The "regular" people's bus

One interesting thing I learned on my first trip to Honduras is that apparently Central America is the graveyard for retired US school buses.  When districts up here are done with their buses, which of course means when they are no longer considered suitable for our children to ride them, they are shipped to Central America where they become part of the public bus system down there.  On the one hand this is great as it provides them with buses to use. On the other hand there is something somewhat unsettling about a whole society riding around on buses we’ve now rejected as unfit for our children.  Most of the buses have been painted over so that you can no longer see where the bus originated from but I couldn’t help looking every time one of these buses went by just in case it was from somewhere I recognized.  In fact on the last day of the trip while walking down a street, a bus went by from Show Low School District which amazingly enough is the small town in Arizona where my niece recently landed a math teaching job!  I went running down the street to get a picture of it to send to her.

There were two things that fascinated me most about the “regular people” buses.  The first one we took was a “direct” bus from San Pedro to Puerto Cortez.  Direct presumably means it loads up in San Pedro and then stops in Puerto Cortez.  This is more or less the case.  However rather than just having a bus that leaves San Pedro bus terminal at a specific time, the bus goes from stop to stop trying to get as many passengers as possible before leaving the city.  In addition to the driver, there is a man I’ll call the conductor who stands at the door of the bus.  The driver pulls up to a stop and the conductor yells out the door calling for passengers.  Aaron and I assumed that the driver and conductor must get some additional money based on how many people are on the bus as they seemed very intent on filling the bus up before leaving.  In fact they charged us for 3 seats because our luggage wouldn’t fit in the luggage area and took up a seat which meant one less passenger for them.  Once they had filled the bus, we headed onto Puerto Cortez and at that point it was indeed a direct bus!

The other interesting thing on this bus occurred at several of the stops when the conductor was trying to round up passengers.  Various people would get on the bus and try to sell us stuff.  They would ride the bus to the next stop trying to sell their wares, then get off and get on another bus to sell to them.  These people would get on and start talking about whatever they were selling.  Most fascinating to me was that everyone immediately got quiet and listened!  I couldn’t imagine that happening on a bus in the US!  One man was selling a pill that apparently would cure whatever ails you (reminded me of the old elixir of life sold in the Wild West days).  Another man was selling a folding toothbrush and assured you that if you didn’t buy it you would have cockroaches and ants climbing all over your toothbrush (Aaron said this was a very good point and bought one!).  Sometimes people were selling good or water.  We bought some delicious homemade rolls that were still warm from a girl who got on.