To Lake Titicaca in fine style safe and sound.

Life on the road can be sometimes a tad scary, especially when the local papers have screaming headlines every week announcing "Many Dead, More Horrible Mutilated in Bus Crash on the same road Dag is taking today to a new town he knows nothing about." And there I was, your humble narrator, sitting right up front with a great view through the plain, untempered glass without any of that plastic shatter proofing I am so used to, looking at the vehicles our driver was passing every chance he got. Not that I worry.

Nice view of the highway and sights along the way. Many of those were of gas trucks. I like it. Nice and close view of a gas tanker right in front of me. I call this experiencing other cultures so I can expand my tiny mind and see how valid it is to live in other cultures and therefore give up my evil xenophobic ways. I py good money for this kind of thing, and I hope and expect it makes me a better person for it. More sharing and caring and less an imperialistic arsehole. The bus last week, well, 8 dead, 48 injured.

That's an education, if you ask me.

I've witnessed a couple of bad bus accidents, and I was in a bus that went part way over a cliff, saved by the driver's cousin who swung himself out the window and climbed along the roof to help a bunch of others hook chains to the axle to pull us back onto the pathway that wound its way through the jungle. A couple of others I met weren't so lucky. But this is life, and it beats the alternative greatly. Dangerous up close and personal, but one must live.

I like it, if only because so far I survive it.
Surviving is the important part for me. Close is cool.


I have a friend whom I tell that should I die in a fiery car crash he should do certain things with the stuff he keeps for me, like sell it off and retire in comfort, given that I won't need it any longer. He always laughs uncomfortably and says I'll be fine. He is a good friend.
I mean, what could happen?

The truth is that the bus trip was uneventful for me. I got through the thunder, lightning and rain storm just fine, the only problem being that just as night fell we were a bit back of the truck that flipped over and had to be shovelled off the road by a guy with a front-end loader. No fire, no flames, and thus no photo, given that it was pitch black. Just a mangled truck and stuff strewn all over the road for a long stretch. No danger for me at all.