Last look at the land

How fitting that I'm spending 20 of my last 36 hours on a bus. A bit of a shame, but what can you do? That's travel departure. It tends to be rushed and tense, exhausting and infuriating, and mostly rather dull except in moments of frenzy. At the moment I'm just glad to be under airconditioning. By this time in my journey I've been having to carefully weigh and craftily justify every penny spent.

On long busrides you go to sleep with music in your ears and wake up sometime later in eerie silence cushioned by the rumble of the road and the occasional snore from other passengers folded into nearby seats. Choose another album and drift off again, waking up later remembering only a song or two. This repeats indefinitely.

The AC gets cold as time wears on, so you put on a jacket and roll down your pantlegs, hugging yourself with clammy arms trying to get your head comfortable. Now and then you wake up and the bus is stopped, letting folks on or off, filling up the tanks, opening doors to policemen for inspections.

In typical South American efficiency, the bus has broken down, and we're stranded sans spare a few hours from Bogota. I'm feverishly glad I decided to give myself plenty of leeway between busride and flight home. Bored, the men outside rock the bus like a cradle and piss on the tires. I guess they don't make the connection that they'd have to handle those tires in the event of a flat.

On his belly beside and under the back of the bus, a man fiddles with tools and lugnuts while the driver kneels alongside shouting instructions. An ambulance shrieks past. We're also stuck in a long line of vehicles, presumably an accident-caused logjam. Salesfolk dart hither and thither, taking full advantage. Here it's food vendors. At home: lawyers. Even if they get the repairs done, we still aren't going anywhere.

I fill my pipe with the last of my tobacco and sit outside on the hill, puffing fragrant smoke and watching the fellows under the bus. In front of me a boy breaks a twig into increasingly smaller fragments.

The side of the bus is decorated horribly ironically; a picture of a supersonic airplane superimposed over the globe. The name "Concorde" in dashing red letters over a swath of green. Now being passed and left behind as traffic picks up once again. The vendors tramp off, chuckling and joking. And here we sit.

Someone once asked me do I liken myself a Tom or a Huck. I was stricken by the question as deeply philosophical and a bit mind boggling. After forming my own guess, I asked what she thought. She told me I was born a Tom but on my way to becoming Huck, a dreamer trying to put some plans to action.

Tom's a bright sumbitch, but gets caught up in his schemes and grand plans at the expense of others, while Huck is more simple and just ups and goes, taking adventure in stride. Tom is more wont to build an adventure, beginning to end, wrapping the whole blasted thing in neat little bows and ribbons. He, like I, has a swollen sense of drama.

As I sit here scratching away, I reckon she's right. But then the question arrises: whom do I want to be?

Another Concorde bus finally swoops by, and we continue on our way to Bogota. The countryside rolls by, rocky hills, patchwork fields, jungle slopes--and I realize with each passing fern and banana tree that these sights are my last. I simply cannot believe I'm going home tomorrow. The realization twists me up. I will miss this place, this pace. I'm ready for home...sometimes.

Clouds hang low over the valley, slinking over peaks and gulleys. I don't want to deal with the waiting--waiting for morning, waiting in a taxi, waiting in the airport, on the tarmac, for my connecting flight. Travel itself, point A to B is a bit of a void wherein time disappears and nothing quite happens. Even the world outside the vehicle seems frozen or at least unreal, like the movie playing out on the screen above the aisle.