Local Color #4: The Bus

Hello from Ambato, which is perhaps the least touristy city in Ecuador, as pretty much everything with Deep Historical Significance (TM) was utterly distroyed in an earthquake during the 1940s. It´s actually great to visit, because you get a much purer sense of what Ecuador is like when the gringos aren´t around. I´m in an internet spot at the Casa de Cultura while Gladys has a meeting with the Provincial Government.

Getting here, however, was definitely less than one third of the fun. It´s not Ambato´s fault, but I will now forever associate it with the 8-10 seemingly interminable bus rides I´ve been on in the past five days, as we´ve scouted out the services for folks with disabilities from Azogues to Imbabura. First, seven hours from Cuenca to Ambato; then, 3 hours to Quito, 3 hours to Ibarra. A veritable Fiesta Del Autobus to see what´s up in the rural communities outside Ibarra (correct answer: some pretty impressive stuff), little side trip to check out the lodging in Otalvalo, and finally back to Ambato. And now that I´ve more or less canvassed the territory, let us all be thankful that the organizations are willing to come to US next time, and never, never speak of it again.


Ah, the bus. Forever in the memory of all but the richest travellers, the South American bus experience is definitely worth having. In the states, it seems like bus travel´s a fairly lost art: you´ve got your shoddy, desperate Greyhound, and a handful of hippies on the Green Tortoise here and there (for the record, they do an excellent little Yosemite loop, if you have a chance to take it.) In Ecuador, long distance bus travel is IT: the country is small enough that pretty much anywhere has a 1 day route to pretty much anywhere else, it´s cheap (about a buck an hour), it´s straightforward, and it´s easy to do.


Bus travel also offers a great diversity of on-board entertainment (which is good, because there´s no way in HELL you´ll be able to read your book on the bus). Allow me to present you with a list of your options:

• You can shop. There are, more or less, two kinds of bus vendors. One fills his arms with homemade goodies and walks quickly up and down the aisles, chanting the name of the product like a monk (secos secos mira mira secos calientitos secos secos secos mira). You can get everything from ice cream cones to biscuits, fried fava beans and empanadas; the dodgiest of all, in my opinion, is the ever-present baggie of chicken or goat stew. The second kind of vendor is often more obnoxious, but sometimes more entertaining: he or she spends several minutes recounting the misfortunes he´s had in life, appealing to the goodwill of the people, and then passing up and down the aisles putting candy in everyone´s hands before ranting about the excellent quality of the candy and exhorting everybody to buy it. Most don´t end out buying it, but the majority of bus travellers are polite enough to accept it (¨sin compromiso, amigo¨) the first time around. You know how people say that money´s the dirtiest thing ever, because it´s constantly passing from hand to hand? At least they don´t sell money with the intention of people eating it. Every now and again, though, you get a product worth having or a presenter with true novelty value. I still have an excellent little pen that has a rolled up 2008 calendar stuffed inside of it, and fondly remember the candy seller who first spent 2 minutes loudly complaining about his inability to attract women, then stuck a two-inch nail up his nose.


• You can dine. In the US, the consumption of anything beyond water is universally frowned upon. Here, you´ve gotta eat that bag of chicken soup before it gets cold.


• You can salve your conscience with acts of charity. Pretty much every stop features a person with either a visible physical disability or a picture of a relative with same, asking for limosnas to buy medicine or tend to daily life. Most recently, we all had the opportunity to buy sticky pieces of poorly-wrapped candy from a women who said it was either sell this, or sell her body on the street.

• Your heart can benefit from aerobic exercise. I won´t mince words: bus travel is scary at times. Overall, it´s exceptionally safe when you compare the number of accidents to the number of busses in operation, and truly sketchy companies do get shut down. Bus drivers are undeniably skillful at what they do: the challenge, for the passengers, is that they´re also insane. I was chatting last week with a group of special education folks in Paute: one suggested that it might be a good idea to do psych exams on bus drivers. Another burst out laughing: ¨nobody´d pass, and then we´d all have to walk everywhere.¨ Complicating matters for gringos, I think, is the paradigm shift between driving here and driving there. When I´m a passenger in the States, there are sometimes moments of ¨whoa, make sure you see that¨ and ¨perhaps a little slower¨, but in general, I feel safe because what I´m thinking matches what the driver does. Not so here, because the system is so entirely different that at times my brain seems to run parallel to how the driver is thinking about the road. I´ve discovered that the sweet spot of a bus is in the front-to-middle: not so close that you can see the road in front of the driver, not so far back that the accumulated bounciness of the bus on the road jiggles you all the way from Cuenca to Quito.

• Sometimes, you can birdwatch, especially on market days, when sacks of chickens accompany their owners to the seat in front of you.

• You can often enjoy the cinema. Thanks to the 1 Dollar Black Market DVD phenomenon, dozens of movies are on offer on busses. Typically, they tend heavily towards the action/adventure genre, and the very specific subgenre of truly awful shoot-em-ups from the eighties and nineties. Often in the past, I´ve wondered how, exactly, a person became a star: what hideous things did they do to reach the top. I can now tell you that many, many people were discovered by managers who saw, in a stupendously terrible action/adventure/horror movie, a glint of raw talent in a yet-undiscovered actor. Thanks to the Ecuadorian mass media (gotta include the cable TV in Guayaquil), I can say I´ve seen Katherine Heigl, Kirkwood Smith, and that allegedly hot actress from House well before the masses found them. Those are the advantages of the bus DVD. Disadvantage? Sometimes, when the bombs are flying at 2:00 am, it´s hard for this gringa to seperate truth from fiction: the velocity of the bus is already scaring the bejesus out of me, and now it seems like we´re under attack. The absolute worst was last Thursday, when they were showing Proof of Life on a night bus that had already broken down once and run over a dog. The movie is all about Americans in peril at the hands of Ecuadorians--for a moment, I connected entirely too well.

Ah yes, the final activity. Lest I forget...

• You can date. I don´t recommend this one, but the solo extranjero is often subject to a wealth of interest by the locals, many of whom know at least one person who´s looking for love and a visa to the States. I have not yet gotten to the point of speaking about my fictitious, jealous husband, but I do know that many of us do this at times.

Okay, Gladys´ meeting is over: off to the market now, to get stuff for llapingachos. I´ll write more when I get a chance about what we saw and did in Imbabura, and tomorrow...Huambalo!