The buses here in guatemala are a bit of adventure. You start off not really knowing where the bus goes from unless you goto the bus depot, since there are no bus stops, times or route information. Buses tend to drive along the relavant route shouting out the destination as they go.

When you do find the bus you want you are confronted with a repainted US style school bus. If your lucky you´ll be able to take your bag inside, but some insist on putting your bag on the roof. This would be ok if it wasn´t for the habit of these bags to fall off around bends. When you get inside the seats seem to have been designed for at most three small children or two bigger ones and the isle is just big enough to fit walking sideways down the bus. Typically these buses, called chicken buses, fill up with 3 adults per seat so that the one on the end has about half a seat.

Soon after the bus sets off it will stop again and pick up a few more people until every one is so squashed they can hardly move. It is at this point someone will enter the bus having bought a job lot of nuts or some type of sweet and they will go down the bus giving some to people on the way down. Shortly after they come backup the bus asking for payment or they take their merchandise back again and get off to board another bus.

Once the bus gets out on the open road all hell breaks lose, slow lorries on some very windy roads just get in way. This gives rise for the driver to over take everything in sight including cars on blind bends typically tooting the horn to make up for the lack of being able to see where the driver is going.

All this said and done you tend to get there in one piece after spending less than a pound for a hour´s journey.

P.S. I´m adding my guatemala pictures to my guatemala set on flickr.