses. Regaeton blared from a set of speakers entirely too small for the volume. I could barely move as I made my way to the counter to return my key.

After a thimble-sized shot of strong, sweetened coffee, I headed towards the maze of vehicles in the lot. Not quite dawn yet, I squinted through the dark, through the buses that looked almost the same, save for the logos painted on their sides. More people, passengers of other buses, stood outside the doors, checking luggage, shouting for their children.   I recognized my attendant who had his uniform back on, checking bags in the compartment where he'd slept. I smiled, handed him my big pack, and dug a cigarette from my shoulder bag. I still didn’t have a lighter; I stood around like an idiot, again.

The valiant man who came forth with a flame this time was much younger than the last. He smiled. “Where are you from?” he said in flawless English.

“The US,” I answered, exhaling.

“Really! I lived there!”

It came out that my new friend, Javier, had spent an academic year in Indiana a few years ago. I told him his English was excellent. “No, no,” he protested. Then, giggling a little, “So, tell me, why are you here?”

“Here?” I looked around. It should have been obvious that this parking lot had not been a part of my original itinerary.

“In Colombia,” he clarified. “Why did you come here? And by yourself?”

 “I’d heard it was a great country to visit,” I explained. “With very nice people and beautiful things to see.” He nodded.

“And you don’t speak Spanish?”

“Very little,” I shook my head sadly. “Except,” I added enthusiastically, “no te preocupes!”

Javier laughed and patted me on the back. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Very good!” He laughed some more. After chatting with some of the other passengers, he filled me in on some the missing details of yesterday's bus journey.

“Yes, sometimes the military stops traffic,” he waved his hand, “to check papers and stuff. We were all caught up in it too.” He gestured to the dozen or so passenger buses filling the lot. “And some drivers don’t like to drive at night,” he continued.

“Because it’s not safe?” I asked.

“No, no,” Javier laughed, “because they’re not very good drivers. But Medellin is very close, just a couple hours more.”

As I stood there, in the grayish pink first light of dawn and chatted with my new friend, I felt myself settling in to the seat-of-the-pants traveling mentality, at last embracing the de facto Colombian national slogan that had been repeated to me the entire trip. Would the bed I’d reserved at a hostel still be waiting for me? How would I get from the bus station to the hostel? Would I ever even get to Medellin? I smiled, and told myself to “no te preocupes.”

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