The Last Chicken Bus
Guatemala
The day I first arrived in Guatemala was much hotter than I was prepared for. So is today. My back and legs are already drenched with sweat from where they touch the seat and it is far too hot for the light pants I have rolled up to my knees. My left side is getting sticky from brushing against the man with the cowboy hat and distinguished nose in the seat beside me. There are three of us in this row: me in half of my seat, his bag of mangoes in half of his, and him straddling the middle between us. Today is not a day I need anyone else’s body heat.
I feel lucky that today I have a seat. I’m traveling the Carreterra al Atlantico somewhere between El Rancho and Puerto Barrios, headed for the Honduran border. Chicken buses in the east and north of Guatemala tend to be much less exciting than their highland counterparts-instead of recycled school buses these used to be actual coaches, a la Greyhound or Peter Pan or National Coach, with luggage compartments underneath and much more conservative plumage. The seats are a bit more comfortable, and have much more legroom than their elementary school counterparts. Today is my last day in Guatemala, and this nicest of chicken buses will be the last of many for me.
A boy with fiery red hair and freckles stands in the aisle beside me, insistent on tugging at my whiskers and fingering the sleeves of my shirt. My shirt is nothing special, not that different than his, and like many other things about this strange place I don’t understand his fascination. His mother, a Ladino woman, sits in the row behind me with the rest of her collection of mismatched children- his brother and sisters, or half-brother and -sisters at least. She is feeding the youngest of them, a fair-skinned blonde girl who is far too big not to have been weaned yet. I seem to be the only one not immune to the noise when the girl switches from playful laughter to a shriek at a volume completely disproportionate to her size.
Two security guards, probably just off their shift guarding the shoe store or gasolinera, board the bus, their shotguns still harnessed around their necks and fingers perched at the ready-inside the trigger guard. Neither of them can be more than twenty years old. No one else thinks twice of it, but I cannot get used to having a heavily armed gunman unlock the bank door every time I need to cash a travelers’ check. In their seats they both drift off to sleep – a chicken bus trick I have yet to learn – with their guns at their sides, fingers still hovering perilously close to the triggers. Guns loaded. No safeties. I am glad to be out of the line of fire.
We make a brief stop and the aisle is suddenly filled with vendors selling everything from ice cream to newspapers to ballpoint pens. The singsong voice of a boy with a stack of papers is first to break through the confusion of people climbing over each other to get on or off the bus. “Prensa-Prensa-Prensa-Prensa-PREN-sah!” he sings. I remember sitting on board another bus on another day, alone, waiting for more passengers so we could start moving toward my weekend in San Pedro, when another boy selling the same paper boarded and chanted the same line. I was the only one on the bus, and I had already bought a paper from him just a few minutes earlier. Something else I cannot hope to understand.
The bus starts again and we jerk our way into thicker and hotter jungle. For all the ugliness of garbage and dilapidated buildings that man casts upon it, this beauty of this landscape shines through in its unmatched variety. I will never forget my first glimpse of that most magical of places, Lago Atitl�n, from the CA-1, still too far away to truly comprehend but already an awesome combination of elements – earth wrought from fire soaring to touch the sky, stopping the wind to capture passing clouds that rain down the water that becomes her. Or the paths overlooking Todos Santos, where fog makes the ordinary mysterious and stars dance with the peaks and people that pierce the clouds. And the calming sound of spring rains on a tin roof. This land captivates you in ways you can’t expect.
Just like the combination of violent fire and calm rains that formed Atitlan, similarly opposing forces have shaped the people of this land. A half millennium of migration and intermarriage and elitism and repression have produced a society uniquely blended between Mayan and Ladino, a fragile coexistence where the ivory sounds of marimba music float alongside the haunting notes of reed flutes, where Catholic churches display icons of locally canonized Mayan heroes, and where sometimes the bus still won’t stop for indigenous peoples wearing traditional clothing. Stop by stop these people leave the bus. We slow for the turnoff to a town where a friend lives now. For a moment I think of taking a detour, diverting for one last visit. But the thought of spending tomorrow snorkeling the Honduran coast silences it, and I will let the crossroad pass by.
Guatemala has become an old friend, the towns I know here are tranquil oases in a trip and life of uncertainty. I am not sure that I am ready to leave, but I am certain that I cannot stay any longer. It’s been nearly five months of stationary living among strangers in a place I probably don’t belong. There are seven countries in Central America, I have visited only two, there are 14 blank pages in my passport, and I have but one life to live.
The sky darkens as the jungle thickens even more. There are just two of us left on the bus now, myself and a European backpacker who I recognize but cannot quite place. The road sign says “Honduran Frontier – 10km.”
The border calls. It is time to move on.
