A short aside from the Peru trip - fictional-? Not Really

When the fields came into view, he remembered.

Even though he had never been in this place before, yet, still he remembered.

The bus, gears grinding, clawed its way uphill, its wheels spewing out loose stones behind like a contrail as the driver fought for traction.

  Below, several hundred feet below, the fields, barely stamps. green postage stamps, shone in the sun, almost fluorescent, contrasting against the puke yellow background of parched corn and barley stalks as the bus climbed ever higher above the Andean plain.

  It was then that it came back to him, the memory that he had choked back, buried, alluded to, occasionally, but never quite divulged as real.

 The coffee splashed over his hand, hot, uncomfortable, not really a burn. More an annoyance as the plane took its first hard bounce and dropped a bare hundred feet or so.

 The crackle of the P.A.  “This is your Ca......” was eclipsed at first by panicked gasps from fellow passengers, then by his own expletives as the coffee splashed off the ceiling, into his face, onto his shirt as he felt his stomach and his seat plummet several hundred feet in  seconds. Belted in, his pain was uncomfortable, tolerable, actually minimal, compared to the slap and slam of other passengers, unbelted and floating/ bouncing into the bulkheads in pain, panic and possibly self destruction.

 Suddenly the walls of the plane melted into translucency and then transparency as the approaching ground could be seen,  a living window on the ever widening fields as they rushed up to meet the silver belly of the falling plane.

 Faster, ever faster he fell, the force of the drop straining at his waist and hips, the pain expanding as the blood seemed to rush to his eyes, his mouth a silent scream and then…….

 He awoke, sweat soaked and petrified. The bed was all that stood between him and terra firma. The clock, the only light source in the darkened room signaled 3am. He sat up, stepped to the floor and paced, looking out of the window at a starless sky as his respiration finally slowed to normal.

  It was almost dawn before sleep finally returned, and I made up my mind not to discuss the dream.

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Believe it or not, the dream and the bus ride were both events that happened to me-- about two months apart. I pondered the dream as a hint, a warning, a suggestion to cancel the trip. The Peru adventure involved 2 internal flights and about 8 bus rides along roads and routes that belonged on a “World’s Most Dangerous Roads” reality show. I literally came close to crapping my pants on the Puno to Arequipa bus trip as the route was what I had seen in my dream.

             Having said that, I can’t wait to go back!!!!!!!!!!!!!