Riding the Rails with Paul Theroux by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There was something about the damp walls of every room in this town, and the muddy roads leading out of it, that made its isolation palpable; its chill conveyed a physical feeling of remoteness. I did not have to look at the map to know I was at the back of beyond. But I woke the next day with an idea. Instead of inquiring about the way to Cuzco from the people who lived in the town, I would go to the bus station and talk to people who had just come by bus along the Andean roads from Cuzco. I was somewhat happier to be in a doubtful frame of mind; I had thought there was only one way to Cuzco, and I had been determined to pursue this trans-Andean route; but, realizing that several choices were open to me, I could take the best one, the easiest, even if it meant my turning back. The trip to Huancayo had been bad, but what if the onward journey was worse?

I spent the better part of the morning chatting to passengers who had disembarked from the Ayacucho buses. Many were vague, rendered stuporous by the long trip, but the lucid ones told me that they had been delayed by rain and landslides; they had had to sleep on their buses, and only two people I talked to had actually been to Cuzco. They had come here by road because it was the only way for them—they lived in Huancayo.

There was a bar quite near to where the buses stopped. Peruvian bars are medieval. They have rough wooden tables and moist walls and dirt floors. You see dogs and chickens in Peruvian bars. Bottled beer is sold, but most drinkers in the Andes here prefer a fermented brew that is a soupy broth and very bitter. It is served in plastic beakers. It is almost identical to the sort of beer drunk in villages in East Africa, the maize beer that is ladled out of greasy pots; indeed, one mouthful of the Huancayo stuff brought me memories of dear old Bundibugyo in Uganda.

“Want to know the best way to Cuzco?” said a man in this bar. He was a student, he said, from Lima, and was hoping there would be a general strike to do something about the rising prices. “You say you just came from Lima, and you probably don’t want to go back there—it seems far, right? But Lima is closer to Cuzco than Huancayo is.”

“But Cuzco is right through those mountains,” I said.

“That is the difficulty, eh?” He swigged his beer. I noticed he was not drinking the local brew, but like me had a bottle of lager. “It is easier to go over them than through them. You take the morning train to Lima. You get a plane ticket and, bam, you are in Cuzco.”

“I thought only tourists took the plane.”

“But you are a tourist.”

“Not exactly.”

“Listen, even some Indians”—he whispered the word—“even they take the plane.”

I took

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