Lost

Early one morning on my way to school, I grabbed a familiar bus on a major road in Lima. There are a handful of buses that go the direction I need, so I generally just hop on one of them. When I first began my bus adventures, I would ask every time to make sure that the bus was going in the right direction. On this particular day, I didn't ask.

I immediately paid my fare and told the coin collector where I was going. He collected my coins and we set out to fight the Lima traffic. This particular route goes straight for what seems like forever until it makes a slight right, a left and then I'm at school.

At one particular stop, I noticed a bus of the same line in front of us. I sighed and knew that soon a battle for the road would soon ensure, resulting in me barely hanging onto my seat as the older-than-me buses fight for the title: King of the Pot Holes. However, this didn't happen. My bus turned left. And it turned left nearly 15 blocks before the usual right hand turn.

"It's ok," I thought, "they want to get around the other bus."

As we continued driving and didn't make any attempt to stop our detour, I began to think about the logic of a bus changing the route and realized it was impossible. So I sat there, staring out the side window, weighing my options.

Do I stay? Do I get off? But I have no idea where I am. I will be late for school. Maybe they will turn back. Surely he is going back. Why do none of these locations sound familiar?

After a few more turns, I saw a familiar street sign. The bus veered right and all my fears disappeared. That is until I realized the slight right turn was only to pick up more passengers and he in fact was turning left. Going far, far away from the familiar street.

"Are you going to the shopping center?"
"No," señorita, "we're not."
"But you told me you were!!"


Panicked, I jumped off the bus in the middle of the intersection and as my feet hit the ground, I heard a whistle, a "mamaccciiita!" and another whistle. Fantastic. I'm lost. Guys are whistling at me. It's too early for this. I'm carrying too many bags. What do I do now?

I started walking down the road with a familiar sounding name and saw a bus stop up ahead. As I approached it, I noticed that the stop was nothing more than a dingy sign placed alongside a dirt median. The stop was covered in trash that welcomed all the dogs and none of the humans. I was standing there alone. None of the buses were stopping. This is when I began to panic.

I quickly changed the game plan from bus to taxi, but soon noticed that the only taxis traveling on that road were "colectivos," which are group taxis that run a set route. I heard Alvaro's voice in the back of my head, "You are to never, ever take one of those."

I tried to flag down another taxi, but no one would stop. I walked further down the road towards a busier intersection and still no one would stop. As they drove by, drivers shook the fingers "no" at me. I felt as if a spotlight had been placed on me and everyone around me knew I didn't belong there. Finally, one taxi driver stopped and I told him my destination,

"No," he said shaking his head, "I don't go there."
Out of sheer desperation, I begged, "Please, please, please."
"Señorita, no, I don't go there."
"Please!" I pleaded as I clutched my belongings and fought back tears.
"Ok, I'll take you to a calmer street and you can catch a bus from there."
"YES!" I screamed and jumped in the cab.

It was only then that I realized I had not yet settled on a price. An amateur mistake in the world of Peruvian taxis where everything is negotiated. If you don't agree before getting in, you are at the mercy of the driver's price point. But at that point I didn't care. I would have paid anything to be taken away from the trash covered bus stop.

As we approached my exit point, I asked him, "How much, sir." And he replied,

"Nada, señorita."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Nothing?

"Yes, nothing. I was driving this way anyway and you will never get a taxi on that street. It's better for you to be on this end of the avenue."

I told him a little bit of my story, or as much as I could in my frazzled state. I was scared from getting lost. And confused about not paying for my taxi. And more than anything I wanted to be at school.

I hopped out of his taxi and jumped on the first bus that I knew was going to school. Never mind the fact that it was packed well beyond capacity and I spent the first seven blocks standing on the stairs with nothing but a half open door protecting me from terrain below. I was on my way to school and that was all that mattered.

