verstehen libre.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
the romance of bus travel
For those of you who have recently expressed a desire to be traipsing around the developing world with me instead of hanging out in, oh, say Gotham City's basements (you know who you are!) let me set your mind at ease with, what else, a bus story or two from Guatemala.
Linea Dorada bills itself as Guatemala's premier fancy-schmancy "luxury" bus company, but it in fact is utter crap. On the trip to Belize City from Flores, for example, we were about an hour out of the city--we'd managed to get across the border after paying illegal and thoroughly exorbitant "exit taxes" directly to the extremely corrupt Guatemalan government--and were cruising through Hattieville when the Belize popo stopped the bus and proceeded to issue a ticket for a broken tail light. I was the only passenger on the bus, and as the driver became progressively more confused and agitated about the ticket situation, the imposing cop boarded the bus and got right in my face.
"Do you speak Spanish?" he asked, in English, which is what they speak in Belize. Among other things.
"Um, sort of," I said. He nodded approvingly.
"But you speak English good," he said.
"Pretty much."
"Good."
And then he disappeared, and came back dragging the irate driver behind him, and ordered me to start translating. Slowly, painfully, I understood from the driver that he wasn't gonna pay the fine, no sir, it wasn't his problem, it was the bus company's problem.
"No MI problaym-ah," the cop sputtered, totally misunderstanding the driver's point, and doing so in unimaginably bad Spanish. "YOUR problaym-ah!!"
"No, sir," I tried to explain as respectfully as possible. "He's not saying it's your problem. He's just saying that issues with the bus are the company's responsibility, and they need to pay the ticket, not him." It seemed like a fair enough assessment to me.
"Well," the cop huffed, in that universal way that cops do, "It's not MY problem!"
The whole situation was starting to resemble that scene early in "Joe vs. the Volcano" in the office, you know, the one where they go back and forth with the "I'm not arguing that with you" bit. The cop's solution, apparently standard operating procedure in the fine and upstanding republic of Belize, was to confiscate the driver's license--and then send him on his way. At this point things got very weird: the driver wandered off to a payphone for 20 minutes, came back and informed me that he was going to go have lunch with his new and slightly mysterious buddy, and took off--leaving me alone on the extremely hot bus (which was still parked in the middle of the road.) Here is a helpful visual for you, in which he can be seen in front of said payphone with said mystery buddy, in a sneak picture from inside the bus (the driver's the little guy):
Eventually he came back, started up the bus, and cruised speedily on toward Belize like nothing had ever happened; the only conclusion I am able to draw from the episode is that he was just stalling for time waiting for the cop to go to the bathroom or something. He certainly never paid the ticket.
Linea Dorada further distinguished itself coming back from Belize. The border crossing was even more tedious than it had been in the other direction, as this time I had to pay both a truly exorbitant Belize exit tax ($20!!) and a completely absurd and blatantly illegal entry fee to Guatemala. The nasty old bureaucrat sitting in the window asked me for her 20 quetzal kickback with a knowing smirk...the kind of smirk that says, "look, we will have NO problem finding a few irregularities with your paperwork if you don't pay up, beeyotch." When I finally staggered out of the customs complex, stripped of my cash and exhausted from the extensive interrogation, my trusty bus was nowhere to be seen. I was immediately mobbed by enterprising Guatemalans looking to buy my Belize dollars and/or sell me a shady ride to Tikal, since pretty much the only reason a dirty hippie gringa backpacker like myself would possibly be crossing the border at such an obscure corner of the country and by bus is to go to Tikal.
"No no no no," I shouted, waving my arms around. "Yo tengo un autobus...Linea Dorada. Un bus amarillo y muy feo. Pero....donde esta...?" I looked for my ugly yellow bus, which really seemed to be no longer in the customs compound.
"Linea Dorada?" one guy cackled. "Esta autobus fue!! Fue!!! FUUEEEEE!!! HA HA HA!!" Which means, obviously, that the bus went away already.
