Not your average bus ride.

Trip Start Sep 16, 2007
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Flag of Nicaragua  ,
Saturday, August 30, 2008

It was to be a night bus. Being the cheapskate that I am, I thought we could save on accommodation by travelling by night.

And we did. But there was no sleep to be had on this bus. The road which skirts the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua is unpaved. The driver figured that, what with all the bumping and bouncing, nobody on board was going to get any sleep anyway so he put the inside lights on and got the reggaeton going. Party bus!

Our seat was a metal frame with a cloth strung over it. A spiked bar was positioned at the small of my back and every pothole or rut that the bus struck was a reminder that I didn´t always have to be such a cheapskate.
 
On the opposite side of the aisle to me I had a manic Nica with a machete and a bitter outlook on life. Like the bus driver he figured that I wasn´t going to get any sleep anyway, so an all-night conversation would make for some fun inflight entertainment. He had a pretty bitter outlook on life and after a couple of hours of being subjected to his racist, misogynist discourse, I pretended to fall asleep. Eunate and I put a towel over our heads and sat there wondering how long this shit would last.

It didn´t last forever. We got a flat tyre at 3am. Ironically we had just left the unpaved road (I guess the old school bus was made for offroading) and were now on asphalt passing through a little village. While the driver got out to change the wheel the other passengers amused themselves, faced pressed against the side windows, observing a machete fight between teenage hoodlums in a field across the road. I took a quick look at the action then, ostrich-style, put the towel back on my head. I don´t mind having missed the action: we got a running commentary from the other passengers.
¨Oh look. They´ve all got machetes¨, said one, not in the least bit excited.
¨That one´s just cut the other guy¨, replied his friend nonchalantly.
¨He´s not getting up. I think he´s dead¨, yawned the third.

The wheel was changed and we moved off down the road, leaving the supposedly dead teenager lying in the field.
       
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