The 1000 Day Holiday

We caught a Linea Dorada bus from Belize City to Chetumal, Mexico. This being an international route, you have to get off the bus and pass through immigration. The benefit of taking an International Bus is that they wait for you to clear immigration and take you onto your destination.

We even get added fun at Mexican border as you get to punch a button which displays a red or green light determining if your bags are searched.

I got though no problem, loaded my bag back on the bus and waited for my travel buddy.

5, 10, 15 minutes no sign, I told the driver my friend was still not there and I was going to look for them. He huffed and puffed a bit. But off I went to find her as he had parked so that you couldn’t see the bus when you emerged from security, and was no longer standing at the corner so people could find it.

5 mins more and still no sign. Finally shes through and I’m telling her to hurry up as the bus driver is getting impatient. I turn around and the bus is pulling out into traffic 100m away!

I sprint after the bus. no luck. Fsck, my bags on that bus and I don’t know if it terminates in Chetumal or continues all the way to Cancun. WTF.

I ran back to my friend and jump in a cab with 2 others who were also left behind.

We get to the bus station 20 minutes later just as the bus pulls in, I bust past security explaining my bags are on there, and then start shouting in my “most excellent” Spanish at the bus driver why the FSCK he left without us and with my bag on board. The only bad bit was that I couldn’t get my Spanish swear words working as they are unpractised.

He didn’t give much of a toss about the situation, but I didn’t get out his face until he had paid our 100 Peso taxi fare ($10).

He then spent the next 20 minutes giving us the bad eye as we waited in line for tickets for the next bus. At least it now had cost him money and that appears the only way he might ever learn his lesson.

Before I first visited South America I had heard crazy stories of buses where you could see through the floor, chickens, pigs and other unnamed animals under your feet.

Maybe it was because I came from Africa where the buses minivans really are like that times 10. The exchange student doctors you meet tell you never to sit near the front of the minivans because the amount of injuries they see in the emergency departments give them 12 months experience in just 3.

Well I have to say that the buses here in Colombia are pretty damn flash.

They have air conditioning “so good” that you hope you are wearing your thermals, jeans, jumper and hoodie just in the hope of being warm enough to sleep. This can be a double negative when you are layered up in preparation and end up on a full bus, no toilet, and there is no air-con!

But to the point of this post. The only strange thing about the buses here is that you will not see what is possibly going to kill you.

There is a partition between the driver/front window an the passenger compartment. So when you get thrown out of your seat onto the floor by heavy braking, or into the aisle from very heavy swerving. You really cant tell how close you came to the end.

The positive side you need less Valium, because what you cant see cant hurt you.

Comparing these trips to one I did in Thailand sitting front and top of a double-decker bus above the driver, with a full widescreen view of their style of overtaking other buses with oncoming trucks around fast corners, all this with just 2 lanes. A few episodes like this and we could take no more and shut the curtains.

Yeah. Colombian buses are better.

a 32 hour commute and Im here in San Francisco.
It would have been around 22 hours if I had booked a cheap flight from LAX-SFO. But instead I got to enjoy the comfort and excitement of the Greyhound.

The excitement being provided by one of the other passengers breaking an arm rest and threatening to kill another passenger with it. I guess its good that everyone gets patted down, pass a metal detector and carry on bags are searched when boarding. I suppose theyve had gun or knife fights break out! hah

Within minutes of leaving the greyhound station in SFC, I love it. Feels like Wellington, or maybe Vancouver.
Time to go explore.