How quickly we forget.....bus journey to Cuenca not as straightforward as I have led you all to believe. So, feeling decidely dodgy due to a v small hangover, v strong antibiotics (I know, I know, shouldn´t have been drinking) and weird tummy I took the executive decision to leave Vilcabamba and head to Cuenca. Got to Loja bus station, bought a ticket, went to have some chicken, chips and coke, which, unbelievably, sorted me out and went back to wait for the bus. Seemed that I was a local attraction and two Ecuadorian girls wanted their photo taken with me, then the lady walking round taking people´s blood pressure wanted to take mine, but I felt knowing what my blood pressure wasn´t going to change my life. They have a weird obsession with their health and weight here, tonnes of chemists, people with scales on the street wanting to weigh you(not a chance, they are those shitty scales which I know just lie, like all scales ;)) and lots of opportunities to buy very attractive suck-me-in corset type scenarios - anything to make a quick buck I suppose.
Anyway, I digress.....so I get on the shitty bus (not nearly as good here as in Peru) and was pleased that the seat next to me seemed to stay empty. No such luck, just as the bus was pulling away, a girl comes along with two little kids. Plonks them in the seat next to me with some nice greasy sausage, chips and fizzy drink and then proceeds to rest a piece of sheet glass (3ft x 2ft) wrapped in a blanket, on their knees (so, imagine....its resting on the floor and on their knees). She flashes me a smile, says ciao to the kids and disappears, NEVER TO RETURN.
So the kids are all huddled up eating their chips etc and proceed to get all greasy, so I gave them a tissue and they were all shy at first, but I asked them lots of questions and we started chatting. The little girl was 8 and her brother 5, they had been put on the 5 hour bus journey by their aunt, back to their home in Cuenca. I was shocked, it being a shitty local bus that stopped everywhere and them being all alone, but this is Ecuador I suppose and I thought best to just get on with it.
As the bus started to climb higher and higher I started to feel a touch nauseas, what with the bumping around and the windy roads. We went very very high above the clouds at which point the little girl poked me to show me that she had vomited all down herself (greasy chips, sausage etc), with a little bit on her brother for good measure. Well, what could I do? I produced my wet wipes, cleaned her up as best I could and said to both of them that if they were going to vomit they should tell me first because we needed to get a plastic bag. This was how the journey went. Plans of sleeping were out of window, every half hour or so I´d get a nudge and have to scrabble around to find a plastic bag which hadn´t been torn up by one of them (cos let´s face it, 5 hours is a LONG time when you are under 10 and bored)and hold it whilst they spewed. I have never seen so much vomit in my life. Made all the worse because I was trying to control my own nausea. Anyway, they were such sweet kids and we chatted a lot and I taught them some English and the time passed and we almost made it to Cuence when the little boy vomited again and I went to adjust the piece of glass and it BROKE. Well, I was mortified, having made 99% of the journey with this fucking piece of glass intact, only for it to break right at the end. (I refuse to take full responsibility due to the ridiculous situation I found myself in ;)). I acutally started to worry what the mum would do to me when she found out the glass was broken, but on the other hand I was composing in Spanish in my head how to tell her off for abandoning her tiny kids. Reallistically ANYTHING could have happened to those kids and she had just stuck them on a bus all alone with no one to care for them and their puking.
So we arrived at the bus station and the mum was about 15 and I just said I was sorry the glass broke, that the kids had been vomiting, said goodbye to the kids and got myself in a cab and as far away as posssible. Totally shattered but only to check myself into a hostel that played blaring music until 1am every night. Began to wonder if Chinese water torture was potentially a preferable option to travelling, but decided to grin and bear it and that´s when I got chatting to Simon and we went on the museum adventures and to the National Park.
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