After Peru

The pleasure of traveling in bus...

Peru has almost no railways, and air travel is still not affordable for the vast majority of Peruvians. Trujillo, a city of 1 million, only has about three flights per day, and its airport looks more like a local train station than an airline terminal. The crowd getting off is mostly rich Peruvians or Western tourists and missionary groups.

Enter the bus companies. The roads in Peru are not great by US standards, but have progressed enough for most Peruvians to rave about a two-week journey from the jungle now being only 15 hours by bus! Buses have opened up an economical way for Peruvians, who especially in the cities are highly mobile and have friends and family throughout Peru, to travel affordably. For the middle and upper-middle classes there are also "VIP" or "Servicio Especial" classes that provide movies, meals, comfortable reclining seats and security measures that are nicer than anything I've seen on a Greyhound, but still a lot cheaper than air travel.

The bus companies I'm familiar with are Linea, Cruz del Sur, Ormeño, Dias, Ittsa, Emtrafesa, and I'm sure there are at least half a dozen others. Living in Trujillo, a straight shot up the coast from the capital city of Lima, there are dozens of buses leaving daily between the two hubs. (Think of the high-traffic routes between New York & Philly or DC, for example.) There are also a handful of departures to other smaller cities in the coast, mountains or jungle. Each company or "agencia" has its own terminal, fleet of buses, range of prices and reputation for safety or service. For example, Dias is the fastest bus to Cajamarca - careening up the winding mountain roads in a mere five hours - and they record all the passengers boarding the bus via camcorder. Linea, on the other hand, has a speed limit for its bus drivers for safety reasons (so it takes a full seven hours), and they not only film you but take your fingerprint as you get on board. I've also heard they bribe the cops to make sure they don't get hijacked.

Speaking of which, there are plenty of cheap and unsafe buses - we affectionately refer to them as "chicken buses" since you could literally find yourself sitting next to a crate of live chickens - and all sorts of bus-driving accidents and highway robberies which occur on a regular basis. (Note to my adventure-seeking friends - take the chicken bus at your own risk.) The fancier bus lines try to avoid this problem by having speed limits, good security at bus stations, and making no local stops where hijackers could try to get on.

I almost always take a bus company called Linea (you can book online), which is the top-of-the-line bus company to Lima. The cost of the 8-hr, usually overnight journey varies from 30 soles or $10 ("Economico") to 110 soles or $37 ("SuperVIP"). The journey is more tiring than the 1-hr plane ride, but the buses are more frequent, reliable and a lot cheaper, and the SuperVIP allows you to put your feet up and recline your seat all the way back. Not too shabby. Also, if you're flying to the US or to some other international destination, the surest way to make your flight out of Lima's Jorge Chavez International Airport is actually to take a bus - those three flights out of Trujillo get rescheduled or grounded all the time.