The Demise of Wanderlust

Colombian eggs are delicious. Even your average supermarket dozen of AA eggs have enough flavor to make a free-range hen in the US jealous. The only drawback is that their shells are a bit thin. Perhaps Colombia has lenient DDT regulations.

Because eggs are such a versatile source of protein, they make a great breakfast snack when boiled for overnight bus trips. Kelsey, my college roommate and best friend, came down to accompany me during my last few weeks of travels and fun in Colombia. She had the bright idea of boiling several eggs and packing them in Tupperware containers to tide us over during the 14 hours of travel to our friend's house on the Caribbean coast near Cartagena.

Since it was the start of a three-day weekend, when we arrived at the bus terminal the place was teeming with families waiting to get on the road toward their vacation destination. Kelsey and I luckily got front-row seats with one of the best companies and wandered around, taking advantage of the last opportunity to stretch our legs for a long while. Due to her odd, atheistic fascination with Catholicism, we payed our respects to the Virgen de Carmen's alter before boarding the bus. While still on the freeway out of Medellin, I noticed that it had started to rain. I have grown accustomed to the daily showers implied by the tropical climate yet still marvel at the all-night downpours...like the one taking place outside. After watching a violent, K-rated Thai martial arts movie that takes place somewhere in barbaric Mongolia, we cuddled under a blanket and drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of wet tires carrying us toward the hopefully sunny coast.

Before I even had a chance to reach REM, I was awakened by the sound of the bus's breaks locking and within a matter of seconds, my body was jerked off of the seat, into the air, and slammed down into the aisle where I slid to a stop against the compartment door. Now high on adrenaline, I was sharply attuned to the babies crying, people rustling about in the pitch dark, and a feeling of panic settling in. While still too stunned to move, I hear Kelsey above me utter "Welcome to your worst nightmare."

After having memorized the highways out of the city from traveling so much, I am familiar with the likelihood of falling off a cliff and drowning in one of the two rivers on either side of Medellin, and so my first desire was to get out of the bus before it could start filling with water because I had no idea where we had landed. I put my hand up to the doorknob and realize that we are locked in. People start trying to push out the windows, but with no avail, the hammers usually in place for emergency situations were stolen long ago. Luckily right as our realization of trapped confinement sinks in the alternate conductor comes up from where he was sleeping at the back of the bus and unlocks the door, telling us to be careful when we get out because he doesn't know where we are.

Gingerly picking myself up off of the floor, I realize that my tailbone is throbbing and my shoulders are bruised but I can still walk fine. Kelsey complains of a huge bump forming on her shin and a twisted knee, but we quickly gather up our belongings and gingerly make our way outside. The entire front of the bus is crushed in so that we can barely squeeze through the narrow steps. Windshield completely missing, in front of us I see a body lying on the ground with a leg up in the air. It is still pouring.

Luckily there is a small house on the other side of the road and we make our way over to stand under the eaves out of the rain, the blanket wrapped around us. The rest of the passengers are surprisingly calm and come join us, some of them sporting broken noses but everyone pretty much intact, thank God. While we wait for an ambulance and another bus to arrive, us survivors try to piece together what happened.

To start out with, the driver must have been going fast for the conditions. He didn't anticipate the sharpness of the turn and tried to cut into the middle too much, slamming on the breaks which we heard locking. The back of the bus started going over the edge of the embankment, landing on a tree which is the only thing that saved us from plummeting down the 5 km drop. In a valiant effort, the driver then pulled us over the edge and back onto the highway, losing control of the bus which then slammed into the side of the mountain. Upon impact, the young boy who does all the grunt work (and doesn't get a seat/belt) was thrown out the front window and probably flew 15 feet before landing in the middle of the highway. The front tire popped, we started a slight landslide by scraping against the wall, and we eventually ended our journey. Because we were facing oncoming traffic on a curve, a truck coming up the other way did not see us and crashed into the back of the bus, thus pinning us against the mountain. Not the most ideal situation.

As passengers started trickling back into the bus to escape the cold and the rain, Kelsey and I remembered Highway Safety 101 lessons that tell you to get as far away from the accident as possible, avoiding further collisions or fires ignited from gas leaks. I luckily travel with Advil and water, so we were able to take the edge off of our pain. About twenty minutes later after the crash, several pairs of highway police showed up on motorcycles. Despite shining a flashlihgt on us and walking around the boy still lying on the street moaning, they didn't really seem to helpful or worried about our situation. It was awful to watch someone, badly injured, without having the knowledge or equipment to help. We couldn't detect a back board to move the boy off of the wet road, nobody had more than a few small plastic bags to protect him from the rain and only extra articles of clothing to wrap around his open wounds. Hypothermia anyone?? One of the passengers was a doctor, but they couldn't do anything besides comfort him despite their expertise. Hell, there weren't even flairs or a reflective triangle to put out in front of the accident to warn other cars and trucks to slow down. Someone just ran out in the direction of headlights waving, hoping they would stop. Oh, the unpreparedness of second-world countries.

