By Pietra Carvalho
On a platform at the Tietê bus station in São Paulo, passengers were waiting with much expectation in their luggage.
They would face thousands of kilometers of road on a bus route that proudly defines itself as “the longest in the world.”
Six thousand kilometers separate Rio de Janeiro from Lima, Peru.
The strategic stop in São Paulo is only one of the 30 of the itinerary, which takes five days and crosses landscapes that go from the fog in São Paulo to the green of the Amazon, passing through the Andes Mountains.
Transacreana, based in Rio Branco in the state of Acre, has been responsible since April for operating the stretch – which, in the past, entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the longest bus trip in the world.
And Josué Ribeiro, 40, is one of those who takes command of the bus cabin. His experience could not be better for a trip full of surprises.
A former nursing technician, he left the health area 16 years ago after making a living “piloting” ambulances.
Now he alternates 15 days on the road with 15 days at home in Rio Branco.
The trip, of course, is not done alone. Josué and his colleagues take turns in shifts of four hours, with three longer stops a day.
“I did this because I like to travel; I always have; even when I worked in health in Acre, my vacations were always spent traveling by car with my family.”
Before facing the Rio – Lima route, Josué had already started his international career, but in a more modest way.
He went from Rio Branco to Porto Maldonado, Peru, on a 530 km trip.
ALTITUDE SICKNESS
Other stretches, however, cannot prepare the professionals for the challenges imposed by the roads to Lima, built in mountains that punish professionals with “altitude sickness”.
Cusco, Peru, where the bus passes, is more than 3,300 meters above sea level, in the middle of the Peruvian Andes.
The thin air, with less oxygen, causes unpleasant symptoms such as headache, nausea, difficulty breathing, and weakness.
Not even Joshua’s wife, used to traveling with him, faces the route.
“I started my family as a driver, and my wife likes to travel too, so when she is on vacation, she travels with me. Only Peru she doesn’t go to because she has a lot of migraines.”
ROUTE RIO-LIMA TRIP
“There are always two drivers in front of me in case whoever is behind the wheel has an accident, especially in the Cordillera.”
“Some mountains are 4 or 5 thousand meters high, sometimes making you feel nauseous, and people get dizzy.”
“I felt it the first time I went, but it was nothing so extreme. We get used to it as the days go by.”
Another challenge, according to the driver, is road safety in Peru, which is full of blind spots due to the rugged terrain.
Using the horns on curves is necessary to warn those from the other side.
Despite the difficulties, the advantages outweigh the difficulties, according to the driver.
Passionate about the roads, Josué understands well why clients travel by bus, even if the five-day trip is much more tiring than the five-hour flight between São Paulo and Lima.
The view is unique.
On the first trip on this route, a customer went there by bus and came back by plane, but he liked it so much that he decided to come back with us.
It is satisfying to know that people are seeing new things.
They really want to see the sierras, film the Cordillera, and change from the Amazon part to the already desert part. It’s surreal
FACES AND ACCENTS
Diversity is a characteristic of what you see through the windows and the passengers who face the stretch.
They are Peruvians who want to spend a season in the country where they were born or return to their homeland and adventurous Brazilians with backpacks on their backs.
Some Peruvians who boarded the Tietê on a cold night in late April were already “veterans” of this type of trip: they used to board with another company, Ormeño, which declared bankruptcy in 2022.
One of these old customers, Vanessa, was waiting to start her last trip to her homeland.
Accompanied by her two children, ages 9 and 4, the woman decided to return to Peru for good after seven years in São Paulo, working as a seamstress and raising the children alone.
“I came with their father, but then we split and went our own way.”
“My ex-husband left, and I was left alone. We took a while to get used to it because of the language and everything else, but little by little, we adapted.”
“Later, my daughter was born here, and, despite the days and days, I liked Brazil very much.”
And wouldn’t it be better to go by plane?
According to her, the road trip is more worthwhile than the plane trip. And one reason prevails among travelers.
