Chicken Bus In Que­pos, Costa Rica

How do we get around when back­pack­ing in Cen­tral Amer­ica? By bus, of course!

But bus­ing around in Cen­tral Amer­ica is not that straight­for­ward. First of all, we have to agree on the def­i­n­i­tion of a bus. If it has no win­dows and no doors, it is still a bus? What if it is painted in flam­boy­ant col­ors, like bright red and yel­low, and has words of wis­dom such as “no pain, no gain”, or “dio bendigo mi alma” writ­ten on the win­dows? And if it takes 5 hours to drive 20 kilo­me­ters? Is it still a bus?

Wel­come to Latin Amer­ica. Most of the buses here are called “chicken buses” by trav­el­ers, because they carry not only pas­sen­gers but the occa­sional live­stock as well. So shar­ing your seat with a chicken or a goat is pretty com­mon, espe­cially if it´s mar­ket day. These old cus­tomized US school buses are often extremely packed, there­fore back­packs are stored either at the back (piled up) or even on the roof of the bus. You’d be sur­prised to see how many peo­ple can fit in the bus — I am con­stantly amazed. If you can still move your arms around you with­out hit­ting too many peo­ple, there is room for more passengers.

Long dis­tances buses are a bit bet­ter. I mean, the win­dows can close and the dri­ver doesn´t seem to be on drug or clin­i­cally insane. But these buses are still going to stop when­ever they feel like it to pick up pas­sen­gers (i.e the mid­dle of a field) and they are quite slow. Nonethe­less, they are cheap — about 1$ per hour. For exam­ple, for a 6 hours trip (i.e Playa Tamarindo to San Jose), you will pay US$6. Can´t beat that! We crossed Panama for $30…

Buses are never ever on time. When­ever I ask “¿a qué hora sale el bus y a qué hora llega?”, the answers is always “más o menos…”. More or less, yes, this is the key word. It also takes ages to buy a ticket because no mat­ter what time we go to the bus sta­tion, there always seems to be a hun­dred of peo­ple queu­ing to go some­where. Buy­ing a ticket from the dri­ver is often the best option, but you may have to stand for the whole trip (may it be 30 min­utes or 12 hours) because all of the seats will be taken by the coura­geous souls who did queue at the station.

Bus Sta­tion In Boquete, Panamá

Bus To David, Panamá

Wait­ing For The Bus, Costa Rica

Read­ing While Waiting…

Bus Sta­tion In Filadelfia, Costa Rica

Bus Sta­tion In Santa Cruz, Costa Rica

Related posts:

1. Faces Of Cen­tral America
2. Boquete, Chiquiri Province
3. Snow Fall !
4. Panamá, Old And New
5. On The Way To France