Bus Travel

hanging out in the Quevedo Bus Terminal

This post is dedicated to Paul, our all-star vomit catcher. He managed to successfully catch four vomits yesterday on our many hours journey home from the coast. I am utterly useless in this arena, as the mere glimpse of a vomiting child sets off an unfortunate chain reaction in the pit of my own stomach.

[Paul: I would like to defer this award to our dear friend, Gwen Riddell, who has on occasion caught our child's vomit *with her bare hands*!!]

We had a really lovely time at the coast last week, and I will write all about it in a separate post. Here I wanted to reflect for a moment on bus travel. Our own journey was just over 300 kilometers each way, one camioneta and four buses, nearly ten hours of travel. On the way west, we traveled with Ecuadorian friends and had smooth connections. We had the pleasure of two violent movies, plenty of standing room only co-passengers riding home from school, and a delicious lunch in the Portoviejo Terminal. Plus the kids got to try cocadas, coconut nugget treats sold only on the coast, and 2/3 liked them! On the way back, we enjoyed an atypical family-friendly movie, lots of vomiting (thank god for plastic bags and Paul), a talented Christian rapping duo, and an annoyingly long last leg. My kids are troopers and surprisingly resilient despite their propensity to get motion sick. I, too, still love traveling by bus despite the same predilection.

Bus travel in Ecuador is amazing, despite being almost always bumpy and, at times, slow. An extensive bus system courses through the entire country, and you can catch a bus going in any direction, to just about any place, at any time. Most long-haul passengers start their journeys at the ubiquitous bus terminals on the edge of each city. Inside the terminals, ayudantes (bus helpers) recruit passengers, shouting loudly and excitedly, "Riobamba, Riobamba! Guayaquil, Guayaquil! Portoviejo, Portoviejo!" Sometimes their enthusiasm is enough to make you want to change your plans. In most cases, the bus is actually owned by the bus driver, who pays to lease the bus route. The driver is basically a member of a regional transport cooperative, working as an independent entity within a larger organization. He is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the actual vehicle; this means that bus drivers are intimately attached to their buses and many vehicles are meticulously painted and individually decorated inside and out with everything from Playboy images to the Virgin Mary.

As a side note, the ayudante is a really cool concept in workplace culture -- whereas in the US, bus drivers are largely solitary workers dealing with tremendous job stress-- collecting bus fares, assisting passengers with special needs, giving directions, keeping oft-impossible schedules -- in Ecuador, the ayudantes support the bus driver with these tasks. Ayudantes collect payment and make change, choose bus music, manage the onboard movie, carry toddlers off the bus, assist little old ladies, load and unload baggage, jump off and register arrival at checkpoints, and more. Meanwhile, the bus driver drives.

Okay, back to bus travel. . .

Once you have identified the correct ayudante associated with the correct bus route, he (almost universally this is a job for male-identifying people) hurriedly rushes you toward an idling bus, with an untoward urgency, "Vamos ahora! Estamos saliendo ahora! Apuranse". And you are literally pushed up into a bus, ideally the correct one, where there may or may not be a seat. I recommend you ask about the seat before hopping in, unless you are okay standing in the aisle for a few miles. And if the ayudante promised you a seat, I recommend holding them to that promise, even if it requires you to be a little uppity.

If you're lucky before you were swept up, you found a minute to pee at the bus terminal bathrooms, $0.25 for paper/$0.10 for the urinal, though some bigger buses do have bathrooms. As I was saying to my kids this week, clean public restrooms are definitely something we take for granted. Whereas it may seem odd to pay for a bathroom, it is definitely better to have a clean pay bathroom, than a disgusting unattended one. I don't know about you, but when I'm traveling, I am m always grateful for the former. Plus, people need jobs!

If you have a few minutes to spare between connections, the Terminal may offer some interesting shopping options. You can get potato chips, chifles and fruit juice. Many offer fresh fruits as well. And plenty of hats, jackets and the like. I personally almost bought some snazzy pink and black striped pants this week in the Quevedo Terminal.

