If you'd like to just read about our adventures so far, you can skip halfway down this gigantic blog entry. However, the chronicle that follows of our rampaging about the southern hemisphere must be prefaced, I think, by at least some discussion of why it is that we feel led to rampage. It sometimes seems shameful to admit that outside of hoping to be salt and light wherever we go, very little about this trip is 'missional,' but nevertheless, I do feel led.
I'm reading through Ecclesiastes, right now in my personal devotions, and although I don't have the precise reference in front of me, I daresay most potential readers of this blog are familiar with the idea of taking joy in the work of your hands, and in the lot given you by God. More, although it's not so popular now as a few years back, the catchphrase 'lifestyle of worship' in its myriad variations still gets bounced about the hallowed halls a good bit, and outside of blitzgreig tract-distribution, I think that a lot of that comes back to glorifying God by making the most of what He's given us, enjoying it, and thanking Him for it.
Finally, although more could be said, there is also the idea that it is formative in some way to encounter a foreign world on its own terms, in the (last, perhaps) blush of one's youth, to leave the horizons broad, and the possibilities (of both kinds) open. It is, in a powerful way, educational.
In essence, then, I hope to glorify God through the work of busily adventuring, through making the most of His creation and thanking Him for it, and through cultivating a better, sharper, smarter, self. Whether anything more must be said, whether by ammendment, correction or qualification, I don't know.
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The past few days in a nutshell: Aaron and I arrived in Lima, and stumbled through the airport asking anyone who looked credible where we could get yellow fever vaccinations. After a great deal of confusion, we learned the difference between the Spanish word for "Vaccination" and the Spanish word for "Vacation." Shortly thereafter, we were inoculated.
We spent a short, pleasant night on the floor in the airport, then in a blurry morning found a taxi, and a bus station. A few hours (mostly spent in a very pleasant VIP room) later, we boarded the two-level bus and were off for the Chilean border. The bus was quiet, pleasant, and very comfortable, and we passed twenty or so hours in thoroughly agreeable fashion. Even the movies, with one exception, were enjoyable. The scenery was interesting, for a desert, but we looked forward to the scenery changing soon after we entered Chile.
This bus disgorged us, then, in a very different bus terminal; a wild, grimy mass of people yelling and moving rapidly in a variety of directions, many of them waving their arms, and some of them bellowing out destinations. Aaron and I, hoping to get a bus across the Chilean border, and following someone through the terminal in order to do just that, somehow got tossed in a taxi, and crossed that way. The desert was not so mountainous or rocky, at this point, but we looked forward to the scenery changing soon after we entered Chile.
Having entered Chile, we spent a great deal of sweat and time rushing in a frenzy from bus-company store to bus-company store trying to find the ideal ride to Santiago. Having made up our minds, we settled on what we now believe to have been the worst option. The seats were not so comfortable, and the reading lights didn't work, and the luggage rack rattled, and the seats were closer together, and there was a family seemingly composed of eighteen trillion wailing toddlers just behind us, but we smiled patiently, thinking of how close we now were to Santiago, and the real beginning of the trip.
A rotund man in a New York shirt entered the restroom--positioned just behind our seats--and disobeying bus company orders misused the bathroom in such a way that it left Aaron choking back gags. I fell asleep lulled by the desert scenery, and woke to discover that we were inching along the precipice of an incalculable gorge. The sight was invigorating, and somewhat terrifying, but it left me looking forward to the things we would see, soon, when we left the desert, and entered the more attractive portions of Chile.
I tried to read, but the absence of reading lights eventually wiped out the possibility. Luckily, the crying children and a whole host of other passengers departed, leaving many seats unoccupied. Aaron and I both stretched out across a pair of seats, and thus the fitful night was spent.
I woke at about seven the next morning, stirred by the bus pulling over. Something had broken down. I was surprised to see that the we had not yet entered the more attractive portion of Chile. I slept for a bit, then got out and jogged around the desert beside the road a bit, and attempted to socialize, then Aaron did the same, and thus a fiftul four hours of delay was spent.
At long last, with the help of some truckers, the bus was patched up, and we headed out again. The day, such as it was, does not bear detailed repeating; the bus would lurch along, then slow...then stop. The men would pile out. The men would inspect the engine at length. The bus would start again. Aaron and I would stare at the desert, amazed both at the variety that is possible within the range of desert landscapes, and also at the way it never ended. Around that time, we gave up on the idea that there were even more attractive parts of Chile, and started to theorize about theological models that this might be hell.
The second and third times the bus broke down, it proved necessary to push-start it towith a semi-truck. All we knew inside the bus was that it suddenly lurched (forward or backward) and gave a mighty cry, and--sometimes--roared to life, and on we rattled, further and further into the unbelievable, unending, eternal desert.
As day failed, and night fell, we once again convinced ourselves to sleep, hoping against hope that day would bring us past the desert, trading bets on how many hours we were actually going to spend on that rattletrap of a bus.
Just past midnight, we were awakened by the bus once again pulling off to the side of the road with some sort of malady. Men disembarked. There was a to-do. The bus lurched violently, and roared to life. We made it maybe a mile down the road before suddenly, the bus' engine began to choke and thud, and there came a powerful smell of smoke, oil, and death. The other passengers near the back began to cry out in fear and outrage, and scoot away from the epicenter of what promised to be a terrific explosion. Luckily, the bus pulled off and stalled out before things had a chance to get really dramatic, and the longsuffering men disembarked, and battered the engine about with wrenches and things.
This time, however, it was not to be. Confessing themselves defeated, the men set up a sudden cry of "Otro bus!" and all of of us were suddenly rushing through the bus, collecting our carry-ons and scrambling out in a daze. The other bus, we got the impression, was ambushing us.
This too, was not to be. After we all had our luggage and were standing in gaggle beside the road like ragamuffin strays, begging for a home, two buses pulled up, had words with our bus crew, and roared again into the night, shaking the dust off their sandles. The third time, however, was the charm, and it was, in fact, a bus better suited both to the rigors of the road, and to the creature comforts of the rescued passengers. Equipped with reading lights, reclining seats, little pillows and working climate control, the remaining six hours or so to Santiago do not exist in my mind, because Aaron and I both spent that time performing our most polished impression of dead blobs, who sit unmoving, and unfeeling as the world passes by.
Sunrise, and the morning found us in a reasonably attractive bus terminal in that promised land of promised lands, Santiago, Chile.
