Blogs :: on the bus
Ever traveled via bus in Mexico? It's expensive ($30 for 3 hours), nice and comfortable, air-conditioned and they play crap Hollywood dubbed in Spanish movies like the cleaner...Ever traveled via bus in Belize? It's cheap ($3 for 3 hours), crowded and cramped, no movies (but there is one of those old school, small channel dial TVs from back in the conversion van day), and A/C comes from simultaneously clicking those pain-in-the-ass latches on the windows of a Blue Bird bus circa 1988. If it's raining, the temperature rises exponentially each minute. The ride however can be quite a bit more entertaining even if it is bumpier...
I'm not as short as I was in 1st grade, the seats don't fit three grown adults, more like 1.5 not counting backpack. I sweat a lot more too. The chicken bus sans livestock is quite crowded as we depart from the Belize City semblance of a bus station, but that doesn't stop the driver from picking up 10 more passengers off the streets on the way out of town. I do enjoy the 1st class service offered by school-aged kids who jump on through the back offering sodas, banana chips, and even hamburgers as we stop in Belmopan to unload/load cattle.
This particular stretch of hell is full of kids, including teenagers, who have picked up bad frat boy habits from MTV by way of popped collars and the like. A 2 year old three seats in front is crying; I turn up the headphones as his mother fans him. Feeling the heat too, he has gone from completely clothed to naked in the past 5 minutes.
I draw figures, just like I did back then in the humid, rainy climate of Florida, on the fogged up windows, remembering to spell any words mirrored in reverse for those outside to read. I try to sleep, usually good at that, once earning the nickname of human pretzel on youth mission trips for crawling up into any space in any shape to nap, but we managed to sleep for over 12 hours last night, exhausted from 5 days of living and breathing ocean.
Two bearded Quaker looking fellows board the ride decked out in classic Mennonite attire, straw hat, overalls, and all. didn't braided hair, not the corn row or rasta style the locals here wear, the french braid type go out of style at the turn of the century? No one told the girl sitting in front of me, and I keep wanting to pull it. Her boyfriend might not like it, but the nerd glasses make the combo hard to resist.
We've arrived, numb legs included, I grab my backpack, bumping heads accidentally on the way out as twenty more people try to simultaneously get on the humidly sweat infested, overpopulated, pothole unforgiving journey via Belizean public transportation.
public transportation, children, buses, Belize
Posted By:
Brendon
10/23/2008