Mad Max...Beyond Thunderdome
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2001
1
58
79
Trip End
Feb 19, 2002
Lima,
Peru
Tuesday, January 22, 2002
The 18hr bus ride was quite comfortable, the seats on the luxury double-decker Ormeno bus was absolutely fantastic -- fully incline "cama" seats with plenty of feet room. This ride was by far THE best bus ride in my life. After all the chicken buses rides in Central America, I mentioned to Juliette we should spoil ourselves this time. The view outside the tinted window was desert on one side and Pacific Ocean on the other. The suffocating heat outside our moving palace never once penetrated our air-conditioned space. My brain was little confused by the contradictory landscape, H2O and sand usually don't mix. Geographically speaking, similar to Baja California in the northern hemisphere, this part of South America is one of the driest place on earth averaging 1mm of rainfall per year. Some places haven't seen the God's tears for over a decade. At first, the change of scenery from rain forests and banana plantations was refreshing, but one can only look at deserts for so long, and soon my wondering eyes became just a constant stare into the distant Andes to the west.
We passed few dirt towns along the way, there were always some dried up rivers cutting through the towns from nowhere to nowhere. I wonder how do these people survive without water? Sand was everywhere; blowing dusts covering the metal sheet buildings, then I wondered if a laundrymat would be a good business here.
We were alone, the bus, the darkness, the road without end. The eerie feeling of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was in my head; we were looking for civilization, but only found hopeless oasis in the desert, dried up, lawless, desperate; we must continue, mile after mile, we search, we discover, we fight, we shall find what we are looking for...it is in our destiny.
One great thing about travelling on a dark desert highway is the stars are much more beautiful. The southern constellations were clearly visible; I haven't seen stars like these since Australia in '96.
We arrived in Lima just after sunrise. After searching through the Lonely Planet we took a taxi to the "Centro", and checked in to an old colonial style hotel.
