As you may expect, driving in Guatemala is a little
different than in the US. I thought I
had seen harrowing traffic when I lived in Beijing, but it’s nothing compared
to Guatemala.
The city streets are mostly narrow, seemingly one-way
streets that go up and down mountain hills and curve around blind corners. The city streets are mostly made from
cobblestone. When it rains, these
streets quickly become rushing creeks – and you better have worn waterproof
shoes, because there’s little chance you’ll escape a mad rush of water
somewhere in your journey. There is a preponderance of pedestrians on the roads–
especially gringos, who magically appear en masse in July to study
Spanish. Sidewalks, however, are not
always present, paved, or passable (they are only wide enough to fit one person
at a time, and when the curb elevation makes it possible cars are often parked
up on the curb, probably because the roads are so narrow). There aren’t street signs in Xela, but the
street names sometimes painted
on the side of the building your shoulder is rubbing up against as you use the
sidewalk, and you can usually spot it by standing in the middle of the
road. So as a pedestrian, you find
yourself alternating between a steep, slim sidewalk and a wet, uneven road –
until a rapidly approaching motor or abrupt honk causes you to scatter back
onto the sidewalk.
 |
| Mayan men and women transporting goods |
In addition to the pedestrians, at any given moment the
streets also hold buses, microbuses (a kind of van with the people packed in
like sardines and hanging out the sides); cars; pickups – often with a full bed
of cargo and/or people; motorcycles, dirt-bikes and scooters carrying at least
3 family members at once (I’ve seen 5 on one cycle – 8 year old kid riding on
the gas tank in front of Dad, and two younger kids smashed between he and Mom,
who is the caboose); bicycles, street dogs, goats, toddlers, and Mayan women (and men) carrying their load on their heads. In
the smaller towns, there’s also a plethora of tuk-tuks creating havoc through
the streets, which are like motorized tricycles with a covered carriage for 2-3
on the back. They can fit into alleys
and maneuver around pedestrians easily, but come careening around corners
without much warning. In towns like San
Pedro La Laguna, where most of the ‘streets’ are paved walkways with 90-degree
corners (that fit 4 pedestrians across, but are also used by motorcycles and
tuk-tuks), these tuk-tuks are especially efficient and alarming at the same
time.
 |
| 'Picop' (pickup) full of riders |
There aren’t really bus ‘stops’, but any bus, microbus or
pickup is liable to stop at any moment to release or pick up passengers. The drivers have ‘helpers’ that stand in the
door or hang off the side of the vehicle yelling ‘there’s space!’ and looking
for new riders (their idea of ‘space’ is a wholly different blog post
entirely). As you can imagine, motorcycles
and scooters squeeze into whatever space will fit them, including zipping
around slowed traffic or between speeding cars.
No one wears helmets here. Rules
for ‘passing’ actually may not exist – when I rode with my host sister Jessica
on the back of her scooter the other day, as we slowed to turn right (and I
think she used her signal), a truck barreled past us on the left and then
turned right immediately in front of us, giving me a heart attack.
 |
| Dogs in the street |
Worse yet, speed bumps seem to be the method of choice for
controlling speed – which might explain why everyone uses the accelerator like
they are in an arcade game - because in just 400 meters, they will have to slow
down for the next speed bump. Some of
these ‘tumulos’, as they are called in Spanish, are in fact a problem for
something like a scooter, because instead of one continuous hump of concrete,
they is a jagged line of smaller, metal humps, which requires a two-wheeled
vehicle to come to an almost complete stop to cross without losing balance. (Yes, it’s freaky from the back of a
scooter). Street dogs are also constantly
strolling through the road in front of oncoming traffic, minor roads and
highways alike. Some cars slow for them,
some honk, and some consider it a game to see how long it will take the dog to
move. The evidence of this can sometimes
be spotted on roadsides like deer.
 |
| Camionete parked at left |
The common mode of public transportation in Guatemala is the
Camionete, which is ‘chicken bus’ in English.
(Last Friday I actually saw a chicken, enveloped in a Mayan cloth and
sitting in a basket, on top of the Camionete that passed below my window at
school). These are retired US school
buses – the yellow kind that my generation rode in elementary school. Whereas in my school, there was a max
capacity of something like 57 persons (I remember it because it was always
posted in the front of the bus), in Guate the seats that used to hold no more
than 2 children often hold 3 adults, perhaps with children on their laps or
strapped to their back. In fact, I noticed
today, rather than walk to the back of the bus some people seem to prefer
sitting as a third with their butt half-off the seat – as long as the seat
across also has 3 people and they can balance each other out in the aisle with
their shoulders. But it’s pretty
humorous to watch additional passengers push through this human barrier in the
aisle. There doesn’t seem to be any
common idea about moving to the back first.
Well, perhaps that’s because the tumulos have taught riders
what we all learned in elementary school – that the back of the bus has more
bounce after the second wheel. More on
those tumulos – perhaps you thought they were only near intersections or
schools or alleys, like they are in Chicago?
Guess again. Major highways
(those rare roads that are not made out of cobblestone) are also covered with
tumulos every few kilometers, forcing speeding, cramped and swaying buses and microbuses
to come to a near stop constantly on any long journey. For a country that has chosen
school buses for their major mode of transportation, I don’t think there could
be a more painful way to control traffic.
Finally, all of this pales in comparison to traveling via
Chicken Bus into the mountains. I’m not
a mechanical type of person, but I can’t imagine the type of engine required
for this feat. Drivers doing the
aforementioned acceleration technique (which I would call ‘careening’),
carrying 50-some adults and cargo, while climbing thousands of meters on a road
that snakes around a mountainside like those in San Francisco must be hell on
an engine. It’s certainly hell on my
peace of mind! Having just visited Golf
and Games before I left Illinois, I have to say it bears a striking similarity
to a go-cart race with buses, sometimes even in competition. When passing through mountain towns on the
way to San Pedro La Laguna, rather than slow, the driver felt it adequate to
lay on the horn all the way through the town like our train whistles in rural
areas, even though these buses were passing mere feet in front of residential
homes! And let’s not forget the brakes;
even though they don’t like to use them, when heading down a 45 degree incline
with a bus full of people in a tropical rainstorm on a street that has maybe 1
½ feet to spare on either side of the bus…you better be sure the brakes are
well padded. On our mountain descent
Friday, one curve was so severe that our bus had to do a 5-point turn to get
through it. (This is also a function of
the ‘helper’ – to guide. And to climb up
on the roof while the bus is moving to retrieve baggage).
But the best part is when the bus is hurtling around one of
the mountain curves, with a wall of earth on the right and nothing but sky on
your left, at breakneck speed, only to round the curve and find all traffic
stopped in front of you because a mudslide has occupied half of the road after
the last rainfall. Rather than slow, bus
drivers move to the left lane, and when that’s occupied, into the lane for
oncoming traffic until all available space has been filled like Tetris,
regardless of the fact that it is impossible to see what was causing the
backup. On our return to Xela this
afternoon, this resulted in a single line of oncoming traffic being forced to
use the shoulder, passing us so close that if I had opened the bus window I
could have dirtied the side mirrors of all the drivers.
Needless to say, every time I travel in Guatemala I learn
fear and gratitude, again.
"The common way to drive in Guatelmala is to accelerate as much as possible until you reach the next intersection, where you are more likely to apply your horn than your brake." HA!
ReplyDelete