“How do you get around with the children once you’ve flown somewhere? Do you rent a Winnebago?” [Um, no, that would use up our entire travel budget in one go.]
“Do you hire a vehicle and driver?” [Nope, still too costly.]
What we do depends on what type of country we are in. In well-developed countries, we usually do rent a vehicle – the smallest, budget car available – then offset the rental costs by camping in a tiny tent for the duration, often weeks or months at a time. In developing countries, we simply take the buses along with the locals. Did I say 'simply'?
The story recounted below was a bus journey we took from Valparaiso to La Serena, two coastal cities in Chile, when the girls were 2 and 3 years old. It is a very typical example, far from the longest bus ride we took when the girls were little (the longest lasted 30 hours, during which we shared just two seats between the four of us), but was still fairly hard work. Enjoy!
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We had a 10 a.m. bus to catch from the terminal in Valparaiso, and left our hostel in good time. The taxi and local bus combination we had taken from terminal to hostel on arrival had been so complicated and stressful that we decided to head back to the terminal on foot when we left Valparaiso – a 30 minute walk, but all downhill.
Things were going well. Suddenly, two-thirds of the way along, we realised we had left a bag of food at the hostel. We don’t like to lose things, so Dave sprinted back to get it – uphill all the way, of course, on feet that were already raw and bleeding for reasons that may become apparent in a later blog.
Meanwhile, I stayed with the girls and all the bags, and tried to eke us towards the bus terminal along the busy roads by way of multiple to-ings and fro-ings of luggage, without letting go of any valuables (including the children). We had only managed about 150 m in six instalments before I realised that our sun hats, strapped to our bags, had fallen off somewhere, probably right where we had started out when Dave left us. That was back round a couple of corners, so I couldn’t see. I was now trapped 150 m further downhill with the children and all the luggage, wondering what my best course of action might be. As I stood, uncertain, a lovely local girl came to our rescue. She understood my hand gestures, retraced our steps whilst I waited with the girls, and managed to find and retrieve our sun hats. I was very relieved, and we painstakingly continued on our way in the same manner as before.
Progress was very slow, however, and I began to worry about missing the bus. I reached a junction and had no idea which way to go. I love maps and pride myself on being a spatial thinker, but put me in the real world and I’m totally lost. It was a critical moment. Just then, Dave The Walking Map reappeared: what joy! We route-marched the rest of the way to the bus station, ignoring rucksack straps cutting into shoulders, arm muscles burning from yanking suitcases along, the children’s aching legs, quickly haggled over tickets so as to pay for only two seats between the four of us (girls on laps) and negotiate the discounted price that we’d noticed usually became available if you bartered hard enough, made last-minute toilet dashes, and leapt onto the bus just before it set off.
This particular bus turned out to be a luxury Pullman coach – no toilet on board (there never is, in our experience of long-distance buses), but with the benefit of a nearly empty top deck where we were sitting. As we set off from Valparaíso bus station, we spread out from our two seats and settled back to enjoy the unexpected bonus of a lovely comfortable journey after our earlier difficulties.
Two hours later, the bus finally left Valparaíso following pick-ups from what felt like every major hotel in the city. Of course, we’d re-grouped back into our two seats well before then, girls on laps, since every space was now taken on the crowded and increasingly hot bus.
Feeling thirsty, I popped open the cap of my flat-pack, flexible, re-usable – and slightly over-full – bottle, accidentally squeezed it as I tried to operate around Poppy (sat on my lap) and sent an unfortunate squirt of water over the unfriendly-looking, Latin American couple in front of us. I immediately apologised and said, ‘Agua, agua,’ a few times so that they would know it was only water. But, instead of having the good grace to gesticulate that it didn’t matter and laugh it off, as I (surely most people?) would do, they completely overdid the annoyed tut-tutting routine, and were still going on with it some minutes later. I didn’t know what else I could do, other than repeat sorry a few more times, then give up. I mean, it was water: had they never experienced rain nor washed their clothes?
You’ll understand then that I had mixed feelings when May was voluminously travel sick a little later on the journey – firstly, into her hands (we used a wet wipe to clean them), then onto her trousers (we changed them for the spare pair we always carried in our daypack), then, at last and with accuracy, into a plastic bag (which we carefully knotted and placed on the floor until we could dispose of it at a rest stop – only to find that there was a tiny hole in it, unnoticeable until the floor beneath our feet began to get tacky). I felt sorry for May, of course, and it wasn’t a bundle of laughs for us either, having May sat on us whilst vomiting and both girls to work around during every clean-up. But the thought of the couple in front fortified me: they were in prime position to take in the full effect of the sounds and smells emanating from right behind them, and I couldn’t think of a nicer couple to share the whole experience with.
Most Chilean long-distance buses stop every couple of hours – a chance for both driver and passengers to stretch legs, use the toilet, buy snacks, have a smoke, dispose of leaking sick bags. Our coach stopped just once for 15 minutes at lunch time, in what ended up over-running to become a nine hour journey.
Perhaps it was at this point that I asked a rather dehydrated, three-year-old May, “Do you need a wee?”
“No,” she replied casually, “I went last year.”
That journey was hard for us all. The children were cooped up and restless on our laps, and we were exhausted trying to amuse them with games of ‘Spot The Fire Hydrant’, ‘Spot The Tower Block’ and ‘How Many Yellow Cranes Can You See?’, those being their favourite features in the passing scenery. They repeatedly asked me to regale them with the story of ‘When Mummy Was A Little Girl And Dropped A Sweet Wrapper In The Street’. I only did such an irresponsible thing once, I promise, as my mum made me go all the way back to find it amongst the dog turds and pick it up, which was mortifying, and the story duly ends with a worldly-wise, “...and Mummy never, ever did such a thing again.” Frankly, I wished I’d never, ever told them the story in the first place.
At last, 7 p.m., we arrived in La Serena. We’d booked our accommodation by e-mail the night before, so knew we had somewhere to stay. What we hadn’t realised was quite how far it was to walk from the bus terminal. But we all needed some air, so plodded off with our luggage dragging behind us. The La Serena region is world-famous in astronomical circles for its ‘exceptional atmospheric conditions and clear skies’. So, after eight days of continuously clear, blue Chilean skies, we arrived to overcast conditions and some rain. After an hour of trudging, we finally reached our hostel. A new adventure was ready to begin.
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