Most-Crowded Aisle on a Bus to Cusco, Peru

Diane: Yesterday, Tom and I took the local bus from Pisac to Cusco. Since we hopped on in the middle of the route, it was no surprise that most of the seats were taken. There were two aisle seats next to each other, and another couple of empty seats in the very last row. We nabbed the aisle seats and talked a bit about where we want to go next. I am all for heading down to the Salar de Uyuni, whereas Tom still wants to go to Lake Titicaca.

Within about 15 minutes, we had picked up a boatload of young school-children who filled the center aisle of this bus. Bodies now obscured Tom's face and we could no longer talk. A teenage woman was leaning all over the back of my seat and onto where my head was resting. Additionally, squeezed between her and the seat in front of me were 2 small boys - one standing awkwardly along my armrest and the other bent at a 45 degree angle over my legs. And that was just on my side of the aisle. On Tom's side, there was an adult taking up half the aisle.

I started thinking about taking a picture to show just how crowded the aisle of a bus could get. I wasn't sure I'd be able to get far enough away at a good angle to capture all the bodies. As it turned out, those thoughts were irrelevant, because with this many people leaning over me, I didn't have enough room to reach my daypack, which was sitting between my feet and legs.

Within another 5 minutes, a group of adult-sized students had boarded the bus. Although hard to imagine, 2 of these large newcomers had squeezed beside the 3 people next to me. There were now 6 people standing in the aisle separating Tom and me. This was an ordinary-sized aisle, perhaps a little smaller than usual, but certainly not larger. I could neither hear nor see Tom at all.

At this point, I spotted the bus assistant 2 rows in front of me collecting fares. I struggled to get some money out of my pocket. But the assistant struggled a lot more than I did. Nobody would make way for him, so he had to pick people up and move them forcefully to make his way through. This was full-body-contact bus-riding for those in the aisle. As a seated passenger, I felt that I was getting VIP service. I paid the fare for both Tom and myself, but the bus assistant returned it to me. This was a first. As I sat contemplating this, I heard Tom's voice wafting my way, saying that he'd already paid the fare.

With people hanging in all directions, the windows were pretty much blocked in all directions. It seemed that I would have to use my finely-honed intuition to decide when to get off this bus, or wait until the end-of-the-line. Luckily, the end-of-the-line turned out to be our stop :-). Although this challenging busride was over for us, I realized that these school-kids must ride this severely overcrowded bus every day to school.