Chicken buses
I don't like using the buses at home - not because I'm a snob or anything like that, but because they confuse the hell out of me. Whenever I've got on the same numbered bus (e.g. No.17) on more than one occasion it seems to have taken a completely different route to the time before. And not always in the direction I was intending to head.

Anyway, I digress. Whilst travelling in Central America a few years ago I didn't have the luxury of choice in the form of transport I took. It was chicken bus or expensive tourist mini van. I opted for the former.

The Guatemalan chicken bus is basically an old American school bus. Designed originally to seat slightly tubby children; in Guatemala I would often find myself sharing a seat with 2 other people, with my knees up somewhere around my chin, a foot resting on a sack of grain and my face pressed a little too snugly to a standing passenger's 'arris.

Getting from A to B normally necessitated a detour and 4 bus changes via C,D,E and F. It worked remarkably well though. You'd rock up at your departure point, tell the disinterested teenage "conductor" where you wanted to end up and then watch as your luggage sailed onto the roof. From then on you jumped off at various points along the way and chased your bag from bus to bus.

Guatemalan bus drivers were a law unto themselves as well. These were guys who proudly hung signs above their seat that proclaimed "Jesus is my co-pilot" and "I drive, God guides me" whilst double overtaking on a blind bend in the mountains.

Personally I liked to think that if they'd just curbed their enthusiasm a little they wouldn't have required the assistance of the almighty. To say I was scared shitless on occasion would be an understatement.
(mcgriffto, Thu 25 Jun 2009, 17:18, Reply)