Lima's bus terminal problem

The problem is, Lima doesn't have one. It has about 50. One for each company. Each one down the road from its peers, spread out over an entire suburb — nothing less than an absolute bus terminal balagan. No wonder that most people don't even bother trying to sort through the mess, and just buy their bus tickets out of Lima from a travel agency in town. Today, I decided to take the plunge, and to find myself a company and a bus ticket, to get me out of Lima tonight, and over to Huaraz. Managed it in the end, but it wasn't fun. Yet another reason why Lima's an evil city: they make it so daym hard to get out of it.

Only just managed to get my ticket to Huaraz. Went to about 5 different companies, and all of them were already full for tonight. I guess I had left it a bit late: I wanted a ticket for between 9pm and 11pm tonight, and it was already 4pm in the afternoon. Anyway, I managed to get the last seat on the bus, for the 10:30pm departure tonight with Movil Tours. Meant to be semi-cama, so sounds like it will be quite nice!

The trouble with booking a bus ticket at a travel agency in town, is that most of them will only book you in with Cruz Del Sur. That's all well and good — Cruz del Sur has very nice buses, and they go almost everywhere — but they're an absolute ripoff. Even more of a ripoff, when you buy the ticket through an agency, who inevitably end up happening to charge you an extra 10 or 20 soles for it. Hmmm, I wonder where that money goes? Anyway, probably works out to be much less hassle, and not that much price difference (considering that you have to get a taxi to the bus terminals and back — and we're talking Lima taxi prices here), in the end. Stupid Lima.