Mijha and her Puerto Rico experience are bearing out, as there is some universality to developing world travel. As it happens, I not only have adventures with buses, but with trains and taxis.
Trains are no big deal--they mostly run on time, they just don't seem to have any sort of fire code capacity laws. Thursday I rode with so many people I could have lifted my feet off the ground and and still been born aloft by the crowd. At some point, we were so full the train doors wouldn't close--which doesn't mean the train won't run, gentle reader; it means it runs with the doors wide open and the people closest to the door clinging to the ceiling straps to avoid being sucked out. Among my fellow travellers were a guy bleeding from a fight, a guy carrying a TV, and a street preacher who yelled over the ruckus that Satan had kidnapped our souls.
Ah, but the real adventure. The real adventure is the strange hybrid known as the minibus taxi. It is a minivan designed to seat maybe 8-10 people and regularly seating twice that, with people perched under the dashboard, crushed against the door, and sitting by the driver with someon else's toddler in their lap. There are, need I say it, no seat belts. Here's how the minibus taxi works: you, the prospective rider, stand on the side of the road aimlessly like a common prostitute. As cabs packed like clown cars go by, they flash their lights and yell out their destination. If they're going where you're going, you wave casually. They then stop for you to get in--or they don't totally stop, they slow down, and you jump on the running board of the car and the passengers pull you in.
People, I LOVE IT. It is an adventure every day.
The train and minibus are how I get to the AIDS group home for kids that I am now volunteering at 4 days a week. I take the train part of the way and the minibus the rest. Round trip it costs me less than $3 a day. And what price entertainment, really? Yesterday a woman got on with a chicken, and no one even looked at her funny.
I have not yet seen white people on the minibus or the train, so it is a refreshing change from the hostel and the touristy areas. Whites seem either to drive cars or take regular taxis. If they ride the train, they ride first class. The minibus is a response to apartheid, when townships were built outside the city and seen as a steady supply of labor, but arrangements weren't made for getting people into and out of the city. So it still remains quite segregated. I am gate-crashing as usual.
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ha ha, my dad has fond memories of his days in panama and the minibuses. there, they are very very colorfully decorated and he would always faithfully wait for his favorite one to come by and take heim around. they have them in mexico too. they are called "rutas" or something and they may or may not let you off where you want to go. i guess the trains in nyc now seem like luxury travel, huh?
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