"No es posible..." I muttered darkly, but I knew it was true. That motherfucker had totally abandoned me at the frontier. I decided the only thing to do was go buy some water and sit in the shade until the vultures dispersed a bit and I could bargain reasonably for a ride to Flores. Which I did. Twenty minutes later, the bus wheezed and clunked its way back into the compound. When I ran up and asked the driver what the hell was wrong with him and where he had gone, he just laughed and mumbled something to his buddy about "la Americana," and gestured me back on the bus with a robust "adelante!", and we resumed our journey.
Just outside of Flores, about 20 kilometers or so, just when I was starting to chill back out, the driver kept stopping the bus for increasingly lengthy periods of time. Finally he started going outside and inspecting the tires when he stopped, and would resume the trip at a snail's pace for a few minutes before stopping again. When I finally admitted to myself that there was obviously another fucking problem and took off my headphones, I heard it immediately: a horrible clunking sound coming from the left front wheel.
The driver and his incompetent buddy inspected the wheel again and finally turned off the bus, shouted something at me and the one other passenger in Spanish about how they were going to go eat lunch (evidently the standard coping mechanism for overburdened and stressed out bus drivers in Guatemala), and disappeared. 45 minutes later a minivan utterly stuffed full of people and a couple of dogs screeched to a halt next to us. It was not possible to fit in this van; people were already sitting on each other's laps. But that was clearly the expectation, so my fellow passenger and I gave it a shot. I don't know where this van came from--it certainly wasn't Linea Dorada-branded--but in any case we couldn't even sort of get in, so it took off. They seemed sincerely bummed that we weren't going with them. Another 20 minutes went by. And another.
I was heading straight to Flores because I had to make a connection to another bus, this one an overnighter to Guatemala City. I really splurged and bought a $40 ticket on a real luxury cruise--one of the fancy double-decker buses that includes attendants and TV and a seat that really reclines--and was seriously looking forward to it. After we were finally rescued by another bus and taken to Flores, I had plenty of time--about six hours--before the overnight bus left. So I hung out, finished my book, watched "Star Wars" in Spanish on the waiting room TV, and catnapped.
The luxury bus was all that the company promised I would get for my $40: lovely leather seats, plenty of room to stretch out, and even a ridiculously attractive attendant strutting around in high heels with trays full of alcohol in dixie cups. I settled in happily, knocked back my dixie cup full of what-she-said-was-wine-but-was-really-cheap-and-awful-port-that-went-straight-to-my-head, and promptly fell asleep. At 1 am, about 2 hours into the 10 hour trip, I woke up because the bus had screeched to a halt in some godforsaken town. There was a tremendous, impressive thunderstorm outside, which is as I have now learned very standard for northern Guatemala--along with daily power outages. I realized with creeping, reluctant horror that there was something wrong with the lovely big fancy bus. I fell back asleep, unwilling to accept the truth, and woke up again when the attendant turned on the light and apologetically ordered us all off the bus and into the rain. We stood around in the rain for a while until a bona fide chicken bus turned up, which was, of course, already more than full, and the remainder of our $40 luxury trip was spent crammed elbow to elbow in the worst bus of the trip. No air conditioning, obviously, every seat full, and the angriest transmission I have ever heard--and that includes all of my dad's cars growing up. The long climb into the city the next morning elicited sounds from deep beneath the stick shift that I never want to hear again in my life. When I finally got to Guatemala City, which is really and truly the hellhole of the universe, sleep-deprived and starving, I immediately got totally ripped off by a taxi driver who left me penniless--which meant I couldn't eat until I got to Dallas. Which was 28 hours away.
In sum, then, Guatemala pretty much sucks. The language school was fun and Xela is a nice town, but I won't be going back any time soon. Belize was fun, and beautiful, but the island paradise of Caye Caulker is overrun with pot-addled rasta-hippies who get a tad aggressive when you reject their advances too many times. They initially nicknamed me "Miss Alaska," and then downgraded me to "Mystery Lady," and finally by the time I left they were just calling me "Girl."
