For our travel to Peru, Keith, Laura, and I had to take a bus from Cuenca to Huaquillas (the border town in Ecuador). Jamie was the fourth member of our beach trip and she was supposed to meet us in Huaquillas, having to take a bus from Loja. The bus ride was unusually comfortable and when we arrived in Huaquillas we all felt relatively energized by the excitement of crossing into another country. After filling out our paperwork we waited patiently for Jamie. Losing our patience after 15 minutes, we decided trying her cell phone. Like all great stories start out, there was a problem in the fact that Jamie was not picking up her cell phone. Although hesitant, majority voted that we cross the border and try to find Jamie in
Tumbes. We met a nice gentleman (I don’t remember his name) who told us he would help us cross the border because it was very dangerous right inside Peru. I’ve never been more naive and ignorant in my life, and like Keith and Laura, ventured off with this complete stranger.
After walking across the border we arrived in a little border town which got me a little nervous. I don’t get nervous that much. This guy walked us through a crowded of glaring Peruvians and into a back shed area where, despite all my feelings of apprehension, I followed. After passing through what looked like a secret passage we proceeded to get into a car with tinted windows. At this point I should have had sense enough to get out of the car and find something more legitimate right? Wrong. The car pulled away through a guarded gate (now when I mean guarded gate, I mean a young man with some sort of sawed off shotgun). If you’ve ever seen a movie where a car is moving slowly through thousands of people in the way (think middle east), that was what this trip was like for 15 minutes.Luckily we made our way on to a highway where we decided it would be best to call Jamie and let her know our plans. It’s a good thing we knew that our cell phones didn't work in Peru right? Now we had no way of letting Jamie know where we were. This is where I started to get even more nervous. When we arrived in Tumbes (the gateway city to Peru and a really ugly city) the guys who helped us across the border tried charging us 100 dollars per person (another assumption here, but it seems like everyone in Tumbes is a snake). Since I was in the *shank seat and don’t speak Spanish very well, I let Laura and Keith argue with the guys. We eventually got them down drastically and even bargained that they call their friend to contact Jamie and let her know where we were. They agreed and told them that she would meet us there in an hour.
Two and a half hours later and after multiple attempts at contacting Jamie I was convinced that something had happened to her. We called the guys that brought us to Tumbes only to get three different answers of where Jamie was. We had literally no way to get in contact with her and we were all very worried. Despite my intuition to check my email (just in case), we decided to get on a bus and head to Mancora. We decided that it was the only thing that we could do, after all, if she was alright, she probably would have headed to Mancora right?
The ride was supposed to be an hour.
One hour and 45 minutes later we arrived in Mancora. We stepped off the bus exhausted, hungry, and clueless as to what to do next.
To be continued…
*The shank seat is the middle seat in the back of a car in-between a friend and an enemy. In this case, I was sitting in the middle, so if something bad were to happen I would have pushed Laura out one door, Keith would have had an easy escape from the front seat, and I would have had to sacrifice myself by fighting the guy next to me (probably receiving a shank in my belly) for the better of the group.
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