Day 256: Pinball Wizard (11/10/2011)

They teach you about sensory deprivation in the first week of spy school.

When the goons catch you, they stick you in a box, deprive you of external stimuli and leave you there for hours on end.

And so, I was introduced to the South American bus driver´s fixation with the Baby Jesus. They slap their trucks thick with stickers and depictions of the little fella. Except today they took the whole business a step further.

The light to the windows from rows one to six were blacked out  by a fifteen foot plastic lamination of the Child King, complete with oversized crown and more rouge than a trendy café in London. There was nothing to see for 300km. From the outside, the bus was a mobile place of worship. From the inside, it was a torture chamber.

I did the only thing I could and deployed the tactics spy school had drilled into me. Find an object to focus on and pass the hours in solitary by concentrating on the detail.

The driver´s collection of ties hanging in the curtained window behind his seat seemed like a sensible place to start so I analyzed the weave, memorized the washing instructions and absorbed the dubious pattern of soup stains.

Before I knew it, five hours had passed and we were disgorged onto the tarmac at Ambato for the final leg to Cuenca.

Sadly, Spy school never mentioned what was to follow so I had to freestyle.

The gaggle of women producing 900 words a minute at 130 decibels in the row in front - they died where they sat.

The twenty-nine stone child who persisted in pushing his seat back and cutting off the circulation to my legs - he hit the tarmac at 80kpmh.

The frankly dire film about a dog and a ghost who defeat a wizard using only the power of something or other – played out at ear bleeding volume, in Spanish, through speakers more crackly than an out of control Vander Graff Generator - quite good actually.

And then the blind kid playing guitar who spent the majority of the journey massacring a series of three Ecuadorian classics, over and over again.

Sadly, I didn´t realize he was blind until I had snapped his guitar and bitten off his ears.

It was about then that I realized that he was staring... fumbling... panicking  - all blindly.

I apologetically pieced his matchwood instrument back together, straightened his tie, brushed the dust off his coat and put a coin in his jar.

On reflection, I´m sure I did him a favour.

Now he´s blind and deaf.

If he ever has the good fortune to be struck dumb he could sure play a mean pinball.