TRAVELING BY BUS II

Traveling by bus is not only fascinating, sometimes it also can take much longer than expected and be exhausting. We wanted to travel from the small village near the coffee farm to Salento a small town in the mountains. The distance between the two place is less than 50 km but it took five hours to get to Salento.
We waited at the road hoping to stop the bus to Pereira, the next bigger town in our direction, where we were supposed to change buses. Unfortunately we let the first bus going by because we were standing at the wrong side of the road and the bus driver didn't see us. The next bus didn't stop. After almost half an hour we stopped one bus and asked if it goes to Pereira. The driver said no but a few people on the bus said yes and we got in. The buses here usually have signs in the front window showing the cities where they are going. This bus didn't show Pereira but Peaje and I wondered where I had seen that word before. After a very short ride I knew why - it meant toll. The bus was only going to the toll station. The guys that told us to take this bus said we had to walk around the toll station and get on another bus there. The first bus we tried to take didn't stop for us. So we went on another local bus with the other guys. When we got to the next town the guys signaled us to get off the bus and change to yet another bus. There was a little confusion since some of the people told us to stay on this bus and others told us to change the bus. We changed the bus and luckily we finally got to the bus terminal in Pereira. In Pereira we had to take the bus to Salento. Unfortunately the last bus going there left 10 minuted before we got to the ticket booth. (maybe we should have skipped the bathroom stop). We now had to take a bus to Armenia, a town south of Salento and from there a bus back north to Salento. After an uneventful one hour bus ride to Armenia and some waiting we got on the bus to Salento. We only got a few blocks until the bus was stopped by the police. It seemed like there were problems with the bus light and after some discussion between the driver and the police we drove to a little repair shop around the corner. It took only a few minutes to fix the problem and luckily we could continue our journey. After that little stop it was less than an hour on the bus to get to Salento. It was totally dark when we finally got to Salento after a rather long bus ride. I still wonder how long it would have taken to drive directly by car.