Transportation ES

March 1, 2009 Day 26

I was returning to San Vicente from the Northeast corner of El Salvador. I arrived to the terminal around 11 am. The terminal in Metapan is large slopping dirt parking lot with a dozen or so buses coming and going, most of which are old school buses. The buses are airbrush painted flashy colors and with a wide range of bizarre imagery ranging from Spiderwebs to Jesus on the cross. As I walk into the terminal people immediately approach me and touch my shoulder asking where I'm going and gently try to push me onto their buses. I find my bus and let myself be pushed on, the bus has had all the seat removed at some point and had different larger seats put back in and closer together so my knees are pressing two inches into the seat in front of me.

The insides of the buses here have a stunningly bizarre range of icons as well. Every bus here has some reference to religion and some kind of cartoon character, and usually a display of allegiance to a certain soccer team. This bus has an Aryan looking Jesus with an realistic amount of blood dripping down his face while gazing off in the distance and staring at a Whinney the Pooh Sticker in which Whinnie is depicted as a cowboy armed to the teeth with little hearts and flowers for pistols. The bus doesn't fill all the way up so I don't have anyone pressing right into me giving me sweat stains in places that just don't make sense, it's still early and not too hot. This bus is not a deluxe so it cost 50 cents less but doesn't have AC and makes more stops. While the bus was idling in the lot, hosts of people walk through the isle selling whatever; plastic bags full of water for a dime, peeled unripe mangoes, candy, french fries, ice cream, but nothing too abstract this time. The vendors are not only at the terminals they also get on the bus at any stop and run through selling there goods, it´s actually really nice to grab a cold bag of water in the middle of a trip. The bus starts rolling and all the vendors hop off and the boot leg Daddy Yankee music video collection starts playing. The cobrador walks buy and I pay him the 1.75 for the 2 hour bus ride, after everyone has paid he returns to his post yelling out the door of the bus telling anyone who looks like they could conceivably be waiting for a bus where it is going. The cobrador is a job that there is no word for in English and I hope there never is but I suppose a good translation would be 'bus guy'; public transportation (in my opinion) simply does not need a high pressure salesman. In the smaller cities they put barely any pressure potential customers, they just say where the bus is going, but in San Salvador there is nothing the cobrador's want more than your 20 cents to ride their bus. I can't speak for other people but when I'm waiting at the bus stop I'm rarely thinking “just give me one reason why I shouldn't go home, just try me. Push me, we'll see who goes where.”

I arrive in San Salvador at the West Terminal and need to get to the East Terminal to transfer to an other bus. When I walk off the bus there are 6 or 7 guys saying “taxi! Taxi! You need a taxi?” to everyone who gets off, I walk right by them but one guy knows that I secretly do want to take a taxi and keeps following me and saying it like we are sharing a secret, “Taxi. Taxi? You need a taxi right?” I start to smile cause he convinced me that I do want to take a taxi, I negotiate him down to a reasonable price and were off to his cab.

The taxis are pretty standard here. As we approach his taxi I make sure to get a good look at the license plate, if the first letter is an 'A' it's a real taxi, if it's something else it's a 'pirate taxi'. From my understanding they function just like regular taxis but are more likely to rob you or pull something fishy. The taxi takes about 5 minutes to get to the other terminal where a public bus takes an 40 minutes to an hour. He lets me off at the entrance to the East Terminal. This terminal is more like a shanty town then any bus terminal I've ever seen, all the buildings are made of corrugated metal and are full of people selling the same stuff, and there is a swarm of people moving around selling things and more people moving people onto buses. People start to approach me again, this time there is a large man with a mustache who from 50 feet away spots my glimmering white skin me and starts yelling in English “where are you going?! You! Where are you going!?” and he tries to shove me on a bus that's not even his, I ask how much it is and the driver says it´s 5 dollars, and for a one hour bus ride that's like someone in the states charging you 25 dollars to get on a public bus, I disrespectfully refuse and get off. My mustached friend slams me on a regular bus that's only “.75 cents maybe.” This bus was awful it was packed tight, people standing next to me rubbing against my shoulders the whole way. I was pleased when I finally got off at the junction, and took my last means of transportation of the day, a 'pick-up'.

The pick-up here is a legitimate form of public transportation, it's just a pick-up truck with a metal cage welded to the bed so people can hang on as it goes up the curvy mountain roads, the pick up is full too but it's only a 10 minute ride so I sucked it up and packed in! The cobrador hangs off the side and wiggles his way up the side on the outside of the cab to collect the 20 cents from the passengers most crammed, an act that would looks like suicide in the states. Ten minutes later I'm safe, sweaty, and 'home'.