Eventually the ambulance arrived and took the boy, who had stopped moaning and had probably entered immense shock, to the hospital along with the driver whose jaw bone was apparently sticking out of his skin. An empty bus came and told us they would carry us on our way; a shining, dry chariot offering salvation from more hours of damp waiting. They told us that we could not get our luggage out from underneath the bus, but they would bring it to us in Cartagena as soon as possible. And as quickly and quietly as we had arrived at our injured station at the base of the mountain, we left.

As I write this, almost 4 days later, I still do not have my luggage, which is trapped in the bus that they had to attach to a crane and somehow cart back to Medellin. Supposedly the storage compartment under the bus is controlled my the electrical system of the bus, which was shut down in the crash. But, typical Colombian bureaucracy-style, the bus is at the Fiscalia, a government department which is reviewing the case and taking ages to file paperwork because of the gravity of consequences. They have not told us if the boy survived. My back and right buttock are extremely sore, covered in bruises that defy natural bodily colors. It hurts to sit and I might have bruised my tailbone. The swelling on Kelsey's shin has gone down, and her knee hurts, but she can walk fine. We complain a lot. I like to think it is out of the jittery fear being in such an accident has caused, but it is probably because we survived an awful event and want to tell our cool story.

Despite all of this, I still have my life, my most valuable possession. Kelsey and I were able to spend a fantastic weekend with our friend on the coast relaxing in Caribbean paradise in the comfort of a family. We took a small plane home, arriving safely back to my apartment. I have taken buses around Latin America for 52 hours straight, traveling from Bolivia to the US without a slight scratch. But for some reason I think I will take busing slightly more seriously from now on. When we first started to tip over the edge that night, I thought my mangled body would have to be pulled out of the remains of the tin-can of a bus, never to see more adventures.

Every time I step into a car, bus, plane, the metro, a taxi--any mode of transportation, I am putting my life into someone else's hands. How many times each day do you entrust the Virgen de Carmen to watch over your journey and hope that she safely directs you home? Lady Carmen must have been waiting for us that night, baby in arm, to push the bus back onto the highway, a reminder that it was not yet our time to die. Perhaps she was hinting to me that I was taking my wanderlust too lightly, urging me to explore on slower terms. With only two weeks left in Colombia, I am at the perfect crossroads to slow down my speed and take time to figure out in what direction I will next travel.

The silliest part of it all is that the eggs survived better than either my our Kelsey's bodies. After a sleepless night we convinced ourselves we should eat something to keep our forces up, and cracked open the Tupperware containers while traveling through the flat cow pastures. Inside, we found the tasty hard boiled eggs perfectly intact. Maybe Colombian eggshells are stronger than I realized.


***Postscript***

Now that the traumatization (I know, I am turning English words into Spanish, but it can be so much more useful sometimes) of the bus accident has worn off, I can analyze the situation with a bit more perspective. The fact that my Rotarian and Colombian friends alike barely reacted to my experience shows a general Colombian acceptance of death. Perhaps I am over-analyzing the situation, but I would say that because paisas have lived with death at their doorstep for so long they have come to terms with the fact that at any moment life could be taken away from them. Every family tells their own tragedy, for several years at the peak of the violence ('92-'95)in Medellin people were never safe even in their own homes, and everyone has spent years traveling on the same dangerous roads. One of the main difference between a developed country and a developing country is that when there is a dangerous patch of road causing an accident, the developed country will have a road crew out on the scene the next day fixing the problem to prevent future accidents while in the developing country the government might order a sign to be put up but never really get around to changing anything. (This anecdote was told to me by several Colombian friends reflecting on their own culture, again proving how resigned they are to potential danger).

I don't know if it is better or worse to not be afraid of uncontrollable death, but one of the advantages that I see in how Colombians accept their risks without second thought is the value they in turn place on life. Paisas will go out of their way to spend an extra hour drinking with friends even if it means being tired the next day for work. Extended families will sit around all day doing nothing exciting just to be together. And, typical to Latin cultural stereotypes, I guess, nobody is hesitant to express their fleeting or deep-rooted emotions--honest with each other about anger or lust just in case they don't have another chance to express themselves.

Instead of being somewhat insulted that my friends did not feel more responsible for my near-death scare, I finally realized after the entire year one of the biggest cultural differences between myself and my host culture: an overall acceptance of death.