highway turned race track

This past week I took a break from Puno and travelled to Arequipa with my arqueologist friend, Amanda. We met Benito, a co-worker from Concordia Language Villages, who just arrived to Peru in order to work on my Amantani literacy project over the next few months. Since Benito was getting used to the altitude (11,000 ft. in Arequipa), we decided to take advantage his condition and spend an additional day in the white city. The plan was to travel to Puno on the 10am bus the following day, Friday. But, of course, it's Peru and things never go as planned, and so I share with you yet another story:

The bus left on schedule at 10:00 am. I assumed things would go smoothly, especially as the bus was more than half full with tourists. We got about 30 minutes outside of Arequipa, on the hot, dessert outskirts of the city, when the bus was pulled over by the highway police.

No announcement was made by the driver, so initially we just waited. Benito and I could see that there were some angry Peruvians getting out of a bus in front of us. So, after about 10 minutes another American sitting near us went down to the bus driver to see what is happening. As it turns out, they had closed the highway between Arequipa and Cuzco for the Inca Path Road Race...an annual car race throughout the country. As luck (??) would have it we'd just happened to be on the route of the race that day. We were told we'd be holding from then (11:00) until around 2pm...maybe 3pm. In Peruvian that means 4pm...maybe 5pm!!!!!!!!! That meant, instead of getting into Puno around 3pm we'd arrive, at the earliest, 9pm or 10pm!!!!

The idea of being stuck on the bus on the edge of the city of Areqiupa that long...with about 4 pieces of bread, 5 clementines, and a bottle of water didn't sound great.

I called one of Qiqe's good friends who we'd seen the day before, Giorgio, and asked him if he thought we could get our tickets refunded for the next day. He said not to worry, stay put, and he'd call me back in 5 minutes. He returned the call, telling me how he had pretended to be our tour agent (his family runs 2 hotels and a tour agency) and yelled at the bus company. The bus company claimed they had warned all their passengers about the road blockage, and therefore would not hold themselves accountable.

Of course, we were not told about the road race...or the fact that it meant the entire highway would be closed all day. Seriously...who in their right mind would say, okay, I'll buy the ticket for 10am anyways and sit on the highway until 3 or 4ish!?!??! Strikes, road blocks, etc. never are good for transportation services. Instead of taking the high road (figuratively speaking) and being straightforward with their clients, these companies sell their tickets to make money and leave their clients stranded...literally.

We were not about to sit under the hot sun, so we got off the AC-less bus, requested the driver remove our bags from the storage unit, and grabbed the first taxi we saw to take us back to the city (for a total of 8 soles). Two quite intelligent, non-Spanish speaking German tourists approached us and asked if they could tag along. So, we found a second taxi and were off to the bus terminal. Giorgio, bless his soul, was studying for a test in his pijamas and quickly got changed and grabbed a cab from his house to meet us in the terminal. While he demanded our tickets be replaced for the following day, I called the hostal we stayed at the evening before and booked 3 rooms.

Our tickets were replaced, at no charge for the following day, the hostal gave us the rooms at a nice discount, and we spent the afternoon on the Plaza de Armas sipping coffee and reading instead of baking in the sun in a hot bus. It was, by far, our favorite day in Arequipa on the trip. Moral of the story: when in Peru...know what's going on on the social front, be proactive so that you don't get burned by inconsiderate tourism players, and plan a few days extra in case you get stuck on the side of the road as a highway is converted into a race track.