The Chicken Bus Post

Guatemala is famous for many things: textiles, indigenous dress, maize, and camionetas, also known as Chicken Buses. To me it’s a term of endearment, a long-standing joke about the baggage that is transported in these second-class, everyday buses. The best part of the joke? It’s completely true. I’ve ridden with a woman carrying a live turkey in her sack, I didn’t even know it was on there until she passed me in the aisle on her way out, not even batting an eye. Some locals call the buses Parejas, for the two ladders that connect to the luggage rack on top where everything from duffel bags to baskets of vegetable are thrown on top. The assistant to the driver, runs up and down the racks, through the front door, through the back door, all while the bus is in motion getting luggage, collecting fares, and packing in more passengers.

Much different than the Pullman buses (the converted vans), the camionetas are old converted US school buses, although you’d hardly recognize them. Each bus, driver, and the essential assistant, have a personality of their own. Most buses are painted bright colors along with names, themes and sometimes motifs. So far we’ve ridden in Guadalupe, Christo, and I’ve forgotten the rest, but one had a Miley Cirus sticker on it’s review mirror, she seems to be pretty popular here despite her utter lack of talent or relevance. Guadalupe had a huge colorful picture of the Virgin de Guadalupe on the ceiling, and I might have imagined, it but I could swear the driver was a bit more careful and a bit more cautious than the others...

From the outside the buses appear bright and cheery and up-kept. I’ve often seen two or more men washing their bus with great pride. Inside they’ve been altered slightly, or maybe it’s because they’re so old I just think they been converted, but they all very much have the school bus feel. On one trip the boys sitting behind us made intermittent kissing noises, the ride was so similar to middle school I had to laugh.

The ride is well, the ride is indescribable, each so different than the last it’s dizzying. Some buses are spaciously empty with only a few heads in the first few front seats. Then there’s mercado buses, a whole different story. If you try going to a puebla when it’s market day, you’ll be packed with about 2 dozen other people and their baggage (whatever it might be) for the ride. The Saturday we went to Totonipican for the market, there were 3 people in every seat, 7 people in every aisle and the back of the bus was so crowded with us stragglers, we were left crushed together not too unlike sardines in a can. Nobody could move, but every once in awhile the back door would pop open and another passenger would literally be shoved in and the door would shut, the assistant hanging onto the back ladder, fully outside, no doubt scouting the next victim.

The assistants are usually young boys, teenagers or a bit older, who take their jobs very seriously. The assistant for Totonipican managed to reach us in the back of the bus by hanging on to the luggage racks and stepping on the back of the seats through the crowd, avoiding the packed aisles to collect our fare. “Pero señor no puedo ahora,” I smiled bemused to packed in to even try to reach into my pocket and hand him the fare. He nodded knowingly, unworried. Navigators of the buses, each new face that comes on, from the side of the road or a designated stop is noted and visited by the assistant, and if change is needed he will disappear again and re-appear five minutes later with the exact change needed. They are sultans of their domain, and do whatever they please, but have, in my experience, been very humorous and very helpful with as much personality as the bus they are running.