After nearly three and a half months of busing around South America, I decided I needed to take a trip back to the States for a while (for family and personal reasons). I’m not done writing about traveling, culture, food and alcohol in South America, but I do have to take a break from actually being there.

Which is how I found myself in need of a bus to Lima from Cusco, one last long bus ride and a few days in the largest city in Perú  before heading to the US. I was warned that there had been a lot of bus drama recently getting to and from Cusco. A Croatian girl who had to come to Cusco from Puno (near the Bolivian border) instead of Arequipa because there were problems along the bus route. An English guy whose 9-hour bus ride from Arequipa to Cusco turned into a 17-hour endeavor when the bus had to be rerouted along another highway, something that isn’t easily found in Perú.

I thought this sounded like the bullshit I was told about crossing the Chile-Perú border only a few weeks ago, so I was surprised when I went the bus station to buy a ticket and was told by several of the large bus companies that they weren’t even running buses to Lima.

There had been news recently about the president skimming money, and people were protesting, in part, by setting up road blocks and throwing things at people who crossed them. In support, many of the bus drivers were striking.

I hadn’t had a problem getting a bus anywhere I wanted to go before. If I had the time, I would have just waited for a bit longer in Cusco, but I had to meet my flight in Lima. The bus companies were telling me they didn’t know when they would be traveling again. So I hopped my first inter-South America flight of the trip, a short 90-minute ride from Cusco to Lima that managed to replace a 21-hour bus trip.

There isn’t much to say about the flying experience. Security was a bit laxer in than within the US i.e. I got to keep my shoes on.