A Bad Feeling

I climbed on board my sixteen hour bus to Panama City, with a strange feeling, I knew something about this bus ride was going to make it worse than any of my previous rides. I had an odd anxiety as I took my seat, in the back of the bus next to the bathroom. The first bad sign. Less than one minute later my premonition began to reveal itself, a very, very heavy Tico(Costa Rican) man sat down in the seat next to me and also in half of my seat. Sixteen hours squished between him and the window, was gonna be uncomfortable, then things got worse. As the bus pulled away from the station the man, now more or less on top of me began snoring.

I awkwardly tried to get to the earplugs in my bag now wedged below my seatmate, but was so constrained physically by the Tico man I soon gave up. Unable to sleep I sat uncomfortable and frustrated for hours. The air-conditioning on the bus had reached arctic levels, the winding road were making me nauseous, I started crying out of shear frustration. Then I had one of those moments, where I remembered that this was all a part of my adventure and that with budget travel you take a chance at this kind of stuff. I laughed it off, turned on my ipod and envisioned the fun adventures ahead in Panama City.

Then three hours into the bus ride my now requisite, Central American bus ride - back pain kicked in, as did the man next to me's creepy wondering hands. First I felt his big sweaty hand brushing by my thigh; but given our proximity I ignored it thinking it was an accident. Then the thigh brushing slowly became a breast brushing. As I squirmed to readjust myself his hand landed between my legs. I screamed. He "woke up" and looked at me acting confused as to why I was screaming.

I demanded he let me out of my seat and as I pryed my way past him he pinched my behind! Feeling violated and angry I informed the bus attendant of the problem; the bus attendant met my concerns with total apathy and left me to deal with the situation alone. I searched the bus for an empty seat there was only one. I felt terrible waking up the young Argentinian man comfortably occupying both seats but there was no way I could stay in my seat. As I explained why I needed his extra seat in middle of the night incoherent Spanish, the young man started to look very angry. He asked me where I was sitting and I pointed a few rows back, he then let me take the window seat next to him and said he would help me "deal with things" when we got to the border in the morning.

At the border I emerged from the bus, afraid to encounter the large Tico man. My new Argentinian friend, Raul, exit the bus walked up to the creepy man and punched him in the face! Then reported him to the police at the border and the man was pulled into a room. An officer then came to me and asked what happened the night before, I told him my best Spanish version of the story and he told me, "they would take care of it." I then saw Raul and two officers speaking with the bus attendant, who came over to me, apologized for not helping and said that the large Tico man had been kicked off the bus and was not allowed to cross the border at this time.

I went through the rest of immigration, re-board the bus with Raul, thanked him for his help and took back my original seat. Raul told me I reminded him of his sister and when he thought about some random man treating his sister the way the Tico man treated me, he got really angry, that's why he hit the guy. It was nice to finally feel like some one was on my side, when it comes to creepy men and their wondering hands. I slept the next eight hours of the bus ride, safe and comfortable and had it not been for Raul I might have given up on all Latin American men.