You can sell an awful lot of worm medicine on a bus in the Andes

MATTHEW PARRIS

At Cerro de Pasco, we found a bus for Huanuco. Cerro is a mining town in the high Andean plain, and feels like it: stark, cold and treeless, thin air, thin dogs, thin people. But busy: it was dusk and half the town seemed to be milling around the bus station contemplating the same journey as us. Huanuco is three hours' winding ride away, halfway down into the Amazon and renowned for its rich harvests, its tropical breezes and its exuberant nightlife.

And it was Saturday night. The bus fare was only $3 and our bus was full, or so we thought until the driver began what all bus-travellers in Peru learn to expect: a series of honks, enginerevs and small lunges forward designed simultaneously to impress existing and intending passengers with the imminence of our departure (so nobody defects to another bus) while stopping short of an actual departure (leaving time for a last-minute complement of standing-room-only passengers).

This went on for half an hour, allowing three strapping young miners with bright eyes, no luggage and their week's wages (no doubt) in their back pockets to deliberate whether or not to blow it all on a night out in Huanuco. They boarded, keeping on (and wearing throughout) their plastic miners' helmets. To be a miner is something, in rural Peru.

It was dark when we pulled away. A baby was crying. A man I took to be employed by the bus company went over to pat and calm the baby. He had checked that all seats were taken and hailed the driver with a cheery Vamos ('Let's go') before we left. He was thirtysomething with a bright red PVC travelling bag and a bit of a belly, dressed Peruviancool in dark trousers and a white polyester polo-neck sweatshirt with a map of Chile on the chest and the gibberish logo DESIG CHILE calculated to impress passengers with his globe-trotting credentials.

But he did not turn out to be the conductor, who was a rather pinched and put-upon-looking youth they called Chino, who did, I slowly realised, all the work. Our friend just chatted amiably and confidently through three hours of twisting, diving, braking and accelerating while the moon swung wildly across the sky and huge dark mountains between which we were descending loomed outside. It was a very dark night and we had 7,000 feet to descend, the baby yelling intermittently.

I overheard our friend talking, as a man of the world might, about the relativities of Latin American currencies. 'In Venezuela houses are incredibly expensive, but of course the cheese is cheaper.' Many passengers looked impressed. The baby was not impressed. Sometimes our friend would assist a boarding passenger with advice on where a perch might be found.

And it was not until we were only half an hour out of Huanuco that I realised our friend had nothing at all to do with the bus company. He positioned himself at the front of the bus and, turning to face the whole complement of us, cleared his throat. My Spanish is poor but I was able to note down the gist of what he said.

'Some of us on this bus are richer, some poorer, but none of us is very rich or we would ride in our own car. [Laughter.] 'The rich are unlike us. But are they happier than you or I? Friends, they are often miserable. For they may lack the good health most of you enjoy. Poor as you may be, if you are healthy you are rich.'

The passengers liked this. A bond had been established, except with the baby.

'I know this continent. The scourge of disease is everywhere. Aids, for example. Not just among the maricones' ('butterflies', which is to say homosexuals) [chuckles] 'but to anyone who is careless' (the young miners stared at their feet). He went on to talk at length about the scourge of Aids, and I wondered whether he might be one of the protestant Christian evangelists who are feasting on the carcass of the Catholic Church in South America these days.

But no. Our friend turned, a propos of little, to cancer, and described many of the organs in which you can have it. Spirits in the bus were lowering. Then, for no evident reason, he reached into his neat scarlet bag, unzipping one of what looked like many compartments. The baby stopped grizzling and watched.

Out came a super-duper sort of toothbrush, new in its packet. 'How many teeth does an adult human being possess?' he asked the bus. Various answers were offered, one young woman saying, 'Thirty-two?'

`Yes! A well-educated senorita. Thirty-two indeed. Every one of them important. And how often do you brush your teeth every day? Be honest.'

This discourse, too, continued for some time, punctuated by another dive into the scarlet bag. And out came a fistful of slim packets each bearing a picture of a 1950s

style American beauty with a gleaming smile, and the trademark Dental Fine. `Here is the answer.'

The link with cancer and Aids was never explained; but after further praise of Dental Fine, our friend passed along the aisles giving a packet to every passenger — 'simply to examine. You need not buy.' Everyone was staring fascinated at their Dental Fine as our friend told them that 'in Colombia this will cost you the equivalent of ten soles.I will give you a packet for just three.'

This was half the bus fare, but when he came round to collect, almost all his packets were sold, including to the young miners, and to a student opposite me who, canoodling with his girlfriend (the only passenger to possess a mobile phone), had looked rather sceptical when the speech started.

Well done, friend, I thought. But there was more. 'Do any of you have a child, or a dog, which, though you feed it well, stays thin? And the cause?' The baby stared as he dived again into yet another zipped compartment. Out came new packets.

'Intestinal parasites.' There could exist within us, he explained, worms many metres long. 'They can enter unseen, at either end. Leave your rectum unguarded for just five minutes and they can enter.' Passengers shifted uneasily in their seats. Poor Chino, who was trying to collect tickets, dodged our friend's generously gesticulating arms, with a look of down-trodden reproach.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Huanuco, moths around its streetlights and flowering trees announcing this richer clime, most of the passengers, including the student, the owner of the mobile phone and all the miners, had bought his worm medicine too.

How I admired this man, living on his wits, a better speaker than three quarters of the Parliamentary Conservative party and as good an actor, on a thousandth of the income, as many soap celebrities in Britain. The young miners got off early, on rumours of a police control point ahead. But not before the baby, whose mother made her exit well before we reached the busy centre and its sounds of drifting music. 'Hasta luego, pequeifito,' ('cheerio, little fella') said our friend.

The departing baby, in unaccustomed silence, stared at him with a glance as imperious as that of any Caesar.

Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times.