So I'm back in Seattle for a week or two for gradu-a-mation festivities and lots of beer and coffee, and then it's on to North Africa and Europe.... ¶ 9:35 AM
Linea Dorada bills itself as Guatemala's premier fancy-schmancy "luxury" bus company, but it in fact is utter crap. On the trip to Belize City from Flores, for example, we were about an hour out of the city--we'd managed to get across the border after paying illegal and thoroughly exorbitant "exit taxes" directly to the extremely corrupt Guatemalan government--and were cruising through Hattieville when the Belize popo stopped the bus and proceeded to issue a ticket for a broken tail light. I was the only passenger on the bus, and as the driver became progressively more confused and agitated about the ticket situation, the imposing cop boarded the bus and got right in my face.
"Do you speak Spanish?" he asked, in English, which is what they speak in Belize. Among other things.
"Um, sort of," I said. He nodded approvingly.
"But you speak English good," he said.
"Pretty much."
"Good."
And then he disappeared, and came back dragging the irate driver behind him, and ordered me to start translating. Slowly, painfully, I understood from the driver that he wasn't gonna pay the fine, no sir, it wasn't his problem, it was the bus company's problem.
"No MI problaym-ah," the cop sputtered, totally misunderstanding the driver's point, and doing so in unimaginably bad Spanish. "YOUR problaym-ah!!"
"No, sir," I tried to explain as respectfully as possible. "He's not saying it's your problem. He's just saying that issues with the bus are the company's responsibility, and they need to pay the ticket, not him." It seemed like a fair enough assessment to me.
"Well," the cop huffed, in that universal way that cops do, "It's not MY problem!"
The whole situation was starting to resemble that scene early in "Joe vs. the Volcano" in the office, you know, the one where they go back and forth with the "I'm not arguing that with you" bit. The cop's solution, apparently standard operating procedure in the fine and upstanding republic of Belize, was to confiscate the driver's license--and then send him on his way. At this point things got very weird: the driver wandered off to a payphone for 20 minutes, came back and informed me that he was going to go have lunch with his new and slightly mysterious buddy, and took off--leaving me alone on the extremely hot bus (which was still parked in the middle of the road.) Here is a helpful visual for you, in which he can be seen in front of said payphone with said mystery buddy, in a sneak picture from inside the bus (the driver's the little guy):
Eventually he came back, started up the bus, and cruised speedily on toward Belize like nothing had ever happened; the only conclusion I am able to draw from the episode is that he was just stalling for time waiting for the cop to go to the bathroom or something. He certainly never paid the ticket.
Linea Dorada further distinguished itself coming back from Belize. The border crossing was even more tedious than it had been in the other direction, as this time I had to pay both a truly exorbitant Belize exit tax ($20!!) and a completely absurd and blatantly illegal entry fee to Guatemala. The nasty old bureaucrat sitting in the window asked me for her 20 quetzal kickback with a knowing smirk...the kind of smirk that says, "look, we will have NO problem finding a few irregularities with your paperwork if you don't pay up, beeyotch." When I finally staggered out of the customs complex, stripped of my cash and exhausted from the extensive interrogation, my trusty bus was nowhere to be seen. I was immediately mobbed by enterprising Guatemalans looking to buy my Belize dollars and/or sell me a shady ride to Tikal, since pretty much the only reason a dirty hippie gringa backpacker like myself would possibly be crossing the border at such an obscure corner of the country and by bus is to go to Tikal.
"No no no no," I shouted, waving my arms around. "Yo tengo un autobus...Linea Dorada. Un bus amarillo y muy feo. Pero....donde esta...?" I looked for my ugly yellow bus, which really seemed to be no longer in the customs compound.
"Linea Dorada?" one guy cackled. "Esta autobus fue!! Fue!!! FUUEEEEE!!! HA HA HA!!" Which means, obviously, that the bus went away already.