All Peruvian passengers interviewed by Nossa highlight the possibility of boarding with up to 50 kg of luggage on the bus, a right taken advantage of by travelers, “parked” in the boarding line and surrounded by suitcases and other packages.
Alone in the line, Rolan Arquimedes Bardales was also waiting to return to the country where he was born, but for only two months.
He has lived in São Paulo for 18 years and is “used to” living in the city.
He packed a lot of Brazilian souvenirs for the relatives he left behind, including seven brothers and sisters.
The reencounter of Bardales, who works as a telemarketing operator in Spanish, happens 12 years after his last trip to Peru – also by bus.
BATHING ONLY IN THE STOPS
The difficulties at sight are of little concern to passengers, who are already well-versed in getting around inside a bus.
“I’ve taken buses with no toilets, no water, and no Wi-Fi, so just knowing that you have all this is already better,” says Vanessa.
On the second floor of the Transacreana bus, passengers have a water filter.
The bathroom is on the first floor, with only a toilet and a small sink. In one of the rows of beds, some travelers have curtains that help to isolate the seats.
To take a shower, only during stops at service stations. There are three per day for hygiene and meals.
The stops for lunch and dinner, lasting about an hour, are those recommended by the company for those who want to use the shower.
The first stop of the day, for breakfast, is the quickest – it lasts only 30 minutes.
“It is tiring, but since the new bus is more comfortable. Before, it didn’t have this; before, it used to leave here with long stops, and you had to change buses. But going direct is much easier,” said Rolan, shortly before boarding in São Paulo.
SON AND FATHER ON THE BACKPACKING TRIP
Among the Peruvians, who filled most of the 43 seats in the bus, two men called our attention: one was carrying a backpack on his back, and the other, older, seemed ready for an adventure, including a fisherman’s hat at 8 pm.
The duo’s journey began in Porto Alegre, where father and son, residents of the gaucho capital, nurtured the dream of taking the longest bus route in the world.
The businessman Ricardo Preussler, 46, says that he and his father, 72, planned to reach Bogotá, but they only found out when they arrived at Tietê about the end of an old line that used to make this route.
So we will go as far as Cusco, which takes about three and a half days, and from Cusco, we will go to Colombia, also by road. The idea is to get to know the land part, the landscapes. We have already been to Patagonia by bus, but this time we can make the trip little by little.
Ricardo relies on his experience in backpacking for months on other continents to handle the undertaking.
“I’m used to backpacking, not so much by bus, but by train. I have done a lot of backpacking in Asia.”
“We know there will be some discomfort, but on the other hand, you will see landscapes and cross the Andes by bus. By land, you can see a landscape that is impossible by plane.”
ROUTE FACED BARRIERS
The Transacreana also faced a winding road to achieve the dream of the route.
First came the pandemic, then the bureaucracy to legalize the trip, and, finally, the heavy rains that left Acre underwater in March this year.
The company even called a specialist in the route, previously done by Ormeño, to take care of business.
Today, Transacreana’s trips leave every other Thursday at 1 pm from Rio, with a stop in São Paulo at night and an expected arrival in Lima on Tuesday.
The return trip from Lima to Rio also occurs on Thursdays.
Transacreana plans to expand the trip to weekly departures in the future. The one-way ticket, at a promotional price, costs R$1,000 (US$202)
AND IS IT THE LONGEST ROUTE IN THE WORLD?
Knowing exactly which is the longest bus route in the world is no easy task since new routes frequently appear and are extinguished in each country.
A route from Rio to Bogotá, which is 14,000 kilometers long, was once operated by the Peruvian company Ormeño but was extinguished when the company went bankrupt last year.
It was considered the longest bus trip, although it did not appear in the record book.
The Rio-Lima route, on the other hand, has been in Guinness World Records since 2016 (when Ormeño operated it) as the longest bus route in the world, at 6,200 kilometers long.
With the bankruptcy of Ormeño, the same stretch is now operated by Transacreana – which will claim the title in Guinness in July.
With information from UOL
News Brazil, English news Brazil, Brazilian tourism, Transacreana