More Crowded Than the Orange Line at Rush Hour

ANTIGUA, Guatemala--It's really not fair to call it a chicken bus.


After all, that classic description of Central American transportation comes from the almost inevitable fact that if you are taking a cheap bus through the countryside, plenty of folks have brought their live poultry along with them. The bus I take home from Common Hope two kilometers into central Antigua seems not to have any chickens. Plenty of commuters, though, even if none of them wear Brooks Brothers suits.

Otherwise, it looks like the classic chicken bus. (There's no Spanish translation of this--it's a gringo term. To the locals, it's just "autobus.") That means it's a very very old U.S. school bus--the yellow kind--brightly painted with elaborate designs and plenty of prayers. They were probably designed to hold 40 school children; they generally run with 60 to 70 people, mostly adults.

I'm generally not a big fan of chicken buses. I just don't like people that much, especially when strangers are sitting in my lap. But there are some security concerns with walking at dusk from el proyecto (the local term for any sizable facilty run by foreign do-gooders) to central Antigua, where I'm living. So sometimes, I take the bus. The first couple times were a bit odd--it's always a little weird being the only gringa in the crowd, and a tall one at that. But today, as I squeezed into the three-across seat with only a mumbled phrase of courtesy, I was actually comfortable with it.

After all, it's cheap--less than 20 cents. The buses run very frequently, and because the drivers consider themselves the only vehicles on the road, they're fast.

The Guatemalan passengers, who usually are the most polite people imaginable, suspend all those rules on the bus. Pregnant women, old ladies, little kids--hey, if there isn't room, stand!

Except for the ever-present possibility of a chicken, maybe it's a bit like Metro after all.