The Party Bus

[Martin Hash]

There was the me before traveling and the calm, serene, patient now me... Either that or explode because traveling to god-forsaken far away lands with no competence or sense of urgency will cure anyone of the misconception that people are the same everywhere. One of the secrets to keeping your cool is that anytime a possible itinerary mentions “Party bus” as an option, you take that, and at our recent visit to Cartagena, Columbia, we signed up for “The Party Bus” expecting, well, a party. The bus certainly looked the part: a beater open-door, Mexican-style, windowless, noisy, rough-riding POS with a the band: a too loud guy playing an accordion and another guy banging relentlessly on a drum.



Unfortunately we were jammed 5-across in the narrow bench seats, a crippled old gal at entrance of our aisle unable to move. The “party” consisted of one small 12-oz (pony) bottles of rum, a 10-oz bottle of Coke, and a mini-ice bucket, which some dork immediately shoved the dirty pony bottle into. There was a faux-excitment host yelling into a microphone, and play The Macarena over and over; and perhaps 2 dozen geriatrics who didn't intend to drink and weren't partying.
“Who’s going to be happiest?! U.S.A.?!” yelled our host into his staticky microphone.
I heard the 4 kids sitting behind us all agreed to the question, “Who’s feeling shafted?”

But it wasn't bad at all. In fact, after a pony of rum, it was down right fabulous. Two more ponies and we'd never been on a better Party bus. The tourist stops got better too.

Alcohol.jpg

“I want that painting,” I told Gwynne.
She looked where I was pointing.
“No.”
“But we're never going to find a painting like that again,” I whined.
“Of a deer suckling a woman's bare breast?” Gwynne replied. “I should hope not.”
I pouted about it for a couple minutes before I could find some shot glasses she could buy.

Suckling Deer.JPG