How people in poorer countries travel: 02 (Peru)

One of the stories I'd edited was set in Kenya, with a line saying:

Quote  ... in overloaded minibuses that swayed dangerously between bumps ...  Unquote

    This recalls my first trip to Peru in June 1986.

    We were coming back to Cusco/Cuzco from a day trip to some Inca site way out, so it was around 5pm, peak time.  

    Our taxi was behind a minibus that was so packed you couldn't see through the bus (to the road in front of it through its front windscreen, like you usually can with a car or a bus) — it was just one black mass inside the vehicle.  

    It was going slowly, lopsided — tilting to the right (the pavement side of the vehicle).  We'd thought maybe the wheels on that side had less air.  

    Our taxi overtook them at one point.  We turned back to look at the minibus.  

    The doorway of the bus had a cluster of people hanging half out of the opening — hence the vehicle tilting on the pavement side.  The ones at the two outer edges of the bus door had only one foot on the bottom step, the other foot dangling off the bus in the air, their hands clinging onto the window edges/ledges either side of the door.  So there were something like four people on the one bottom step of the bus.  

    There were even men standing ON the front bumper, clinging onto the windscreen wipers.  One of them was actually directly eyeballing the driver as he was standing right in front of the driver!

(Cusco/Cuzco, Peru, 1986)