You can call it a camioneta. You can call it a chicken bus, or even just plain bus (but with a
Spanish accent: "boos"). But don't call it a "bus de pollo" because somehow the literal translation of chicken bus is insulting. They are everywhere and they carry thousands of people all over this country to other cities, other pueblos, other neighborhoods and even just down the road. I stand in front of Santa Lucia every morning, and no matter what time I get there--five minutes early, 10 minutes late--there are always two or three camionetas that come by with the conductor's cry: Ciu Vieja!
Here's how to make a chicken bus: take a retired, no longer considered usable school bus from the USA, and transport it somewhow to Guatemala. Once here, strip the interior completely and reconfigure it so that at least three more rows of seats are crammed in. Attach hand rails the length of the entire ceiling and and then suspend racks just above head level so that people who rely on the buses to transport their goods (things like huge sacks of potatoes and piles of firewood) from place to place have somewhere to put their stuff. Paint the outside all kinds of brightly mismatching colors. Affix horrifying pictures of Jesus on the cross with blood dripping down his face to the windows, or maybe the sad sad face of Mary in mourning. Make sure that the dashboard includes a prayer, petitioning God to protect the piloto, the conductor and the passengers. Dont' forget the sound system that will be able to blast American oldies or Latin music through the entire bus. And pick a good name (something like Dulce Daniela), and paint it in huge letters so that it can be seen from afar. The last addition is the cargo rack added to the top of the bus for stuff that just won't fit in side. Finally, cram twice as many people into the bus than there is room for, and you have a chicken bus.
The public bus system is so very different here. Noisy, crowded, a bit dangerous, cheap, efficient. The distance from where I live to where I need to get to is almost the exact same distance as the Fauntleroy ferry terminal is to South Seattle Community College. From start to finish/door to door, one trip takes 20 minutes andcosts about 30 cents ( including the 5 minute walk to the bus stop and climb up the side of Volcan Agua); the other takes 45, including a 20 minute wait for a transfer and costs 9 times as much. I'm just sayin'.
Being un piloto or un conductor (it takes two men to run the bus--one to drive, the other to do everything else; the second is way more important) de un bus is a decent job. The job of conductor takes strong lungs and an agility that rivals that of a chimpanzee. They jump off and on the bus before it has completely stopped thousands of times a day, calling out their destinations and beckoning passengers to load on. With the seats crammed so full that passangers' butts touch across the aisles and others stand in the back in full body contact filling every millimeter of floor space, the conductores inch their way from front to back, collecting fares that they keep in their hands and shove into their pockets. "Intimate" is the word that comes to mind when considering how it feels to have the piloto's butt smoosh against my shoulder once my fare is paid. The pilotos and the drivers get a cut of the fares they collect, which is why laws that govern occupancy are always ignored.
The job has an awful danger to it, too. I am not referring to the possiblity of falling off when the bus is moving--in fact, I have never heard of that happening. It's the gangs that pose danger. At various times during the day, money is turned over. If the conductor has not managed to fill the bus adaquately, too bad. Street knowledge is that pilotos y conductores have lost their lives for not forking over enough dinero. I have never read it in the paper or thank God seen it happen, but it seems to be conventional knowledge that it is so.
I took a 2 1/2 hour chiken bus ride last week, but not to my original destination to Xela. I had a weird bug of some sort that left me uninterested in travelling the 5 hours, so I changed my plans at the last minute and travelled again to Lake Atitlan with a bunch of people from the school where I study Spanish. I am so glad I went. I had been thinking that I didn't really need to see the lake again, having done so the past two years. Yet it is stunning and so worth the chicken bus ride! We had a small bit of luck in that it only poured Saturday night and Sunday while we were waiting for our return shuttle. Speaking of rain, why in the name of all that I hold valuable did I decide not to bring those damn boots?!? Last year's drought was an anomoly; this year's flooding so far has been, too. My feet are wet and my one pair of jeans is now a strange green.
As we travelled to the lake, evidence was all around us of the devastating power water has. For several miles through the highlands, out one side of the bus was the vista of rambly, rolly hills, neatly and beautifully cultivated into a random pattern of every hue of green. For miles stretched the promise of a strong harvest. The view of the upslope, however, was quite different. Rivers of orangish mud looked as though they had been freeze-framed mid flow. Pebbles, rocks and boulders sat in small mountains in strange and inappropriate places (great word, "inappropriate") like on top of people's homes, in front of cars and in the middle of the road. Sometimes we had to wait for cars to pass from the opposite direction: one side of the road was covered in mud; the other had half fallen down the slope. Those of us with edge fear--okay, I--focused on the prayer across the dashboard, looking neither left nor right. In Ciudad Vieja, still some 3oo or so people are living in the Cathedral because of the mudslides that buried their neighborhood. Out in the country, their aren't any cathedrals, so I don't really know where those people go. It is a long hard job to unbury a house with a shovel. I suspect that many stay buried and people just build a few feet over.
I have now been here for over a month. I have one week left out in Ciudad Vieja, then another to travel a bit, should I want to. Xela is still high on my places to see. Almost every day it has rained with a fervor that those of us who live in the Rainy City never experience. I am so very thankful that I do not have to stand waiting for the bus!
Steve Davis & me as we make our way through the mighty jungle near Lake Atitlan
What could be more beautiful? 
