The Pros and Cons of bus trips:

Castelsardo, a town I would have missed if not for traveling on a bus

I think how one feels about bus trips is directly related to how nauseous one gets on a bus. After several winding trips through Corsican mountain towns Andrew would discuss the beatify of the ride; the country, the mountains, the small towns we would never see on our own, the adventure. I would discuss how soon until I could drink 7 up, bubbly water, beer, anything to stop the roiling.

I sit next to him, ipod firmly planted in my ears, eyes closed, singing along just slightly and counting the minute until we get off. He stares out the window. The bus twists and turns. I look at the clock and notice that is 3 minutes later then the last time I looked at the clock. Andrew nudges me to look at some town, or cliff or river. I look, I think, wow that is beautiful, what a beautiful ride, what a beautiful place, I am so glad I am here, I jut wish I wasn’t moving.

Buses also do not take a direct route. This is part of their charm of course. We pass though and stop in little towns well off the beaten path. A few days ago I looked up and we were in a medieval town with flag strung up between buildings and hordes of young people sitting in cafes along the main road. Yet, it also means that a relatively short ride, say 48 km as the case maybe, can take hours. We zoom right pass the large turn offs towards our destination and instead drive in what feels like the opposite direction towards some small encampment where we have a stop. This gets less charming as I get more sick

I should say I really don’t have much room to complain here. These are nice buses. This is nothing like the bus I road on it Mozambique that was missing parts of the floor and roof. (funny, I don’t remember getting nauseous on that bus, maybe it was traveling in a straight line? Maybe it didn’t go fast enough to make me sick? I know, I was younger and everything was easier) These are new, comfortable, air-conditioned buses with nice shock systems and courteous professional drivers, almost always. In fact, the driver on our bus into Sisarri called a cab for us, and tracked it down when one failed to show up.

In Corsica we had one long ride I was a bit worried about, I thought I would be horribly nauseous for sure, so we sat right up in front so I could “drive along” with the driver and try to trick my brain into good behavior. This plan failed spectacularly. This particular driver drover like a bat out of hell. He tail-gated and honked at other large buses until they would pull over and let him pass. He tail-gated some small cars so closely that from the front of the bus we could not see anything but their front roof portion of the car. Riding along on this particular ride was an older assistant who had smoked several packs a day since the age of 4. We knew a stop was coming because the assistant would pull out a cigarette and just suck on it for a bit in preparation. The assistant helped manage the passengers and sell tickets. He also helped by singing along loudly to the bus music and goading the driver to faster and faster speeds. Right at the moment any sane woman would say, “honey, slow down, I think you have made the poor bastard in the car in front of you wet his pants,” the assistant would start umm, expressing his displeasure at the slow speed of the driver in front. He would cheer when the bus finally got past whatever was slowing it down. Please note: we were driving on mountain roads. It was like driving in Tahoe or Sequoia with bits of the curvy part of highway 1 tossed in. These were not roads I would normally think of as passing roads, much less passing roads when you are a very large bus. The upshot of this experience was that every time I opened my eyes and tried to “Drive along” with the bus I was terrified. I explained to Andrew that since every moment my eyes were open the bus driver was doing something dangerous and stupid, we would all be safer if I kept my eyes closed.