Why I hate Colin Farrell

Is it Colin Farrell? Is it Kerry Tasker? Who can tell?

'What?' you ask, 'how could anyone NOT hate ColinFarrell? I can give you half a dozen reasons to hateColin Farrell: Daredevil, Alexander, Daredevil, SWAT,Daredevil, He looks like your friend Kerry Tasker...' I know, it's easy to hate Colin Farrell,especially for helping Ben Affleck punish humanity with the Daredevil movie, but my specific reason for hating Colin Farrell starts with a bus ride... or more accurately, what was supposed to be a bus ride. I decided to skip Nazca because it sounded like it had become a tourist trap and I get motion-sickness (to see the lines you go up in a plane. Someone told me hot air balloon too, but I couldn't confirm that. I'd go just for a ride in a baloon actually). Also I saw a similar geoglyph on my Ballestas expedition, and I didn't want to get to Nazca and ask questions about the lines just to find out what I could read on wikipedia. I guess I decided that the experiencewould be less than transcendent. But we're hating Colin Farrell in this post I believe, not debating the worthiness of viewing theNazca lines as a spiritual experience. At any rate, I decided the canyons near Arequipa (la Ciudad Blanca) were beckoning. As it was a 12-hour bus ride, and seeing as how the bus was to double as my bed for the night, I spent the extra soles on Ormeño's RoyalDirect bus, which was to take me from Pisco to Arequipa with no stops in 12 hours, bathing me in attention from the friendly coach attendent, providing me meals, a bathroom, guarenteed only as many people as there are seats, etc. The bus was to depart from Pisco at 6:30pm (we're going to really hate Colin Farrell soon enough, so bear with me). I returned from the Ballestas (where I saw dolphins, cormerants,sea lions, a particularly rude pelican, yada yada) around 4:30, exhausted, sunburned, in need of a shower but not wanting one due to my skin, and without a hotel anyways. So I lounged around the plaza and an internet cafe (You can now download Ira Glass podcastsfor free from www.thislife.org, and if you're a geek like me you'll be excited to hear that!) until 6:00,then headed to the bus station. 6:30 quickly approached, but no bus came with it. I got up to ask the attendant, who saw me coming and said 'Arequipa, right?' 'Si.' So he got on his cellphone and after a rapid exchange in Spanish told me we had to go to San Clemente, the next town over. I tried to protest and ask why and he played the No Ingles card, but made it sound like the first bus had broke down and a second bus was leaving from Lima and would be through San Clemente but not Pisco. He said I could take a cab to San Clemente and that he would pay for it, and we both climbed into a cab. I felt OK because I knew the busses break down frequently, and that this guy worked at the bus station and had sold me my ticket the other day, but by this time it was dark, and as we drove through heavy industry and eventually countryside I began to worry. First of all, let me explain a little bit about safety in Peru: up until now I had never felt unsafe, but people are always telling me things like 'don't worry it's safe here' or 'this area is safe but don't go into these areas,' and my travelbook and fellow backpackers have numerous stories of bus hold-ups, strangle muggings, etc. Also, the hostals here are all locked 24/7, and you have to ring a bell to get in or out to have someone unlock the door for you. Also banks have permanent police details. So as we're driving through who knows where I'm thinking I didn't see any signs for San Clemente, the guy in front is on his cell again, and I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. So I discretely work my credit and debit card into my boot so if I do end up hog-tied in a tub somewhere I'll hopefully hold onto those. Then the guy from the bus station hops out pretty much in the middle of nowhere, closes the door, points at me, points in the direction we were heading, and we speed off (which all happened prettyfast). The cabbie seems friendly but speaks no English, so we don't get very far talking. I'm reallystarting to sweat after a bit, but then I see a sign for San Clemente, which eases the tension a bit. We eventually arive at the Ormeño office, which is pretty much just a barren room with a counter and some plywood portioning off part of the room. Oh, and a conspicuous water spigot jutting about three feet from thewall at knee level. And it's locked, that is the door is open but the bars over the doorway are locked. The cabbie motions to leave and I protest, as the office is empty, so he starts poking around. The employee is eating next door it turns out. He lets me into the office, looks at my ticket, tells me the bus is coming at 9:30 (friggin sweet, almost 3 hours away), then locks the iron bars again (locking me IN), goes into the enclosure, turns on a TV and gets on a cellphone. At this point I'm feeling less like a guest and more like a hostage, and I'm starting to sweat again. I mean the office looks like it hadn't been used for some time, and the whole thing was so strange... Fortunately not long after that some other people showed up with bus-related business. Around 9:30 the attendent takes me accross a highway, where a half-hour later a bus comes and I get on. By this point I'm feeling safe again, and i'm totally exhausted and want to sink into the plush bus seat and sleep. Unfortunately Colin Farrell had other plans. About 45 minutes later i'm rudely awakened to what sounds like 50 cent and Limp Bizkit. And it's loud. Like rock-concert loud. I wake with a start, wonder how I got on a bus with Fred Durst, and look up: the bus televisions are playing fucking Miami Vice with Colin Farrells big, ugly, mulleted head looking cool while shooting drug dealers with mostly naked women nearby. I think that's what I hate most about Colin Farrell, is he always looks like he's thinking to himself: 'I'm Colin Farrell.' Plus he makes shittymovies. He's no Ben Affleck, but he's damn close. Maybe he can be in Armageddon 2 with Ben. That would fit. So fucking Colin is yelling, Fred Durst is screaming, and I almost lost it. But no one else seemed bothered, even though everyone was sleeping when I got on board. It was genuinely strange. At any rate, my earplugs were NOT handy (didn't we learn a lesson about this earlier?), and the movie wasn't going away, so I thought I'd try and watch it. But it was dubbed and subtitled in Spanish. Eventually I got to sleep, only to be again awakened 6 hours later so we could watch a bootlegged Break Up (the romantic comedy of the year I'm sure, starring sweethearts Vince Vaugn and that girl from Friends) at 6am and eat breakfast,which was white bread with bolognia and egg salad sandwiches. I drank the juice. 14 hours in total, we pulled into Arequipa at around 2pm. Oh yeah, and our Directo bus made several stops to pick people up. I don't know what the moral of this story is. Trust people but notOrmeño bus lines?