Vive Le Canada, eh?

July 3rd, 2010: Usually I will cringe at the travelers that have a Canadian flag sewed to their daypacks, backpacks, hats, shirts, shorts, socks and let’s not forget those proud to be Canadian shoe laces to keep themselves from being identified as a resident of the United States of America. I love everything about Canada and I can at times understand separating themselves because I myself at times (lots of times) am embarrassed by the behavior of my fellow comrades. But today…I was so – so – so very happy that one of the most rude, obnoxious travelers I have met had a good sized Canadian flag plastered right onto the side of her daypack. This would have been a good time for her to leave her daypack at home.

The amazonian sized Canadian girl with a table in the rear decided to pick a fight with two frail Peruvian senior citizens, taking their seat in the middle of our 12 hour endurance tour seeing a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains to some knocked down stones and tunnels of Chavin de Huantar dating from 1000-200BC.

When the elderly lady kindly asked if she could have her seat back, the Canadian girl gave her a look a teenager would give someone adding a rude comment saying that there are no seats. The woman again asked kindly for her seat. Now that the entire bus was becoming aware what is going on, her strength of 10 men was not as intimidating because we had at least 11 men on the bus. I can see why the girl was in desperation mode wanting the old couples seat because they definitely had two of the worst seats right next to the toilet in the very last row of the bus that didn’t even seem to have the luxury of reclining seats.

Now it was a battle of patience. Eventually they lost, getting up as they had to do the walk of shame to the back of the long bus, with the Canadian flag proudly showing everyone that they were not from the United States. Today…I liked those flag toting Canadians that wanted to show the separation of the two. Vive Le Canada, eh?