colectivos - buses

We've been taking the bus to school and it's been great.

They are called "colectivos". A little confusing, but great. You really get a sense and a whiff of what it's like to live here. Of course there's some little twists: you get on the bus and you're supposed to tell the driver how far you're going so he can mentally compute your fare but most people just grunt and the driver calculates it as 80 cents. I guess if you were travelling a short distance you'd do something different. We grunt. You drop your coins in the machine and get change and a ticket that really resembles a fortune cookie (see above). I've yet to figure out what my fortune it so far.

The bus stops ("paradas") are also great. Sometimes they are ideal - covered benches, metal signs indicating which buses stop here, etc. Sometimes, it's literally a 3" x 8" sign with only a number and it's glued or nailed to whatever is close by - a tree, a stop sign, old people who don't move very fast.

You enter at the front and leave at the rear door, but typically these colectivos are packed, so you have to elbow your way to the rear door. And to get the bus to stop you push a button which is usually at the rear. Packed in a colectivo with our air conditioning in sweltering heat means sultry. So you really, well, you probably don't have any smell function in your computer but I'm sure you get the idea.

That being said the colectivos are fast, cheap, efficient, well utilized, and well run 24/7. Figuring out the routes, that's more confusing than yahtzee.

A bus stop.

Note the "Linea 130" signage.