Long, long bus journeys

Leaving me feeling a little out of it. One of my big concerns before leaving the UK, was how my "issues" would effect my travel plans. Number one issue, travel sickness. For as long as I can remember cars, coaches, planes and boats have made me feel sick. I´d even have to cut journeys short on the tube sometimes from fear of throwing up. My second issue, that for some reason I´ve decided to share is small spaces, the fear of that is. So it was with some trepidation I took my second long bus jouney today. But so far so good, well that´s as long as I don´t eat.
I´ve felt a little sick even without eating, but by leaning into the aisle and looking directly ahead it usually passes. Obviously this can be difficult with the window seat. Then I have to use my incredible extending neck and lift myself onto my seat by perching on my hands and stretch that neck, I then have the "E.T" look.
It´s odd the things they are strict about in Peru. Showing porn on a bus in the daytime is fine, men, women and children constantly spitting out of windows is okay, but God forbid someone sit in the incorrect seat on a bus!
They are very strict about sitting in the correct seat, I´ve even had my fingerprint taken and my seat number written next to it on one journey. I wasn´t even crossing any border.
I´ve seen a conductor on a half empty bus approach a passenger and ask them to move as they were in the wrong seat. Today I was in seat 37, luckily it was an aisle seat, no need for the E.T neck extension today. My bus travelled from Mancora to Trujillo, I think that´s about 350 miles. In Peru that takes from 9am until 7.30pm, don´t ask me how.
There were a number of short stops were locals use the bus for short distances. For me this meant getting out of my seat each time to allow someone to take the window seat. There was no possible way I could scooch across, never mind the important seat allocation, the person in front had reclined there seat to a 180 degree angle (no doubt to watch the porn), so the window seat next to me occupied enough space for a very small Hamster family. I´d gotten up a few times to let people into the space, but finally I had the two seats to myself. That is until Latin America´s largest man needed the seat.
I´ve really gotten used to the average height here being so much shorter than at home. I fit right in, Dad you would love it here, they´d call you Big Sam! Sometimes I even have that self-satisfied feeling of towering over people, it´s wonderful.
On seeing this giant of a man, both outward and upward I felt a little mean for making him take the window seat, but not that mean. Unfortunately he didn´t have room for his knees and ended up taking alot of my space. I had to sit almost diagonally. This also meant ours arms touching, in Latin America there never seems to be any concern for personal space. Touching is all the rage, however the giant had a huge open wound on his arm. There was only one thing to do, I used the ET position to create space. Thankfully he got off the bus soon after.
I arrived in Trujillo a few hours ago (my neck slightly longer), as is usual a taxi driver was available at the station. It´s always the best option at night and actually anytime I have my back pack with me, we travelled for about 5 minutes and it cost around 20p.
After long jouneys it always throws me when I´m asked a question in Spanish. I should be used to it, as no one speaks English, but I need time to re-adjust after a long journey listening to my ipod.
I thought the taxi driver was introducing himself, "Chessy" he kept saying. "Well hello I´m Karen". Formal I thought but I´ll go with it. But he was actually saying Chelsea. I grinned, what more could I do? He asked me whereabouts in England I´m from, it started off as near Liverpool, but really when people only know London what difference does it make? Occasionally I get, "The Beatles", but I mean how can I respond to that? Yes they apparently lived in Liverpool, but they never came back, okay McCartney opened that school that no one ever hears about now. Anyway back to the taxi. European football is big news here, so we talked a little about English football, I told him how he shouldn´t support Chelsea (sorry Trainor and Gaz "I know nothing about football anyway" Hynes) because they just buy everyone. Yes I know I hardly support some struggling little team. Anyway the driver asked me another question, this one had me really stumpted. "How many years England play football?" At first I thought I´d misunderstood, then paranoid thoughts crept into my mind. Is he trying to say its been years since we won the World Cup? But no he actually wanted to know how long we´d playing football for in England. I told him we invented football, which sounded as bad as it reads. It difficult to communicate in Spanish when you are used to using 300 English words to say one tiny thing. I understand the history of football in the grand scheme of things isn´t so important, but it hit something with me, something I´ve noticed since I first arrived in Costa Rica, no one seems to have a sense of history. Of course I understand British history isn´t important here, but they don´t seem to be bothered with there countries history either. Okay this is a rather sweeping statement based on a handful of encounters. But it is actually quite freeing, rather than carry all that guilt of being from a wealthy nation with an Emperial past, here when you say you are English you can just talk football. Thank god Liverpool made it to the last 8, otherwise I´d have to talk about the Beatles.