Thoughts From the Chicken Bus

Jenifer Bubenik Signs "Thoughts From the Chicken Bus". THIS EVENT IS IN THE PAST! WHEN Wednesday, November 4, at p.m.; WHERE Le Travel.
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Chicken buses – the ultimate Guatemalan experience

Hi Koala, Yet another highly entertaining post on Newly nomadic. Have a great trek and we all look forward to hearing of your latest adventure when you reach Todos Los Santos. Lots of love, Dad xxxO. Down here in Panama most of the buses are smaller seat, air-conditioned Toyotas. Most, but not all. One thing I enjoy doing since I retired down here is to just get on one of the many buses at the terminal and see where it goes. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account.

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. I remember on one chicken bus ride -from Somoto to Ocotal in northern Nicaragua- I came across a chap who had the clearest and crispest diction of any Spanish speaker I had ever encountered.


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His words and phrases departed his tongue like bright sparks flying from an angle grinder cutting through buttery concrete to clip my ears with immaculate sharpness. His voice was like a professionally sharpened, large kitchen knife of the highest quality and polished to glimmering superbness. Each word he uttered was akin to horizontally slicing spherical beads of dew into flawless hemispheres from where they lay on pointed blades of buffalo grass in the early moments of a summer dawn.

Soon it was revealed that he was one of an ever-increasing brigade of evangelical preachers who take advantage of a captive audience to preach their message. Listening to his tone, his syntactic flow and his angelic oration was a pure, undiluted piece of beauty. It matters little if you agree with the message.

The multifaceted nature of the ubiquitous and humble chicken bus goes on and on. It is also a medical clinic on wheels. However, it functions in a different, inverse way. Whereas in a standard doctor-patient relationship the patient describes his or her symptoms and the doctor consequently makes a diagnosis and prescribes a treatment, the chicken bus magic-pill peddler makes it his business to convince the passengers that they are suffering from all manner of debilitating ailments and would be doing themselves a great disservice if they did not avail themselves of the miraculous cures on offer.

Like the evangelical preacher, the chicken bus physician is a master of oration and persuasion. He uses his words to inflict disease and illness. Each syllable that he utters shoots from his mouth like a needle of contagious saliva exploding from a sneeze and within the confines of the chicken bus epidemics are difficult to contain. A sudden outbreak of credulousness is not uncommon.

Curiously, foreigners and the thrifty almost invariably possess a mysterious immunity. The chicken bus is all this and it is more. It is a great constant and a cultural uniting presence through the region.


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In the seven countries that make up this petite isthmus linking the great continental spaces of North and South America the histories differ. Cross a border and the currency changes.

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The people are far from uniform. However, the heart and soul of the great chicken bus remain the same. They are faithful and indefatigable — always ready to rumble off into the unknown distance — and have such an endearing multifaceted personality that you might just fall in love. I will never forget my first chicken bus in Guatemala. I got on the bus and it was so full I told the man helping the driver that I would wait for the next bus.

He just laughed at me and wedged me between two women in the aisle. We were so tight together that their hips were supporting me on either side.

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I had no seat underneath me, only the aisle, but I did not need one. We were scrunched together so much that we envied sardines in their can! Not for the faint or the claustrophobic, those buses.

Thanks for bringing back the memories and doing such a great job! Thanks for your comment! In San Juan del Sur, a purely tourist town, the taxi drivers stepped up their game.

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One of my more sobering moments came on the bus ride to Granada. By this time, I was savvy enough to not be fooled by the Nicaraguan cheat-the-tourist shenanigans—or so I thought. In the hectic crowd-shuffling confusion of getting on the bus at the station, a man came up and put his hand on my backpack, asking in rapid-fire Spanish if I was going to Granada.

I nodded my assent, and he jerked the pack off my back. A local bystander commented that he almost took my arm with it and laughed.

The Chicken Bus Experience - 43BlueDoors

I flashed him a polite smile and jostled my way onto the bus. I spent the rest of the trip letting go of my emotional ties to things. Really the most valuable thing in my backpack was the backpack itself. View all posts by Searching byways. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.