Chicken Bus Adventures
I took a taxi for $2 across about 1/4 of Managua today, in order to reach the bus station that has buses that travel south. Managua is nuts, it has almost 2 million people and none of the streets are named. I´ll say that again, no street names, just people who know where they are and where they are going and if you don´t, you´re out of luck.
My taxi driver, Carlos, was great and helpful and we chatted the whole way there. However he didn´t have change for my $5 and I might single handedly throw the entire taxi economy in Managua off if I tipped 130%. Due to Carlos´ warning that the place is dangerous, I was wary when I got to the bus station/produce market/scam artist hang out. Immediately two dudes in bus company shirts ran up and tried to take my bag, which I thanked them for and kindly insisted on carrying myself. Then they offered to go get change for Carlos, got him paid and assured me that I´d get the change from them once they got inside. It was $3, I wasn´t too worried either way.
Once in the parking lot they told me to get on an empty bus (the driver was on it), which kind of freaked me out. The driver assured me it was going the direction I wanted. At one point I sat there thinking, “I´m really not sure if I´m on the right bus, but since I don´t exactly have a destination, I can´t actually get lost. Wherever I end up, there I´ll be.”
The guy who promised me my change kept popping in and out, and I kept on being demanding “donde esta mi cambio!?” Finally the driver got thinking that I was getting scammed, and went and got a cop. The cop came on the bus, the guy paid me and everyone was happy. I felt like a dope that such a fuss was being made over $3 but I guess it´s the principle of the matter.
More people filed on and then it dawned on me that this was, in fact, a chicken bus. Once I started looking around, what actually was going on around me was so surreal, it felt like a dream;
* The guy who tried to scam me was telling me how dangerous Guatemala was (”Whew! Guatemala es muy peligroso!”)
* An older man held a wooden box containing cartons of cigarettes for sale. On top of three levels of Marlboro’s, Colonials, Elephants and Noros were little bags of peanuts. On top of those was a land-line telephone, much like ones you would see in any office building (v-tech?). The older man picked up the receiver and earnestly started dialing numbers. I assumed he was nuts and watched him with interest. I almost fell out of my seat when someone picked up on the other end, and he had a full on conversation on speaker phone. I still have no idea how that worked.
*A man with a human sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pinata got on (Michelangelo? Donatello?) and squeezed down the aisle. He finally found a home for the Martial Art wielding amphibian behind the driver, it´s paper mache´body wrapped around the back of the driver´s head.
* Michael Jackson´s “Billy Jean” plays loudly over everyone´s conversations (….who claims that I am the one, but the kid is not my son…)
* A man is laughing and chatting with the driver while dry shaving with a yellow disposable Bic razor.
* An old woman, small and shriveled, dressed in a frilly, pretty teal-green dress balances a large wooden tray of foods in baggies on her head while the driver takes corners like Mr. Toad´s Wild Ride. On the third tier something liquid and crimson sit perched in perfect balance, like jello filled water balloons.
* A kid with a perfectly styled, curly hair do, has an upside down and backwards visor on. For a shirt he is wearing a football jersey that bears the words “T-Rex” across the back. I have no idea if this is the name of a football player, if the kid is a burgeoning paleontologist, or if he is into glam rock.
* Now the radio is playing George Michael…”teacher, there are things, that I don´t want to learn and there ain´t no joy, for an uptown boy whose teacher has told him goodbye….”
I chat with the man across from me, Raff, who was born and raised in Nicaragua and is coming home to visit his family. He´s been living in Queens, New York for the past 20 years. Outside fat ponies graze in dry fields, and small weather beaten men drive little herds of cattle, their horns sharp and skin saggy. Two little girls ride along side the road on an adult sized bike, laughing.
The bus is entirely packed with people, but it´s not unpleasant. People are selling food, talking amongst themselves, happy to be there. Everyone smells like they showered that morning, the only unusual smell was fresh onions. Someone must have been transporting a large bag. I liked it though, it reminded me of cooking a turkey dinner, when I start the dressing early in the day and am chopping and cooking onions in the morning. Totally pleasant.
Everytime we stopped people ran up to the windows to sell things “naranja´s! churros! mannn-goes!” I´d love to trail around behind those folks sometime and live a day in the life of their day. Must be so interesting.
We finally reached our destination, Rivas, where I would catch a cab into San Juan Del Sur. Raff helped me find a cabbie, after he unloaded his things. Which included a human sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pinata. I guess Raff (short for Rafael) liked to travel with his namesake.
Tags: 1, Nicaragua, Posts by Bri, Tag Index