The Worst Bus Ride Ever: An Epic Tale

I'm usually not one to speak about isolated incidents. But every once in a while, an incident so horrifying comes along that it deserves its own space. The trip from Maputo to Vilanculos was such an incident.

With certainty, Richie and I weren't looking forward to the trip. On the best of days, on this shitty road, it's a ten hour trip. But that's just time on the road. Our day officially started at 4:30. A quick shower, a call to a taxi, and we were on the road by 5:15. Right off the bat, things were bad. Our taxi driver, thinking we were going really far, took us to the airport. We should have taken that as a warning sign.

After arriving at junta, the place in Maputo from where busses and chapas leave, we got on the bus and were quickly on the road. I was stuck in the row behind a guy who was clearly drunk off gin. He was belligerent and I was not happy. I really would have liked to punch him in the face, but instead, I decided to fuck with him for a lot of the trip. I convinced him that I didn't speak any English. Later in the trip, i watered down his gin. I don't think he noticed. And I later learned, while he spoke English to me and I looked at him like I didn't understand, that he was in the narcotics trafficking business. Nice.

Of course, the first hour of the trip was just getting out of Maputo. I really don't see the purpose of having to stop cars and busses every 15 minutes, but then again, there are a lot of things I still don't understand about this place, even after more than a year of being here.

The ride was going quite smoothly. The driver was making pretty good time and with the road so smooth in the south, we were moving so seemlessly that I fell asleep. I woke up when we got to Xai Xai. We had just crossed the bridge when we came to a stop. Usually, busses will stop for people to go pee or buy sodas and whatnot, but this stop was extensive. This spelled bad news.

For a good while, we sat on the bus like assholes, thinking that this was just a flat tire that could be repaired quickly, slam, bam, thank you ma'am and back on the road. But we were wrong. One tire came off, and then another. What we had was an axle problem.

Even so, we held out hope that this problem could be rectified, but I still didn't want to take any chances. As we waited for a fix, I tried to get a ride heading to Vilanculos. But over the entire morning, no one was heading to Vilanculos. The longest ride we were offered was to Maxixe, and even then, we wouldn't have arrived in Vilanculos by the end of the day. We decided to take a pass.

So we waited. At some point, the guy sitting next to me told us that a bus was coming to pick us up. This was all fine and good except the bus was coming all the way from Maputo. We were going to have to wait until mid-afternoon to get on the bus. In the meantime, Richie, being the asshole that he is, crossed the street to talk up the girls sitting under the trees. This was like throwing a piece of meat to a pride of lions: it was just a matter of who was going to jump on first. He has since dubbed the first girl "Demon Slut".

Finally, around 3:00 in the afternoon, the bus arrived from Maputo. This is where things got interesting...as if they hadn't been already. This new bus didn't have a full undercarriage for luggage, so they started filling the back rows of the bus with bags. For those of you doing the math, if you take a full bus, and take away four rows, that means some people may not get on the bus. This was everyones fear. People, including me, did our best to claim seats. I jumped on the tire and passed my bag through the window to someone who saved two seats for us.

Naturally, this didn't mean anything. Just as the bus was filling out, people started to congregate around the door. WIth my computer bag already on the bus, there was no way I wasn't getting on. I made my way right to the door. I can only compare this experience to getting up to the very front of the floor to see a concert. I needed to be front and center.

Being bigger than almost everyone paid off. I may have thrown an elbow to get where I wanted, but I was the third person on the bus, securing an almost comfortable for Richie and myself. Richie, in the meantime, got stuck in an angry mob of people. He, too, was close to the front, so the momentum of the mass of people dragged him on to the bus. As people settled in, there was no shortage of yelling. I think I saw tears running down someone's cheeks. This was a battle royale.

The funny thing about this whole process was that everyone pretty much knew that everyone was going to get on the bus, by hook or by crook. In a country that packs 28 people into a 16 person car, this was going to be easy. We ran almost non-stop from Xai Xai to Maxixe. The road, disastrous only a few weeks ago, was in surprisingly good shape. It seems that the Chinese company working on the road finally cracked the whip and they got paving.

From Maxixe on out, things were slow and go. There are some biggish commecial areas between Maxixe and Vilanculos, so whenever we came across one, people stopped to get off. These stops were not three-second, get-up-and-get-out experience. These stops took time because people had to dig out their luggage from the heap. I chose to close my eyes to try to forget the day.

We arrived in Vilanculos at 12:30 AM Sunday. Just writing that sentence makes me want to vomit. We were hungry, dehydrated, sore and angry. But more than anything, we just wanted to sleep. We called a taxi, and while we waited, we found out that one of the girls Richie had talked to didn't have a place to stay for the night. She was banking on getting to Inhassoro, about an hour north of Vilanculos, but there are no chapas running at 12:30 in the morning. Taking pity, we took her in and paid for her room.

By the time we settled into bed, it was 1:30 AM. That's a twenty-hour travel day. If you're wondering why we hate going to Maputo, and why we are trying to convince Peace Corps to change us to a flying site, this is why. I never want to experience this again.

Needless to say, I can't wait to return to Maputo in two weeks. Dear god, help me.