Chicken Bus Virgin No More

A chicken bus is a rehabilitated US school bus (made for children...and they are very small people) decorated in flamboyant and colorful ways. They speed through the towns coughing up thick black smoke. They seem to serve the same purpose as a municipal bus system in the US. But the experience is quite distinct from a Muni bus in SF. The first thing a gringa comes to learn is definitions of personal space will be radically changed on a chicken bus...three to a seat (remember, seats made for children). There are drivers and assistants hanging out of open doors and windows working hard to fill the buses and people are crammed into every conceivable space. If folks could be levitated I am sure the space above our heads would be filled with floating bodies. Today a very large (horizontally, not vertically) older Mayan woman virtually sat on my lap, smiling at me broadly with her partially toothed mouth and grey chin hairs blowing in the wind. We bounced along the cobblestone street...then hit the paved road where the standard driving protocol seems to be: floor it and honk your horn at everything in the road....right side of the road or left side of the road...who cares!