The bus across the mountains

To kick-off a trip in the Amazon, one first has to arrive in the Amazon. I decided to start in Pucallpa, a small town on the Ucayali river in the Peruvian Amazon basin. The road goes no longer than to Pucallpa but from here, one can travel further into the jungle on river boats. Arriving to Pucallpa one has two choices; a flight from Lima or a bus. After consulting many sources, I was about to get a plane ticket as I heard that the road was not very safe. It is a decent road for the first 14 hours passing the mountain towns of Huanuco and Tingo Maria, but for the last 6 hours down to Pucallpa on the other side of the Andes, the road is said to be quite bad in rainy weather and bus robberies occur more or less frequently.

However, my last source told me otherwise, which made me change my mind in favour of the bus. There are companies offering a “special service” direct bus, which is a little bit faster as it doesn’t stop en-route for picking up or dropping of passengers. It is also safer as most bus hijacks occur when robbers board the bus as paying passengers, only to force it to stop at a strategic location. Said and done, off to the bus terminal. 18 hours it would take, they would serve lunch and dinner on the bus and it would cost less than £20. A bargain, isn’t it?

I safely arrived to Pucallpa at 9:00 in the morning after a bumpy bus ride with little sleep, sitting next to a fat person who obviously had serious problems keeping the body parts to his side of the seat. But that’s a part of the adventure.