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The Chicken Buses of Guatemala are tripped out-pimped up-lowdown moving pieces of folk art.
I love them.
The buses are retired coach and school buses. Most of the ones I rode out of Antigua were built by the Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Ga. The Blue Bird emblem was still entrenched like a sheriff's badge near the front door of the Chicken Buses I rode. The school bus company started in 1927 as the Blue Bird Body Company in Richmond, Ind. under Christian principles. An original sign from company founders reading “God is our Refuge & Strength” still hangs the corporate headquarters in Georgia.

Perhaps the Chicken Buses are blessed.
Each all-steel bus is custom designed and painted in bright red, yellow and evergreen. Gobs of shiny chrome are attached to the front. Most of the buses have names like interpid explorer’s ships. Our first bus was “The Cubanita” (the little Cuban girl or woman). “The Princescita” rolls back and forth between La Barrona and Guatemala City. I saw the beautiful “Orellana.”
Many of the buses play loud mixes of cumbia and ranchera music, a perfect soundtrack for hair pin turns down the mountains of Antigua. Flavored with a bold and somewhat touristy New Orleans landscape, Antigua is nestled between three volcanos.

During passenger stops rural vendors come on board the Chicken Bus to sell fruit, juice in a plastic bag, plantain chips (my favorite) and water. I heard fried chicken is also sold on the bus, but I did not see it. One vendor carried a stack of newspapers on her head. There's an idea for the Chicago newspaper community.

A few men boarded the buses with machetes and leather whips. At one stop the bus driver requested that the cowboy deposit his machete at the front of the bus. I squirmed a lot. I am 6'2" and most of the Guatemalans are around five-feet tall. And most of the buses were built for kids. I did not bring an iPod and hardly had space to read a book or a magazine. I gazed out the window at the blue countryside, a pastiche of modest farms and roadside huts.

“We are in at least 60 countries,” said Ron Smith, Blue Bird Director of Marketing. “We sell them through dealers to school districts. The school districts use them between 10 and 15 years. The buses are really well made to meet federal safety standards in North America. They have a lot of life left in them. So a dealer or school district sells them to a broker who takes them to Third World countries. We see a lot of them in Latin America.” Smith said 225,000 miles is a good lifetime run for a Blue Bird bus in North America.



Smith studied the Chicken Bus photos I took. He even put one on his screen saver. He estimated the buses were built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “I can tell from the chasiss that it was prior to our models of the last 10 years or so,” he said. “They’ve been out there a while. But they’re built to transport students. Its a cage within a cage. It is beautiful to see how the owners and drivers take wonderful care of them.”

Locals say the vehicles are called Chicken Buses because people are crammed into them like chickens in a coop. Others claim they are Chicken Buses because riders transport live animals on the buses.

The website Antiguadailyphoto.com suggests that “Chicken bus is the derogatory term used in many guides to refer to the rural public transportation buses in Guatemala and in many parts of Latin America.” I do not use Chicken Bus in negative tones.
As the only “gringos” on the crowded buses, I found Guatemalan riders to be courteous, warm and engaging. Local women let their babies ride in the welcoming laps of my girl friend and her sister. I must have spent a dozen hours on Chicken Buses in Guatemala and not once did someone blow snot in my face. I can’t say that about my rides on the CTA.

Labels: folk art, Guatemala

A bunch of palm trees are not as interesting as one palm tree.
A singular palm tree became my respite during a New Year’s Eve vacation to Guatemala. I was with Adriana and her sister. I have never traveled with two women--at least in the physical sense. They are younger than me. At times it seemed I was in a reality show.

I was in La Barrona, (pop. 900), where no one spoke conversational English. I recalled a few phrases from high school before I flunked out of Spanish II.
On our first day at La Baronna (sandbar), Adriana and I came upon a large sandbar with the slope of a crescent moon. Adriana was in La Barrona a few years ago when she volunteered for a sea turtle conservation effort. She said the sandbar was new. I headed for the palm tree perched above the sandbar. The palm tree was in an estuary steps from the Pacific Ocean. Herons as thin as bamboo shoots abounded along a riverway. I saw pelicans and Great Egrets. Maybe Kingfishers, I'm not sure.

The palm tree reminded me of those minimalist Corona beer commercials. No one was within miles. I figured the one coconut in the palm tree would fall down and knock me in the head. I had no iPod or cell phone. Just a book of Raymond Carver short stories, a notebook and some back issues of “Baseball America.”

I love the timeless possibility of an ocean horizon more than the momentary adventure of the crashing sea. A few times during our week in La Barrona I made my way to the palm tree I called my own. There were no other footprints in the sand besides mine from previous visits. Some visitors to my secret spot saw sea debris lodged in the sandbar. I only saw the ocean and virgin sunsets.

The world spins on dreams. I thought a lot about this under the palm tree. Adriana has a fast-talking upbeat friend name Douglas who took an eight hour Chicken Bus ride to reconnect with her. He is a fisherman who wants to spend three years working in Houston, Tx. to better his family.
Just about every night I was at the beach I spotted a man walking the beach looking for turtle eggs. He was always a different man, but similar in that he was always alone. Every man I saw carried a machete by his side. The foreword silhouettes of these wandering Guatemalan men under a full moon will be etched in my mind. Three-quarters of Guatemala--the most populous country in Central America---lives under the poverty level. But these men have the freedom of the ocean.

We took the Chicken Bus to La Baronna from Antigua. The buses are so named because people cram into them like chickens. They are reclaimed coach and school buses from the United States. During one connection on the way to La Barrona, I used the bathroom at a gutted out gas station.
When I came out of the loo I saw Adriana sitting on a curb between the two gas station pumps. Her backpack was at her right side. Her sunglasses sparkled in the piercing sun. She looked beautiful. She was waiting for her favorite bus, the Princess, whose spinning wheels takes you to La Barrona. She is always waiting for the next adventure, which is what I love about her. I thought about that, too, under my palm tree, alone and looking at the fortuity of the ocean.

Labels: Guatemala