Adventures from Texas, USA. Taking the Greyhound Bus

"Is everything all right at he back? Or do I need to call the po-leece?"

And then I hear something that makes my heart stop beating.

"Cops get on this bus and people gonna get hurt."

The gravel voice belonged to a man who boarded four hours ago; an African American, with a grizzled, homeless look that carried the suggestion he was just released from prison. While I slept had been touching Eliza's hair, sniffing her long brunette locks. Then he had cupped her breast, and she had verbally exploded, which is what woke me up. Our two travelling companions, Matt and Fergus, sat across the aisle. I could see the whites of their eyes, and we all had the same thoughts.

This man had a weapon, and we were all going to die.

Silence answered the driver. Soon the engine revved again. Eliza swapped seats with Matt, but until the sun rose above the Texas dust, we stayed very silent, and very alert.

Daylight brought with it relief and a realistic perspective. Eliza's harasser was, in reality, a scrawny little thing, and we could have easily over-powered him. The shadows had played tricks with us.

However, the new day brought with it another problem. Since we started out from Toronto we had boarded a bus that was reported stolen, had our luggage hurled off by a quarterback Greyhound employee, suffered racism and small town opinions, but that was nothing compared to the Stench. Our seats, the only four left when we had boarded, were right next to the only toilet at the very rear. It had not been emptied because of the previous night's power cut.  Before we stopped at the next rest station for breakfast, the smell of collected shit forced us to breathe through cloth to try and filter it for our scarred nasal passageways. Matt had had enough, and stopped a burly Mexican man from entering. Just when I thought this would be trouble, the man sat down like an obedient schoolchild.

At the rest stop, Matt and I brainstormed until we came up with a solution that did not involve us waiting for another bus only yards from the Mexican border. We bought four cans of heavily scented air-spray, and at regular intervals during the next day of our journey to Las Vegas , sprayed the toilet door from top to bottom with the smells of what was supposed to be apples and lavender. It was successful, if only for short windows of time.

The harassing man had befriended a young mother and her son who boarded soon after breakfast. Her little boy cried about the putrid toilet smell, despite our efforts with the aerosols. We considered warning her about the potential ex-prisoner, but she seemed to sense the danger. She alighted at the next stop, although she had said she was heading for Los Angeles . Soon, the scrawny man disembarked aw well, at the same bus station where the deadly toilet was finally emptied and cleaned. With some stretching space, no danger and no stench of shit, we all slept for the first time in two days.

I woke just before dawn. Heavy rain pelted the bus. The sun crept up, and the mixed weather created this great golden glow around the bus and across the Nevada desert, populated only by fake looking cacti, whose silhouettes appeared like angels in the sand. It was a wondrous site. I snatched up my camera and captured it in all its glory.

We dumped our bags at Circus Circus and wandered up the Strip. It was just after six a.m. and already the sun was unbearable to my pale Scottish skin. We guzzled Gatorade while admiring the mighty casinos of America 's playground. Thousands of leaflets for strip joints and hookers littered the sidewalk, a sign of a regular Vegas night.

Amidst all this money and sin, all the filth and anger, stood a priest. Even in this desert heat, which broke sweat from my every pore, he was a statue dressed all in black, save for the pure white dog collar. In both hands he held a charity collection can. It was the most impressive sight I have ever witnessed; more so than Niagara Falls or the Empire State Building, the White House or Graceland . This one man of God stood in the heart of sin, baking in this hard, hellish heat.

I slotted a quarter into his can, and moved on.