"No es posible..." I muttered darkly, but I knew it was true. That motherfucker had totally abandoned me at the frontier. I decided the only thing to do was go buy some water and sit in the shade until the vultures dispersed a bit and I could bargain reasonably for a ride to Flores. Which I did. Twenty minutes later, the bus wheezed and clunked its way back into the compound. When I ran up and asked the driver what the hell was wrong with him and where he had gone, he just laughed and mumbled something to his buddy about "la Americana," and gestured me back on the bus with a robust "adelante!", and we resumed our journey.
Just outside of Flores, about 20 kilometers or so, just when I was starting to chill back out, the driver kept stopping the bus for increasingly lengthy periods of time. Finally he started going outside and inspecting the tires when he stopped, and would resume the trip at a snail's pace for a few minutes before stopping again. When I finally admitted to myself that there was obviously another fucking problem and took off my headphones, I heard it immediately: a horrible clunking sound coming from the left front wheel.
The driver and his incompetent buddy inspected the wheel again and finally turned off the bus, shouted something at me and the one other passenger in Spanish about how they were going to go eat lunch (evidently the standard coping mechanism for overburdened and stressed out bus drivers in Guatemala), and disappeared. 45 minutes later a minivan utterly stuffed full of people and a couple of dogs screeched to a halt next to us. It was not possible to fit in this van; people were already sitting on each other's laps. But that was clearly the expectation, so my fellow passenger and I gave it a shot. I don't know where this van came from--it certainly wasn't Linea Dorada-branded--but in any case we couldn't even sort of get in, so it took off. They seemed sincerely bummed that we weren't going with them. Another 20 minutes went by. And another.
I was heading straight to Flores because I had to make a connection to another bus, this one an overnighter to Guatemala City. I really splurged and bought a $40 ticket on a real luxury cruise--one of the fancy double-decker buses that includes attendants and TV and a seat that really reclines--and was seriously looking forward to it. After we were finally rescued by another bus and taken to Flores, I had plenty of time--about six hours--before the overnight bus left. So I hung out, finished my book, watched "Star Wars" in Spanish on the waiting room TV, and catnapped.
The luxury bus was all that the company promised I would get for my $40: lovely leather seats, plenty of room to stretch out, and even a ridiculously attractive attendant strutting around in high heels with trays full of alcohol in dixie cups. I settled in happily, knocked back my dixie cup full of what-she-said-was-wine-but-was-really-cheap-and-awful-port-that-went-straight-to-my-head, and promptly fell asleep. At 1 am, about 2 hours into the 10 hour trip, I woke up because the bus had screeched to a halt in some godforsaken town. There was a tremendous, impressive thunderstorm outside, which is as I have now learned very standard for northern Guatemala--along with daily power outages. I realized with creeping, reluctant horror that there was something wrong with the lovely big fancy bus. I fell back asleep, unwilling to accept the truth, and woke up again when the attendant turned on the light and apologetically ordered us all off the bus and into the rain. We stood around in the rain for a while until a bona fide chicken bus turned up, which was, of course, already more than full, and the remainder of our $40 luxury trip was spent crammed elbow to elbow in the worst bus of the trip. No air conditioning, obviously, every seat full, and the angriest transmission I have ever heard--and that includes all of my dad's cars growing up. The long climb into the city the next morning elicited sounds from deep beneath the stick shift that I never want to hear again in my life. When I finally got to Guatemala City, which is really and truly the hellhole of the universe, sleep-deprived and starving, I immediately got totally ripped off by a taxi driver who left me penniless--which meant I couldn't eat until I got to Dallas. Which was 28 hours away.
In sum, then, Guatemala pretty much sucks. The language school was fun and Xela is a nice town, but I won't be going back any time soon. Belize was fun, and beautiful, but the island paradise of Caye Caulker is overrun with pot-addled rasta-hippies who get a tad aggressive when you reject their advances too many times. They initially nicknamed me "Miss Alaska," and then downgraded me to "Mystery Lady," and finally by the time I left they were just calling me "Girl."
So I'm back in Seattle for a week or two for gradu-a-mation festivities and lots of beer and coffee, and then it's on to North Africa and Europe.... ¶ 9:35 AM
