Peruano transport

Having been in two places in Peru now, I thought you might be interested to hear about Peruano (Peruvian) transport.

In Puerto Maldonado one of the first things that strikes you is the huge number of motor bikes. They are mostly of the trail variety (as most of the roads are dirt) and all the drivers wear some form of helmet (it's a new law and everyone conforms rather than pay on the spot fines - however you don't need to do your strap up and you can wear anything that resembles a helmet, e.g. a hard hat). Most of the bikes that you see are actually taxis and they come in three varieties
- a bike, where the passenger rides pillion (no helmet is required for passengers), women often ride side saddle
- a tuk tuk with soft cover
- top of the range a tuk tuk with hard cover

There are some four wheel vehicles but not that many and no cars. I think the reason is that the only road into Puerto, over the Andes, is a really tough road, it's dirt and extremely rutty, so to get cars in would be extremely expensive.

In Cusco, the roads are also populated pretty much by taxis, but this time they are cars, they come in a Smart car type version and a pretty standard saloon version. The fare is set at a standard two soles (40p) for any trip within town. They offer a really good service except that you don't really want to pay any attention to the driving and other vehicles as it's very bad for your nerves! There are few sets of traffic lights and I think the idea at junctions is that it's like the States in terms of who gives way to who, but it's hard to tell because I haven't worked out a pattern yet. The thing to do seems to be to drive as fast as possible, to brake at the last possible moment and to try and squeeze through any available gap!

So far I've only seen one taxi accident, where in a slow moving queue of traffic, the front half of the queue had totally stopped and the taxi at the front of the second half gently drove into the rear light of the car in front until the sound of breaking glass brought the first driver out of his car! I was late for school and couldn't wait to see what happened next!