As a backpacker, one frequently finds himself in uncanny situations never foreseen. The power of yes lends itself to amazing adventures while eering on the side of caution rarely rouses one from their comfort zone. However, what may appear routine, when adding the magic ingredient of foreign culture to the brew, may quickly transform into something quite blog-worthy indeed.
It has been suggested more than once, that a movie be produced or a book written about my life and the ridiculous situations I get into. I take these experiences for granted and write them off as either a product of my disorganization or rather a product of simply the random chances life throws at you. Another day in the life of a traveler/backpacker, may be an extraordinarily novel encounter for the hobbit never leaving the shire.
Once such event happened recently when taking what should have a been an ordinary collectivo/taxi ride between the towns of Santa Teresa and Santa Maria, in the sacred valley region of Southern Peru (near Machu Picchu). I began relaying the story to my girlfriend and she immediately interrupted me with, "See! Movie material!". I disagreed. This could happen to anyone anywhere in the world on any given day. Apparently, toying with death in a "routine" taxi ride is not so "routine" for most people.
While buying snacks at a local store, I said, "excuse me" to yet another random foreigner thinking it was just another tourist similar to myself, but most tourists in this town travel with tour groups. As I walked by, I heard, "Hey!" and I turned to see the faces of a mother and daughter I'd hiked around Machu Picchu with the previous day. I guess they were unable to get out the day prior and were conducting their travels this day. How odd?
Upon further discussion we realized we were heading in the same direction and they invited me to jump in the SUV with them. To this I agreed and we slogged further down the road until the cab driver handed us off to another driver. After quite a big of haggling, we managed to get the price straight and finally, to comply with his nagging, transferred into the vehicle of the other man.
This man was likely in his 40's, wearing an old gray t-shirt with holes in it, overweight, and clearly not in the mood for conversation. I later found out he lived in Santa Teresa (where we were departing from) and had a family with children. So why this man decided to risk the lives of not only himself, but also the two mother daughter pairs including one very young girl around 9 years old, is a question I've not been able to answer.
As we entered the vehicle to silence the driver, the first thing I noticed, as I was in the front seat, is there were no seat belts in the car anywhere. They'd been cut out. Now this is quite common for vehicles around the world, but it's usually relegated to specifically the back seats. On a small country road this ordinarily would be no problem. However, this was no ordinary road.
The province of La Convencion contains rugged, though lush, steep mountain terrain and Santa Teresa is no exception. Land slides in this region have caused major trouble for local villages in the past. Specifically the road from Santa Teresa to Santa Maria runs parallel to a river cutting its way through a valley, fueled by cascades from the mountain peaks. The road has been carved into the mountain side and has steep and sometimes dead vertical drop offs on the riverside. None of it is paved and there is scarcely a guardrail or any signs indicating orientation or danger. To compound the problem, many places in the road run directly through intense streams flowing from the mountain slopes. Essentially, the driver must pull as far to the left side of the road as possible and drive quickly to avoid the possibility of his vehicle floating right off the other side of the road.
On our journey back to Cusco that day, we saw remanants of three recent wrecks and were privy to tales of more thanks to our final driver. Drivers typically didn't survive these encounters with the river as a 50 to 150 foot fall awaited their misjudgement of the road's direction. Often, lack of sleep or alcohol were involved, but not always. We saw a family car with four people outside of it on its side further down the cliff. It had happened shortly before we and the police had arrived. Everyone seemed to be alright though somehow. Or, judging by the police's lack of urgency, those injured had already been carted off.
So despite all the obvious dangers, there were no seat belts in the car and the driver seemed to be a former Formula One Racer when during every turn, right at the apex, I was sure his tires would spin out and we'd go careening off the side of the road to meet a watery fate. Ordinarily, this wouldn't bother me so much due to my many encounters with batty drivers in third-world countries around the globe. I began to notice however, when one of the girls in the back seat repeatedly asked the driver to slow stating, "Por favor senor, no tenemos prisa!". "We are not in a hurry" in English. Her response was echoed by the mother of the small girl agreeing that the road was very dangerous. Four times this happened and each time, the driver's response was to flippantly increase the volume on his radio, continually taking his eyes off the road to compound our dilemna.
There's not a whole lot you can do in situations like this but either get out or pray you don't die. I chose the latter though my tolerance was really pressed during one of the instances when we spotted a former crash site. We noticed another vehicle parked on the side of the road with the driver standing outside the vehicle pantoming to us. As it turns out, this was one of our driver's friends and he simply wanted to show our driver the vehicle that had lost its grip on surety and tumbled into the river below.
Ok so, I get it. You want to long-neck, but when I see your friend with a giant boulder in his hand and realize that's your version of an "e-brake", we have a small problem. Especially when the vehicle is facing downhill directly toward an imposing cliff and there are still five passengers in it.
He gets out of the vehilce and immediately I hear an "ummmm" from the back seat. I reach over without delay and jerk the e-brake as hard as I can and guess what? Of course, it doesn't work. It comes all the way up with zero resistance. I wasn't letting this car relenquish us of our ability to control the situation so I quickly climbed over the shifter and placed my foot heavily on the brake in the floor. All passengers thanked me for my "good idea" and while you might think the driver would at least make mention of the fact that I'm in his seat with my foot on the brake when he returned, in reality he looked at me with complete indifference, climbed in, and continued the death race. When asked (by me) if he was annoyed, he responded negatively. I couldn't decide if it was better to distract him to slow him down or if that would merely take his eyes off the road- our one connection to safety. I suredly decided mum was the word.
We did eventually make it to our next pick up, though there were a few times I doubted. Especially when we saw a beer truck that had fallen off the road and while no one was taking the beer, they were systematically pulling the truck out of the valley piece by piece.
For every story like this, I've five more, but one gets so caught up in just trying to get from place to place in one piece, that they are often written off as just part of the journey of life. While I may be dismissive at times about the thrills and dangers we face navigating this world. I a am grateful to be a part of it and wouldn't trade my experiences for any level of comfort and security. Bring on the ludicrousy.
