Cuenca, Ecuador to Lima, Peru

12 PM Wednesday, December 8 through 1:30 PM Thursday, December 9, 2004:

[Continued...]

Day 2: Thursday, Schmursday

2:00 AM --- I dream of world peace. Or tacos. (Can´t remember which as I often confuse the two.)

7:30 AM --- Its Morning! Morning! Morning! Only 6 more hours until we reach Lima. The worst has passed! The night is through! The sun is shining and, if there were any birds, they might even be singing. On the downside, my breath smells like tacos (or maybe world peace) and so I pop about 9 tic-tacs brought along for just such emergencies. Tic-tacs: They´re what´s for breakfast.

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Quick! Pop Quiz! You are the big-shot owner of a long-distance Peruvian bus line that hauls groups of passengers of all ages (between, say, 6 screaming days and 106 drooling years) for more than 1000 miles at a time over the span of 16 hours and sometimes much more. These are arduous, grueling journeys but, what is more, the competition between you and other bus operators (damn them to hell!) is fierce. You need to keep your passengers happy and entertained. You need to show them movies that will keep them coming back to your sleezy empire of ever-expanding corporate greed so that you can one day rule the World. The Whole Entire World!

Anyway, the question is this: What sort of movie should you pop into the DVD player at 7:30 in the morning --- a movie that will rouse at least 75% of the bus passengers from their slumber?

(Answer coming right up...)

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7:31 AM ---

Sound! Lights! Action! Roll the film! What do men and women and children of all ages love to see, first thing in the morning? Why, rated R movies containing graphic depictions of sex and violence, of course. Particularly those which have porn stars in them (no, not real porn stars) and opening credits that roll across the screen to the sound of high-pitched moaning and wailing.

That´s what we got.

Movie Review #2: The Girl Next Door

Starring: You´re kidding, right? Nobody.

Summary Plot Overview: High School Boy meets New Girl Next Door. High School Boy is hard-working California kid with grit, struggling to obtain much-needed scholarship to GeorgeTown so that he can one day be president (a Bill Clintonesque sort of president, one grows to suspect). New Girl Next Door is a steaming cauldron of sexy bad-girl trouble with a dark secret past (naughty, naughty, guess what it is?). Meanwhile, a Cambodian genius needs $25,000 to move to the U.S. to cure cancer. Porn stars crash the high school prom. Hilarity ensues.

Gut Reaction: What a great movie!

Final Rating: A

9:45ish AM --- Rest stop. A decrepit restaurant on the side of the road with upstair bathrooms that smell like smelly upstairs bathrooms and a downstairs kitchen that smells like smelly upstairs bathrooms are leaking things ---very bad things --- down into it.

"How long will we be here," we ask the bus attendant.

"15 or 20 minutes," she says.

What she means, however, is this:

"Exactly until the driver feels like leaving again. This restaurant is owned by a friend/family member/parole officer of the driver/bus company owner/me. Its going to sell food and beverage to the passengers, damn it, and we´re not leaving until its done doing just that! Care for a tasty, icy-cool Fanta and a side of plantains with raw sewage sauce?"

10:30ish AM ---

We get back on the bus some 45 minutes later. I didn´t eat anything. Its now serious movie time.

Movie Review #3: The Machinist

Starring: A starved, emaciated Christian Bale. He looks even hungrier than I feel.

Summary Plot Overview: Protagonist works as a machinist in a grim, gritty, black and white and occassionally orange-colored world, a cold alienating world of grinding industrial gears. Grinding industrial gears? Are we all just grinding industrial gears? Cogs operating as mindless machines in this dark, empty vortex we all call "life"? And, while we´re on the topic, is anything as it really seems? Is memory real? Is reality memory? And wouldn´t it be cool to try to make a movie that integrates certain elements of Memento and emulates the artsy-fartsy existentialism of a David Lynch film? With a hint of The Twilight Zone thrown in for an added Film Noir feel? Everything is Permitted, isn´t it? What the hell am I even talking about? Rosebud!

Gut Reaction: Life is bleak, empty and meaningless. Life is bleak, empty and meaningless. Life is bleak, empty and meaningless. My ass hurts. I want a hamburger.

Final Rating: Does it matter? Does anything matter? Hamburger.

12:00ish PM --- The scenery. The scenery for the last several hundred miles --- or since we woke up to the orgasmic shrieking in the opening credits of The Girl Next Door --- has been blasted desert sand and dunes. Stretches are flat for mile after mile and other stretches form rolling hills that look like craters on the moon. Every so often the bus hugs a steep, dusty ledge over the Pacific Ocean, to our right. As we get closer to Lima, we see many small, absolutely destitute Pueblo Jovenes. Row upon row of boxes built on stretches of sand and dirt. Ecuador was poor, but Ecuador was green and lush and fertile. Most of this land is brown and grey, barren and dead. A low fog rolls over it all. How do people survive here? Perhaps I should realize the insignificance of my relative discomfort? (Warning: Should I out of the blue develop a sudden, deadly-serious and humorless social conscience, the blog will cease to exist as we know it. Exit the International Journal of Sport and Leisure. Enter the International Journal of Guilt and Sally Struthers. If you do not want to see this happen, it is your best interests to turn a blind, indulgent eye to my solipsistic sullen ramblings.)

12:00ish PM ---

Movie Review #4: Along Came Polly

Starring: Ben Stiller; Jennifer Anniston

Summary Plot Overview: Boy (Ben Stiller, cast as a well-meaning but neurotic Jewish shmuck, surprise, surprise, what a stretch) meets Girl (Jennifer Anniston, cast as a well-meaning but neurotic commitment-phobic ditz, surprise, surprise, what a stretch) after Boy´s new Wife shags her French nudist scuba instructor on the very first day of Boy and Wife´s St. Bart´s honeymoon. Boy eats lots of spicy food to impress Girl, in spite of his irritable bowl syndrome. Girl has an old, senile and blind pet ferret. They learn to Salsa dance. I like spicy food. I like spicy food with salsa.

Gut Reaction: Fart jokes are good enough for me. As are blind, senile ferret gags. I want some Korean Bulgogi.

Final Rating: B for Bulgogi. I swear, I´m going to kill somebody if I don´t eat soon.

1:30ish PM --- We roll through the poor, outer limits of Lima. Boxes. Dirt. Poverty. After a while we reach the city center where grand 16th and 17th century buildings overlook massive public plazas and parks. The city is a jumble of old and new, ugly and beautiful, but its BIG and its BUSY and it feels like a proper "METROPOLIS." Perhaps there is even a restaurant here? We reach the bus terminal at approximately 1:35 PM. Swarms of taxi drivers eagerly wait for us to descend from the bus.

This concludes the post, but another post is to come on the rest of the first day in Lima.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS will therein be answered:

Do I get scammed by cons?

Do I get conned by scams?

Do I eat the tastiest mushroom and bacon cheeseburger ever, thereby soothing the savage beast within me?

Stay tuned...