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Apr. 4, 2008 I described this trip 3 years ago on this website, but I would like to refresh my memory. I have been in South America for over 3 years, since December 2004. Anticipating a visit like this, I made a preliminary excursion in April, May and June of 2004. I was hoping to travel from Los Angeles to Lima by bus, but I learned immediately that the Pan American Highway is discontinuous, with a gap of 200 miles, called the Darien Gap in Panama and Colombia. So I decided to take the bus from LA to Yaviza, Panama, and see what I could do there about continuing to Colombia. I boarded a Greyhound Bus in Los Angeles one morning and 4 hours later I was at the main terminal in Tijuana. There I was given a tourist card that I would have to take to a bank and pay $21 to have stamped, before I left Mexico. I very shortly caught a bus for Mexico City, a ride that cost $150 dollars and lasted 45 hours. In the huge, modern North Terminal in Mexico City two days later, I could not find a bank handy. So instead, I just boarded another bus to Tapachula, Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, another 19 hours. I stayed in Tapachula one day to go to the bank, and then boarded a Ticabus bus with a destination of San Jose, Costa Rica. Buses in Central America do not run at night, because of robbers and terrorists. So once we entered Guratemala, and made a stop at Ciudad Guatemala, we just rolled on to San Salvador, El Salvador, where we arrived about 6 PM. I stayed in the hotel in the bus station for $10. The next day, after pasing through a narrow neck of Honduras, without going into Tegucigalpa, we just kept going till we got to Managua, Nicaragua, where I got a room near the station for $10. There was good home cooking in Central America, if you like rice, beans and roast meat, as I do. We passed through hours and hours of dense jungle with rushing torrents everywhere. We made San Jose about 6 PM, but I didn't continue on the same bus. Instead I looked around San Jose for a couple of days. Finally, I was ready to go to Panama, but when I got to Paso Canoas, I was dismayed to learn I needed proof of onward passage to enter the country. A local hustler helped me circumvent this problem by having me bribe customs $20, and I was in. We got to Ciudad Panama about 5 PM, when the last bus for Yaviza had already departed. I sat in huge, modern Albrook Station in Balboa Heights till 7 AM, when the morning's first bus would leave for Yaviza. I boarded all right, but long before we got to Yaviza, I learned from other passengers that there were no ships departing for South America there. Visualizing myself cabbing all over Ciudad Panama looking for a ship to take me to Colombia, I finally decided just to fly. After one day in Ciudad Panama, then, I went to Tocumen Airport in Tocumen and bought a one hour flight on Copa Airlines for Bogota. I arrived in Bogota about 10 PM and a cabdriver took me to a pension in Modelia, near Terminal Bogota. I arrived on a Wednesday, but there was no bus till Sunday, so I just hung around Bogota for 4 days. Finally, at 9 PM on Sunday I got on an Ormeno Bus in the terminal, with a destination of Lima, Peru. It would be a 64 hour ride. All day Monday, we rolled through the gorgeous Colombian Andes, peering down into bottomless canyons and up at towering green peaks. At nightfall, we were at Rumichaca, a natural bridge between Ipiales, Colombia and Tulcan, Ecuador. There I had a long conversation with a Quechua Indian woman. We made Quito about midnight, but I couldn't see much. In the morning we were in the endless banana plantations of south Ecuador, with stilted houses over stagnant ponds everywhere. We passed through Guayaquil around noon, and made Tumbes, Peru in mid-afternoon. I was shocked to learn that the Peruvian shore is a terrible desert, just like the Sahara, with dunes 300 feet tall coming one after the other for hundreds of miles, all shrouded in uninterrupted fog. We got to Lima the following day. A man on the bus who lived in Pueblo Libre helped me find a pension in his neighborhood, where I stayed for 5 days. I had bought a round-trip ticket in Bogota, because I didn't want any problems with not having onward or return passage. No one in Colombia, Ecuador or Peru asked for it though. But since I had bought the ticket, I had to return the same way. On the way back, the bus I was on broke down in Cordoba, a village in south Colombia in a terrorist-infested area. The bus driver told us we were running a risk of being attacked, but nothing happened. I got back to Bogota and got right on a plane for Panama.There I went back to Albrook Terminal. I already had my bus ticket for San Jose, where I spend 2 or 3 more days before taking a Ticabus bus back to Mexico. There, after 3 days on buses, I was back in Tijuana, and from there I caught a Greyhound to Los Angeles. I got off the bus in Compton, took a Blue Line train to Vernon and a city bus to Figueroa, and I was home. I returned to South America in December, 2004,but I flew al the way from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires. Right now, I am in Caracas Venezuela, but plan to go to Colombia in 3 weeks. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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