October 18, 2001
Classic chicken bus; this one is leaving Antigua to Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. Photo by Michael Seto.
The dilapidated bus rumbled in early, squeaking and bouncing along the rutted tracks in the grass. A young man in jeans and a t-shirt stood in the door, "Flores! Flores!"
We grabbed our packs, yelling back, "Si, si!" and hustled over.
He strapped our packs to the roof and we climbed onto the bus. Every seat was filled with Guatemalan farmers, women, and children. I spotted a couple empty seats in the back and we hoisted our day packs and squeezed through the aisle, no-one made any effort to move aside as we passed.
I sat down and said, "buenos dias" to the man next to me, who smelled of several days sweat and wore clothes whose mud stains looked permanent. He did not respond. Sitting there, I heard a squeal and glanced behind me, to see this old woman with a chicken squirming around in a plastic bag, I thought this is going to be interesting.
Andrew and Fiona and I met at the bus station leaving Oaxaco to Palenque. They were English backpackers and we hung out together and decided to travel to Mexico over a less common route Tenosique to El Naranjo to Flores, our ultimate destination.
This involved a complex sequence of transportation, which serendipidouly arrived on time. We rode a small van to La Palma in Mexico and there negotiated for a speedboat to take us on a three hour journey up the Rio San Pedro to El Naranjo, in Guatemala.
William, our Mexican speedboat pilot glided the boat in sensuous curves up the river, hemmed in on both sides by reeds and trees. Birds started and flew off at the sound of our boat. Passing some rapids on our right, I leaned over to get a better look as the broader river continued forward.
Suddenly, William banked the boat and headed straight for an impassable gap. We gasped and I crouched down, grabbing the back of a seat and flexing my knees, waiting for the impact against the rocks defining a five foot gap thru which water surged toward us. In a instant we exploded into calm waters on the other side of the gap, passing with inches to spare. I glanced at William as I sat back down and he smiled.
The remainder of the speedboat journey was as calm as the morning water of the river and we arrived safely in the scrap wood and aluminum siding rag-tag village of El Naranjo a few hours later - and hopped the chicken bus.
I looked at my watch after dozens of stops, where people jumped on or off the bus. One hour. The young guy who collected our 25 Quetzals told us the ride would be four hours. The bus smelled like a stale locker room and all the passengers needed a deodorant bomb to go off in the bus, including us.
Three hours into the journey down pot-holed dirt road, a trio of girls boarded, yelling in Spanish, hawking soft drinks and some tortillas. After some debate, I looked at her wares, a yellow chicken wing, sitting on some rice, wrapped in three small flour tortillas. The rice was orange from the chicken grease. I forked over 5Q and dug in with my fingers into the hot food. it was delicious.
We arrived in Flores a while later and found a nice hotel. After a cold shower and a beer, I sat on the porch overlooking Lake Peten Itza, on which Flores island sits, and thought, what a great trip on my first chicken bus.
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