If you have ever visited Guatemala then you will be well accustomed to camionetas or Chicken Buses. They are old American school buses that once we are done with them are sold at auctions, driven down through Mexico, given a killer paint job, and used as public transportation. I feel like American school children would like going to school a lot more if they could get on these tricked-out school busses each morning. To be clear, these are old American school buses that were considered too old to cary around a below maximum capacity number of elementary school children. So naturally they are deemed suitable to carry around as many people as can physically squeeze through the doors.
If you do ever find yourself on a bus in Guatemala here is a tip: most busses have ayudantes (helpers) who are in charge of collecting money and putting large bags on the roof. Busses do not have Charlie Cards or any type of pre-paid plans like there are in the U.S.A. and you don't pay when you get on the bus. You get on the bus and take a seat (if you are lucky) and later the ayudante walks through the bus to collect the money. Know how much your trip is going to cost! Ayudantes are notorious for aprovecharing (spanglish for taking advantage) of people. Stay strong! I cannot even count the number of times that ayudantes have tried to overcharge me. It is getting less frequent as my Spanish is getting better, but it still happens too often!
A couple friends of mine and fellow PCVs put together a tumblr of camioneta stories. They give you a better idea of what being on a camioneta is like. http://camionetadiaries.tumblr.com/
One thing about public transportation in Guatemala is that people often come on the bus to sell you things, ask for money, or to preach. These are frequent occurrences. I like the kids who come on the bus with a bag of hard candy and little packs of gum. Other things that are sold on the bus are: Pollo Campero boxes of fast food, soda, bags of cut up fruit, coconut water in little plastic bags, bread, chuchitos (like tamales), and miracle medicine that they claim can fix just about everything. There are also a surprising number of people with sick or mangled children, missing limbs, or beggars. It is the camioneta sermons that usually go on for the longest amount of time (and later pass through the buss for donations). I tried to take a little video of one camioneta sermon without drawing attention to my camera. Turn the volume wayyyyyy up to get the full effect.
Busses get CROWDED. There is absolutely no such thing as maximum capacity on these things. The normal number of people to a seat is three across. On each side. Meaning that when the bus is full people are sitting six across so that the people on the aisle usually only have one butt cheek on the seat. After that people still manage to pile into the isles in between all of these people. It gets tight. I have both stood and been the third person on a seat for hour-long bus rides and it is not fun.
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| Sometimes you have to make your own seat |
In order to save money, people will often have their child stand in front of them in the seat so that they don't have to pay an extra bus fair. Makes sense to me if they are only taking up one space.
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| 2 adults, 4 children. Later another adult joined them. |
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