To Xela (a bigger city in Guatemala)

Riding a chicken bus is kind of along the same sadistic lines of riding a carnival ride that cranks and squeaks, and you know it's probably not safe but there is something to the twinkle in the carni's eye that is either wisdom or the aftershocks of a 72 hour meth binge, or both.

A chicken bus is the infamous central/south American school bus type public transportation that usually has humans and chickens and bags and all sorts of cantankerous and cumbersome objects overflowing out the cracks of the windows and rambles at demented speeds down curvaceous roads that don't have guard rails.

Pedro and I got on one of these chicken buses, humid with condensation on the windows and locals staring at conche and colocho (blonde kid and curly haired kid) to go to Chimal were we would then jump on another bus to Xela.  With a sort of pseudo-white-light-disco-central-american-brass-and-rhythm-music pumping from the buses blown out speakers, I stared out the window down the hundred to thousand foot drop to the canyon floor next to what we rambled by at star-reaching speeds, separated from the edge by no more than a tortilla.  I started to think of how many of these buses tumble to their metal contorted deaths a month as we flew down the snake like roads.

We got to Chimal safe and sound, wired with adrenaline and had to run after a wake of black smoke that came from a bus, already leaving, with a guy hanging out the door yelling "Xela Xela!".  We caught up to the bus and jumped on, the entire time the bus never stopping but accelerating and motor chugging like a kid laughing while running in a game of tag.

The bus smelled terrible and was armpit hot and I felt queazy from the cheap bologna type chorizo and black smoke I had ingested earlier.  Just don't puke, they will not stop for you.  Just don't think about it, pretend like you're in Jurassic Park, look over there see, it's the exact terrain of J. Park, da-de-da, there's the J. Park theme song, are those pterodactyls?

We made one stop on the way to Xela, a fork to either Xela or Atillan, the giant lake in the middle of the country, and 8-10 people, old, young, men, women, kids, jumped on the bus with nuts, lime, tomatilos, chochitas, french fries, drinks, candy, yellin' and sellin' like thier life depended on it, which it did.

The chicken buses have two employees, one driver, who is usually extremely talented and psycho reckless and a guy who stands at the door to open it for passengers and collect money.  The key to this operation is speed, hence the Daytona speeds and the lack of stopping.  The bus only slows down to a gurgle and you jump on like a Indiana Jones.  To ensure this speed obsessed game plan the guy at the door will climb out the door and onto the roof while the bus is going sixty and flirting with the edges of cliffs and your basic common sense, scuffle around up ther and grab the bags of the passengers, who are jumping off the moving bus, and launches the bags off the bus, sometimes hitting their targets, sometimes not.

As we were rolling into Xela, the door guy started talking to us, asking how many beers it would take us to get drunk, how much a liter of beer costs in the states, if we like coucha (homemade Guatemalan moonshine, which we do), if we wanted to have a good time (if we knew what he meant, wink, wink).  All that was in Spanish and when we got off the bus he said "Bye homies".