The world ends at the edge of a road

Day 17
2011-01-25
Rockfalls, avalanches and floods - Andahuaylas 

Only two hours later the bus stopped without further notice. We were in the middle of nowhere - in the Andes, on a dark muddy road. We waited for a couple of minutes hoping that the ride would continue...but nothing happened. I left the bus to see what's going on and I noticed that the s driver were talking about something in spanish. The road was obviously blocked and after a while the drivers started to get ready for a sleep - yes, you heard right: they were getting out mattresses to set up their beds. I went back into the bus to tell Chris about it and we resigned to the situation and tried to sleep a bit. It was a short night. When the morning dawned I woke up and left the bus again. The drivers were already trying to free the road. A rock avalanche went down the night before and the road was completely covered in all sizes of rocks. After 2 hours we were finally able to continue our trip and drove on. 

Only half an hour later the next obstacle hit our way: a mud avalanche blocking the road for a second time. After another hour we were able to go on. Believe me or not...there was another surprise waiting for us. Just a few miles later the road was completely under water and we had to wait again. 

We finally reached Andahuaylas in the early evening. Our scheduled connection to Ayacucho was already gone but the bus company was trying to arrange something. We were told that our bus to Ayacucho has been rescheduled 2 hours after our arrival. 

This gave us the time to visit the city centre and have a decent meal. We hadn't had a big thing to eat since our departure 16 hours before. 

After a nice lunch and a walk in town we headed back to the bus terminal where we waited for the boarding process. But guess what - nothing happened. We were told that no bus would go to Ayacucho this evening because the office was told that the road in the mountains was blocked due to rainfalls. After checking on our options we headed towards the city centre to find a travel agency to get tickets for a flight to Ayacucho. We were just outside the bus terminal when a fellow passenger approached us saying that they had organised a bus that would leave that evening and they were almost boarding. We thought about it and I decided to go back and take our chance because I wanted to leave already. Chris wasn't so happy about that but he joined. 25 minutes later we were sitting on the bus and leaving Andahuaylas. Another 11 hours were laying in front of us and we prepared for the night in an uncomfortable bus seat. We literally JUST left Andahuaylas as the bus stopped. It was raining outside at that point and we couldn't see much. Suffice to say, Chris was furious after following me on my decision to board that bus and not take the airplane. Anyhow - we were stuck because a truck in front of us had turned sideways because of the mud on the road.