Life´s a rollercoaster...

I am of course not only a man of the world. I am also a man of the people. If there is a hand to be shook, I will shake it. A baby to be kissed, I am there. I even help little old ladies across the road! By force if necessary!

Being this as it is, I can hardly refuse the request of a much loved... well, liked sister to explain the story behind the picture with the somewhat alarmist title that depicts my lovely self wearing a slightly panicked expression. (Joking Jess, love ya heaps)

This story begins the morning after having scrabbled my way out of the precipice known as the Colca Cañon. It goes without saying I was somewhat buggered. I do not believe that I have perspired as much in the last ten years. Not even before an exam in Real Property.

But there is no rest for the wicked. Neither is there rest for the slightly lazy or temporally illiterate. Instead, we intrepid... tourists... needed to rise at sparrowsfart (slightly after five for the laypeople among you) to board a bus and be whisked off to La Cruz de Condor to see condors. Which was fine. Except for the fact that it did not work exactly as planned.

You see, despite the fact that our guide Pepe had warned us that the bus-boarding process was a bit, how did he put it? Oh yes, ´abso-frickin-lutely manic´, I and my two Canadian friends still managed to dally over that last cup of mate (nothing like a hot herbal tea dervived from the same plant as cocaine...). Hey, we were tired, ok!

Anyway when we did finally reach the bus, the scene was like something out of Aliens. People were scrambling over the top of each other, clawing, kicking fighting. Some people were carrying bags of rice, others two or three kiddies, who in turn were fighting fairly dirty. The bus itself had people hanging from every mechanical orifice... a surging, sprawling mass of humanity. Pepe was standing beside the bus, almost having kittens-

´Where have you been? C´mon, we have seats reserved!´

´Seats reserved!?!?´I said ´I would be surprised if we had oxygen reserved on that thing´

´No no no no, Trust me´ he replied and promptly grabbed my hand, before disappearing into the seething ball of flesh. I tell you it was horrible. The sights, the sounds, the smells - I was in my own personal wrestlemania, only with less spandex and more llamas.

But stranger than that, was the fact that it was the first time that I had been privy to the clear divide between Westerners and Peruvians that seems to exist here. Because I am almost sure that there is no way that there could have been reserved seats on that bus... but despite this, the crowd of Peruvians parted like the Red Sea, to allow the stupid tourists to have a seat. I am certain that were I to attempt the same feat in Australia, a overweight man in a wifebeater would tell me oh so politely to ´Shove it´ And rightly so.

At any rate, the bus was, shall we say, full. I spent the rest of the trip nursing a 4 yr old boy on my lap, while two elderly native american woman sat on each of my knees. This is while the vehicle was tranversing terrifying roads with blind corners, wide rivers and the occasional pothole that could swallow the latter era Elvis without chewing. Oh and all the while the Canon de Colca (which as you will remember, is very deep!) followed one side of the road. In the event of a crash I would have had to untangle a young child from around one of my kidneys before even considering the problem of how to get out of the overcrowded environment which would by that time by full of injured clothes merchants.

And this is when I took the photo. Which, I must say, I think is quite arty.

Rock and Roll.

Paddy.