Well let’s just say that this was the first time that I have spent about 60 hours in a bus before. Our itinerary of buses involved 4 different bus rides we would be ‘living’ on. Before leaving Quito, Ecuador, I tried to think of several things that I could do while traveling. I only came up with a few things that would take up a part of the trip. I honestly didn’t know of what else to do since we would be traveling for so long.
Before traveling I was a bit worried if I would get car sick on the journey, so I knew I had to ‘fight’ myself from getting car sick. (I had gotten a little car sick on the bus to Dunamis, and that was only a 20 minute maximum drive.) I had been asking God to give me a seat that was closer to the front so that it might help with my car sickness. I know that asking that seemed so little but God answered me and he gave me a seat that was in front of the halfway point on all four of the buses.
So the 60 hours started at around 11:15 pm on Friday night the 9th. Our first bus was about 9 hours. It was really nice that it was through the night that we drove. Almost all of us in the bus slept. We arrived in the morning to the the next city. We then stayed in the bus terminal that was pretty much like an airport. We left on our next bus at around 2:00 pm. This bus would take us over the Ecuadorian and Peruvian border. This bus was about 19 hours including the border stop and one or two mandatory bus stops to check bags. This bus was a double decker bus. I had the first seat on the second floor. I was sitting right over the driver of the bus. This was really nice because I had a very good view of where we were going because the windows wrapped around the whole front of the bus. The bus also had personal TV’s, so I was able to watch a few movies. The bus also provided dinner and breakfast so that was very nice. In all I slept, read my Bible, looked at the landscape we were passing, and watched movies. We exited the bus in Trujillo, Peru. For Team Silverback, we were only halfway through our travels.
In Trujillo we stayed at Savage Ministries. Team Tribe would be staying there for their month of ministry. We went to the beach in the morning the next day and stayed there for a couple of hours. It was nice to walk around and see the ocean. This was a big change to Quito, where we were in the mountains. Later that evening, we would leave on our next bus that would go over night for around 9 hours.
Our travel began again. We left Trujillo for Lima. I slept very well because the seats had a lot of legroom and they reclined quite a bit. In the morning we were in Lima. We then decided, after we took care of our bags with our next bus, we would head to the mall to get something to eat. We walked for about a mile, mile and a half and then we got there. I ended up eating at Burger King. All of our money was in the currency of Soles. I bought 2 burgers for 10 Soles. 3.2 Soles can be exchanged for 1 dollar. We then headed back to the bus terminal and got on our last and final bus. This bus would be the longest so far. It was 22 1/2 hours long. We started our journey. I tried to sleep a lot, but there wasn’t a lot of legroom for each seat so I had very restless sleep. Early on I also noticed that I was actually very car sick. I felt very nasceous. All I wanted to do was get off of the bus, while in reality we were only about halfway done with the ride. During the night, I realized that I could sleep better if I slept in the pathway. I knew that I would half to be very conscious while I was sleeping-which is impossible-to make sure no one would trip over me if they need to go to the bathroom. Surprisingly no one ever tripped over me. I probably slept a good hour, off and on. It also wasn’t helping my car sickness because we were climbing around 13,000 feet(starting at sea level), zig-zagging up the mountains to the city of Cusco.
But the trip was finally done. We finished the seemingly crazy journey. We are with the Andersons, who are our ministry hosts while in Cusco. They have expressed that they want us to solely grow in each of our walks with the Lord while we are here. We have had several times that we have sat down and talked as a team about certain things. I love that we are talking with each other on different topics and hearing what each other have to say. The Andersons have invested so much of their time and energy into our lives while they have 5 children. I’m excited for what these next 2 1/2 weeks will hold.
