The "Guatemalan Chicken Bus" is in a category of its own! :giggle:
For those of you who don't know what it is and/or have never ridden in one, it is truly the experience of or the end of your lifetime.
A chicken bus (Spanish: "camioneta") is a colloquial English name for a colorful modified and decorated US school bus and transit bus that transports goods and people between communities in Guatemala and many other South American countries. The word "chicken" refers to the fact that rural Guatemalans occasionally transport live animals on these buses, a practice that visitors from other countries often find remarkable. Often two young men will partner in the operation of a bus, one of whom will have his license ("el piloto" or the "pilot"), while the other dubs himself the ayudante or "helper". The ayudante is responsible for heckling passengers aboard, collecting money, and organizing the luggage, livestock, produce, etc. onto the roof of the bus — often while in motion. In Guatemala this helper is also known as the "brocha" (brush), referring to the fact that this person prompts people to get inside the bus (brushes them in) by shouting the destinations the bus is reaching.
Each bus is painted vibrantly and wildy decorated, mainly with religious figurines, its name and its permanent route. The buses are finely tuned, often with high-performance mods and they are always stuffed with passengers (whenever possible) and then hard-driven to their destinations at top speeds, especially downhill on narrow mountain, rural roads often racing and trying to blindly pass another Chicken bus on each hair-pin curve. Truly something to experience at least once in your lifetime. If you've never ridden in one, you truly haven't lived life to its fullest!
For those of you who don't know what it is and/or have never ridden in one, it is truly the experience of or the end of your lifetime.
A chicken bus (Spanish: "camioneta") is a colloquial English name for a colorful modified and decorated US school bus and transit bus that transports goods and people between communities in Guatemala and many other South American countries. The word "chicken" refers to the fact that rural Guatemalans occasionally transport live animals on these buses, a practice that visitors from other countries often find remarkable. Often two young men will partner in the operation of a bus, one of whom will have his license ("el piloto" or the "pilot"), while the other dubs himself the ayudante or "helper". The ayudante is responsible for heckling passengers aboard, collecting money, and organizing the luggage, livestock, produce, etc. onto the roof of the bus — often while in motion. In Guatemala this helper is also known as the "brocha" (brush), referring to the fact that this person prompts people to get inside the bus (brushes them in) by shouting the destinations the bus is reaching.
Each bus is painted vibrantly and wildy decorated, mainly with religious figurines, its name and its permanent route. The buses are finely tuned, often with high-performance mods and they are always stuffed with passengers (whenever possible) and then hard-driven to their destinations at top speeds, especially downhill on narrow mountain, rural roads often racing and trying to blindly pass another Chicken bus on each hair-pin curve. Truly something to experience at least once in your lifetime. If you've never ridden in one, you truly haven't lived life to its fullest!
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