I want to tell you guys about our wonderful bus adventures! It started out on Monday when we all came together with most of our squad. I loved getting to see everyone and hearing more about how their month went at their ministry sites. Our first bus ride was hard for me… one because we had to say goodbye to people that I’ve gotten extremely close with in Ecuador. I love them so much! As I was hugging them I felt like God was telling me that everything will be okay and He gave me a peace about leaving after that. Reason #2 the bus ride was hard: I don’t sleep on buses. I can’t get comfortable enough to sleep or I get too excited about where I’m going.
Monday at 7pm our squad headed out for our next destination… PERU! We got off the first bus at about 9am, walked across the boarder with our huge bags, then got onto the second bus that took us to customs. I know you’re thinking how did you cross the boarder before going through customs? Honestly I have no idea. I was thinking the same thing. We go back on the same bus and went to a hostal to put our stuff in a room until it was time to get on the next bus. Note: I haven’t slept yet! I was thinking, “Hostal! Awesome! I’m going to sleep in there for a little while until we leave again.” Nope. We had to pay extra to stay in the room because we only paid to put our stuff there. So instead I decided to walk around with some people from the squad and explore the town. (First bus: 13 hours. Second Bus: 1 hour)
Tuesday at 7:30pm we got on the next bus this time with our entire squad to head to our different ministry sites. Once again I didn’t sleep.. this time because we stopped like every 30 minutes for police to check along 56 of our bags. I could have slept if I wanted to but I decided to go outside to make sure no one was going to steal anything while we were stopped. This bus ride lasted until about 8am. Then we got off the bus and split up into our teams because some of the teams were staying where we had stopped for their ministry. Then 3 teams including mine got onto another bus and drove to where their 2 teams would be staying for the month. (Third Bus: 12.5 hours. Fourth Bus: 30 minutes)
Wednesday at 10:45pm Team Daniel (my team) got onto another bus to head to Lima, Peru. By this time I’ve been awake since Monday morning so I’m starting to get a little delusional. I felt like I was dreaming. My days were running together and I had no concept of time at all. (If you’ve ever seen me after a few all-nighters at school… you know what I’m talking about.) So we were on this bus until about 9am when we finally made it to Lima. But it gets better! When we made it to Lima we had to find a taxi to the next bus station that would take us to Pacullpa. (Fifth Bus: 10.25 hours. Taxi: 30 seconds the way they drive here)
Thursday… We are sitting at the bus station in Lima at about 10am and they tell us that they can’t sell us bus tickets to Pacullpa! “Say what?!” The roads had suffered from a landslide and it was too dangerous at that time to go and we had to check back in 30 minutes. So we checked back in 30 minutes and they sold 6 tickets to Pacullpa to us. Finally on our way to Pacullpa… our last bus ride. We got on the bus at 2pm it was supposed to take 20 hours but instead it took 24 HOURS!! The roads got so backed up in the middle of the night that we got stuck in the same spot (not kidding) for 4 hours! At this point we seriously thought we weren’t going to make it so we started praying that we would! (Sixth Bus: 24 hours!!)
WE MADE IT!! On FRIDAY…Finally after 5 days, about 62 hours of being on a bus, about 5 hours of sleep, and 0 showers… we made it to PACULLPA, PERU!
