A regular sight on Peru’s roads

Bredde Bus auf falscher Spur 3 slider

Bus-drivers on the left hand side of the road

It is just after 7 a.m.  We are leaving Chincheros empowered by the slogan: “I want to get home fast!”  If it is a smooth journey we could be in Curahuasi in time for a late lunch.  But life is full of surprises, also of the unpleasant kind.  We reach the entrance to the Abancay Valley at 11 a.m. and are able to see the houses of the state’s capital.  But suddenly our journey comes to a grinding halt: a landslide has covered the whole national road.  We quickly discover that people have been working round the clock trying to move the earth from the road for several days.

We have no other choice, but to follow a two hour diversion which takes us over an adventurous gravel track; accordingly our journey time increases from 6 to 8 hours.

We are all feeling pretty exhausted by the time we approach Curahuasi: the clock reads after 3 p.m.

A bus from the company Breddie appears on the road ahead of us.  The four of us are witnesses to how the bus driver assumes the role of “Lord of the Road”.  In every bend, without fail, he swerves onto the left hand side of the road.  He has no chance whatsoever to see what is coming towards him round the bend.  Should a car encounter him, it would be tough luck for the car:  the car’s driver would have little chance to survive a frontal crash with the bus.

Chris Welch cannot stop taking photos.  He is feeling at home: in Australia they drive on the left.

Not a week goes by in which a terrible bus accident does not happen.  The bus companies however can solve these embarrassments with the police in a special way: the negotiations concerning the cash-flow are done in a friendly atmosphere in back rooms.

The newspaper “El Comercio” published a report in 2014 which stated that 40% of the bus drivers had psychopathic tendencies: https://www.diariolaprimeraperu.com/online/transporte/como-chofer-peruano-141570/

So what should we do with our photographic evidence?  Pass them on to the bus company in question?  Or to the police?  Or to the media? The third idea sounds the most promising./KDJ

Derrumbe slider
For four days people have been clearing the earth from road.
Bredde Bus auf falscher Spur 2 slider
The same picture bend after bend.
Bredde Bus auf falscher Spur Nummernschild
The bus‘ numberplate
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