A Slippery Slope in Crag-laden Northwest Argentina pt. 5 of 3

Given the precedent set by the previous events on this tour, my rest was better than I could have expected. I was only awoken a few times through the course of the night, and the person behind me was gracious enough to let the little hand hit the six before he started to shout.

"I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dying," he pierced the general hum of the moving road with his shrieks, "I'm dying!"

My heart jumped up and so did I to turn behind my headrest. There sat a five-year-old boy banging two plastic men together.

"I'm dying. I'm dying," it was kind of cute, I thought. There were other verbs he could be using while banging the men together.

"I'm dying," he gave me a huge toothless grin while his mother, after years of practice, remained quietly asleep aside him.

"I'm dying. I'm dying, " he continued, dissipating all lingering forms of cuteness in his play.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." What a wonderful narrative surmise of my trip, I thought, and it's getting really annoying.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." How long does it take your plastic man to die? I turned around again and chided him.

"Shut up," I said. But this time his mother was awake and she gave me a look that could be read word for word as follows:

"My kid? Shut up? Listen, punk, you shut up! Ha! The guy who made the whole bus stop last night because he couldn't hold it in is telling my kid to shut up? Turn your honky-ass around!"

Well, maybe her look didn't scream that last part, but it was effective enough to make me turn and bear disgrace.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." We spoke in unison, "I'm dying."

Unable to return back to a semi-peaceful state, I stared out the window to watch the sunrise. Ah, yes! When one wakes before the sun rises, he can make the most of his day. He is blessed with opportunity. A sunrise provides both literal and figurative enlightenment. The entrance of the sun allows me to push yesterday's woes behind me and to bask in today's chance to make anew. Yes, the sunrise brightens spirits and fills each day with a spectrum of....wait! Why was the sun rising out of my window on the right of the bus? Even being in the southern hemisphere couldn't explain this anomaly.

"Take 'er really easy, Chris. You don't know what's going on." I thought. But that was the problem, I didn't know what was going on anymore. The best solution at this moment was to sigh and accept. This was a cursed trip from the outset. The realization should have made it more manageable, but it didn't. I stared out the window, I had nothing with which I could pass the time we were heading backwards except for my journal. (At this instant, I'd like to point out that my notebook was more of a Magellanesque tale of adventure than a pre-teenage girl's diary. Well, who am I kidding?)

"Dear Diary," I wrote. "I can't wait to finally get back to my room where I can rest peacefully and dream of all my crushes, omg!" I continued with seemingly endless similes for what my heart felt like. I think I was writing about the way Danny looked at me during third period when a sudden interruption shook my pen. The bus had slowed as a result of the sudden friction applied to it's wheels by the break pads, in other words: the driver slammed on the brakes when we came to an unexpected (yet unsurprising) obstacle in the road. What was surprising, however, was what happened next.

[[You'll unfortunately have to wait a short time for the shock and awe that follows this lingering suspense/angst. Part six of this three-part odyssey will be presented soonafter we complete contract negotiations with a certain Hollywood A-List celebrity who may be playing the role of the Bus Driver. We've already signed Danny DeVito on as the five-year-old boy in the forthcoming crag-laden movie.]]