Pisco-Lima

0932 At bus terminal. After standing there being ignored for five minutes while she did some paperwork, woman at ticket window told me I can't buy a ticket for the 1000 bus now, I have to buy it 'al momento' or as I infer when the thing is actually here. Fuck knows. This all gives me really bad feelings about security and so on. Asked hotel owner and the place I should get off is Puente Benabides.

Netbook indeed hadn't finished that fsck overnight, had to kill it and shut thing down. Bag is chock full and really difficult to shut; there's no more stuff in it than usual but because I've never had time to do a full wash all my dirty clothes are in a carrier bag which means they are 'lumpy' instead of folding flat. Due to feeling short of time I'm only in Lima for four nights but hopefully that will at least give me a bit of time to get things sorted out.

Can't find PB on OSM map; also noticed last night the whole city seems to be rotated 90 degrees on OSMcompared with what I expected, and yes I do have it set for north at top so fuck knows. I am just going to have to see if I can get off there and take a punt on a taxi. At least, assuming I can buy this fucking bus ticket, it should be daylight at the time.

I fucking hope the wifi works in my room in Lima.

Security shit around taxis especially is grinding me down. The advice seems to essentially say 'you are completely fucked whatever you do'.

0944 Oh, I was at Posada(s) Gino(s) here. At least it is only a very short work from the Flores terminal.

0950 World plus dog just shown up, all with identity cards and laser printed paper which I am inferring are ticket reservations. I am queueuing up randomly at the other ticket window. Neither is labelled as expected. This one is 'encomiendas y giros' and the one I tried before is 'canjes de essalud'. I haven't got a fucking clue. I am never going to get out of fucking Pisco.

0955 OK, she took my money (15) and gave me a paper ticket which says nothing on it. The word 'sencillo' came up which made no sense. I suspect I am going to have to take my bag with me on the bus, esp if I want to get down at PB, which is contrary to all the smug advice I read, so I can spend 4.5h watching my bag to make sure no one takes it. Maybe 'sencillo' means 'single', I don't know. Fuck me, I don't want to come back.

These buses are really fucking with my head. It would be fine if not for all the fucking advice about security *which does me no good since it appears I have no choice but to travel with Flores out of Pisco to Lima*, unless I want to go the route of flagging one down at Cruz del Pisco which sounds nightmarish and also any such bus by definition is also poor security.

1000 And yay, I've lost one of my padlocks, even though I could have sworn I deliberately locked them both onto one of my zips before leaving hotel.

1012 We're off. Got double seat to myself (unallocated). No, some more ppl getting on so maybe not. No one has checked my ticket, I hope this is Lima bus. If it goes to Ica I will just change there. Fingers crossed. Not mega rammed but obviously this is a fairly frequent route and not some enormously long haul high ceremony process. Still have double seat.

1016 Think just overheard chap on his mobile say he's on a bus to Lima. I got the front two seats on left, bag is overhead so as long as I don't sleep hopefully be obvious if someone tries to take it. Thinking I might need to deliberately ignore all the security advice which renders things impractical. Dunno. Maybe if I restrict myself to taxis with Sewhatsit on them that is as much as I can do in reality, the alternative is walking everywhere which is perhaps riskier.

Quite a few tuktuks in Pisco BTW.

1024 Woohoo, we turned south onto the Panamericana. I suspect this is just to get to some bus stop we have pulled up at, I should probably stop paying so much attn but would just like to get our basic direction confirmed. Yes, we seem to be doing a U turn so fingers crossed we are indeed heading north.

1029 Load of people just got on but I still have my double seat and the front two seats on right are free. Heading north.

1052 Guy just checked my ticket, so probably OK.

1442 At hotel. As I half hoped bus stopped at Puente Bwhatsit anyway. I had been torn about getting off at previous stop but didn't. Got a taxi on third try, he quoted 20 which seemed steep but not in mood to argue as felt bit vulnerable with my bag as always. Anyway, got here OK - I had the wrong location in OSM, I think there is more than one pair of streets intersecting and that caused me to get wrong one. WTF the lat/long cannot be shown on the booking page instead of just a no-use-when-in-transit map I don't know. Wifi seems to work in room, which is a relief.