Chantal - Have Laptop Will Travel: Insomnia

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December 05, 2004

Insomnia

Actually, not so much a case of insomnia as the combination of a very early night, and then finding myself very wide awake four hours later.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking so hard about Central America and Mexico lately, especially today when I’ve spent most of the day mulling over the reasons and practicalities of moving back, but I’ve been finding myself putting my book to one side over the last hour, and stepping back to the nights where, around this time at night, I’d find myself standing outside some truck stop on an overnight bus journey.

The roads are so bad over there, few buses dare to travel at night. The only two routes I’ve taken where they’ll take their chances are in Mexico, and travelling between San José in Costa Rica to Panamá City. Nearly four years ago, the typical half-hour (most of which would be spent waiting for the border crossing to open, and chatting with the money changers) of crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica ended up taking the whole day, and my mother and I managed to get seats on what was probably the last bus of the day down to the capital.

Because of my archaeology work, because of being a compulsive wanderer, because of whatever reasons I’m too sleepy to think of right now, my trips back to Central America always involved numerous lengthy bus rides up and down the continent. These are the kinds of journeys where it can take half a day to travel less than a finger’s width on my large-scale map in my hallway. Where, if you religiously take the first bus of the day and keep travelling till the last, it might only take you a day and a half to cross a country. The local buses stop frequently, with vendors surrounding both sides of the bus, selling randomly-coloured liquid in plastic bags and various edibles. The larger buses – the long-distance, or international buses – have their allotted scheduled stops, however, and that’s what I’m thinking of now.

Normally I try to avoid taking the Pullman buses, as they reliably make me feel violently ill, however they’re the only buses which leave you standing outside cafés in some unknown stretch of road for about half an hour while the driver works his way through a three-course meal.

Also, normally I love cities by night, as their character and feel change so completely. I’ve spent countless hours standing by roadsides waiting for the driver to finish eating, but something about this time of night reminds me of those nights spent doing much the same at roughly the same time as now. Though Central American culture is very external, by now, the streets would be deserted, the wicker chairs and tables brought back inside off the pavement, the doors shut and bolted against the night. Standing outside in the muggy warmth, maybe seeing only one or two lorries rush past in that half-hour, time seems to take a fag break; the emptiness of the space I’m standing in and looking at feeling so peaceful despite the sleepy cheerfulness of my fellow passengers in the café behind me. During the day, time resumes its work, there are more buses queued up, more passengers standing beside me, more things clamouring for attention, and it’s hard to regain that absorption of the view.

In my mind, it’s four years ago, and I’m on that late bus down from the border. I’m travelling with my mother, my harp, and a family of three who don’t speak any Spanish. Next door to the café, there’s a vegetable shop. Looking over the Pan-American Highway, known as the Interamericana in Costa Rica, but otherwise a country lane by English standards, I feel a peace, a relaxation, a groundedness I rarely get elsewhere. I could stand there for hours, knowing that that’s where I want to be, where I need to be, especially to accumulate what I need to make sense of my life in England away from there, but I know that the bus will be leaving soon, that there are those who need me.

There are so many reasons I love and miss Central America so very much. Because of my habit of cross-country travelling, I’ve seen most towns and cities by late night and early morning. But, as the bus terminal described in ‘San Pedro Sula Dreams’ is one of my enduring daytime memories, by whichever twist of fate, standing outside a bus stop-off is one of my strongest nighttime memories of all the places I’ve been to or lived in, and one of the very few which give me the greatest sense of belonging.

Posted by chantal at December 5, 2004 05:14 AM

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