I finally made it, still shaken up but then discovered that there isn't much that a hug from a first grader can't fix.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my sweet Peruvian taxi driver who fell for my begging and turned my nightmarish morning completely around.

Oh, the traffic.

This is how you receive directions in Lima:

Take the expressway, exit at the main street and continue on for a while. The whole trip should take ten minutes. Or forty minutes with traffic.

The dreaded "with traffic".

My first few months here, when I was trying to be a serious private language consultant, Alvaro's mom would drive me to my classes. "Pick me up at 7:15," I would say and without fail she was at my apartment at 7pm sharp. It drove me nuts. The predictability of her too-earliness made it worse. I would remind her, "I think 7:15 is better, it's just a short drive from here" to which she would reply, "Oh, but with traffic it's much longer." Inevitably, there was zero traffic and we were fifteen minutes early for my class. In those days, I wasn't allowed to be by myself (though that's an entirely different story) so I had to wait in the car with Alvaro's mom for fifteen awkward, Spanish stumbling minutes.

The point? Traffic in Lima is a) horrendous and b) annoyingly unpredictable.

Limeans measure distance in the traffic minutes it takes to get there. My trafficless morning commute would be about twenty minutes. A good traffic day is door-to-door in under an hour. Going just ten blocks can easily take over half an hour. Tonight my taxi was to pick me up and take me home. It wasn't there at the designated time, so I called the company. "Oh yes, Señorita, it will be there in four minutes." Did I mention that there's actual time and Peruvian time? I hear "four minutes" in Peruvian time which in reality is forty minutes. And "he's just three blocks away" translates to reality speak as "an arrival thirty minutes later".

And the unpredictability. Several weeks ago, we went to a play at my school. Alvaro's parents advised us to leave a full hour and a half early because of all the "traffic." On a Saturday night? Unlikely. So we made out way about 30-40 minutes early. Imagine my surprise when the highway was a parking lot and it took over an hour to get to school. The unpredictability is maddening. The worst part? His parents were right.

The only redeeming thing about all this chaos is that thankfully, I don't have to drive. I'm either sitting on a bus or as a passenger in a car. Driving in this mess is a whole different level of stress and there's no way I could acclimate to that.

Traffic Chaos

When we were in the United States a few weeks ago, someone actually congratulated us on surviving traffic in Lima. I accepted the congratulations with great sincerity because surviving traffic in Lima is no easy feat.

I come from a land full of kind, orderly, overly sympathetic Southern drivers. If you need to get over to another lane, simply put on your blinker and a kind driver will welcome you in front of them with a warm wave. Once you find your place in the lane, a small thank you wave is exchanged and there is harmony in the world. If the traffic lights are not working, the intersection becomes a four way stop and drivers patiently wait their turn in line. As I wait my turn I usually think, "Look at how nice humans can be to one another."

And then in Lima, simply driving down the street is an exercise in survival of the fittest. This no holding back, let the biggest car win approach to driving has completely dissolved my desire to drive in Lima. My boyfriend's mom tells me, "...but you know how to drive, you will be fine." Not exactly.

I know how to drive in a state of orderly drivers who respect traffic lanes. I know how to drive in a city with traffic laws that are actually laws and not mere suggestions. I know how to drive in a place where a stop sign means stop, not honk-your-horn-as-you-pass-through-the-intersection-to-tell-the-other-cars-that-you-are-coming.

Lima is the only city I have ever been in where cars in the right hand turn lane, dart forward after the light changes, go across several lanes of traffic and make a left turn. He with the larger car wins.

Today, I received this video as yet another shocking example of the traffic conditions in Lima. I know that the traffic problems and lack of law enforcement are serious issues, but I can't help but to sit in humored awe as I witness the chaos.  It's something that to me, a driver from regulated, kind Tennessee, is so bizarre that it can't possibly be real. Now you too can witness the adventure that is driving in the city. You don't need to speak Spanish to understand the video, but I'll give you a hint: that's an exit ramp.