One more notable thing about the bus terminals in Ecuador are the food kiosks. Ecuadorians enjoy travel snacks, but above all, they value a hot lunch (almuerzo). And for most Ecuadorians, a hot breakfast (desayuno) is just as important and similar in contents to almuerzo. As such, in any bus terminal, there are rows and rows of stalls featuring home-cooked meals, individuals preparing and offering hot lunch: first a hot soup, followed by the segundo, arroz con (rice with) something. Almuerzos are of variable quality, but almost always good -- sometimes delicious -- and a safe way to eat while traveling. When I lived here 20 years ago, lunch cost $1. Prices have definitely increased, and the average bus terminal almuerzo is $2.50, including both parts and a drink. Our aforementioned lunch last week in Portoviejo featured a scrumptious fish soup called viche de pescado, which has a broth made from blended green plantains. Yum! The segundo was rice and fish (rice and beef for the kids). The drink, a flavored oatmeal drink called a colada, is not my favorite, but my family managed to get it down.

If the bus terminal is too far off your path, you can also catch the bus at any point along its route -- in front of a house, a store, a random corner, a park-- all you have to do is flag it down. On the front of the bus are big windshield stickers identifying the final destination with some intermediary cities also listed. And, as the buses move through towns, the same ayudante who pulled you into the bus in the terminal is often found hanging out the open front door, yelling, "La Mana, La Mana, Quevedo, Quevedo" or wherever else the bus is headed. This system is amazing (no hunting for bus stations). It is also painful, as any bus you are riding -- across any distance-- even a 12 hour long journey-- involves stopping and starting and stopping and starting along the bus route to allow passengers to embark and disembark, thereby extending the length of the trip, sometimes to double. While it's extremely convenient to be the person hopping on or off, I find myself wishing for actual bus stops and express buses.

In addition to the picking up and dropping off of passengers, the buses also regularly pick up and drop off vendors along the route. Any such vendor can get on any bus and sell their goods, as long as they hop off in a reasonable amount of time and behave themselves while on board. Vendors sell everything from papas and chifles to encocadas and cookies, to chocolate bon bons, to agua de coco, even scissors, locks, and remedies. Last week there was a woman selling a menthol rub with the power to cure all maladies, the scent of which permeated the bus for a half an hour after she left. Sometimes, like on our bus adventure yesterday, rappers and/or singers come aboard, even clowns. Many have a very loud and passionate shpeal that goes something like "I could be in the street begging for a handout or even doing criminal activity, but instead I am hear asking for your collaboration and support. I am trying to earn my keep, pay for food for my children, and do so in a productive and socially-friendly way. Please engage with me and purchase my offering." Some are a little more bitter, "Really, no one, no one in this entire bus is going to support me? Not a single one of you? You should be ashamed of yourselves." In any case, there is never ending bus shopping with some entertainment; you can never be quite sure who will hop on next and what they might be trying to sell you. Dillon is particularly intrigued by the vendors.

Now I must take a moment to acknowledge the phenomenon of the onboard bus movie. Inevitably it is a horror film or a ridiculously violent action movie, always straight from Hollywood, almost always dubbed into Spanish, blasting at full volume for all to enjoy. In recent years, the buses have all upgraded their audiovisual systems so that there are enough screens that every rider has a good view of each and every gory scene. At times, I have to direct my screen-deprived children to turn their heads; other times, the self-regulate themselves as Rambo blows up men in the jungle and/or Ghost Rider's burning body chases someone through a city. I can honestly say that I would never ever in my life have seen any such films if it weren't for the Ecuadorian bus addiction to bad American action movies. I often find myself wondering how many people on board actually enjoy the entertainment. Hopefully lots.

When the movie ends, jaunty bus music is another staple of Ecuadorian bus travel. In fact, a silent bus is a strange bus. The music is always louder than the average American traveler might desire, usually cumbia or regetton, sometimes Ecuadorian banda. Sometimes it's quite good, sometimes terrible. But ever-present. It's a good way to get your finger on the pulse of current music trends in Ecuador and practice some Spanish too. I hear Brynna frequently pulling words out of the songs, particularly those that recur, and asking for translation from her brothers.

One word on the roads in Ecuador. The truth is that while there is a robust inter-provincial highway system, actual road conditions are variable, ever-changing, and super hard to maintain -- with the steep elevation changes, constant rain, frequent landslides, and high density of bus traffic. On some roads (e.g. Quito to Latacunga) buses can run hard and fast, upwards of 60-70 MPH, when they aren't stopping to pick someone up or drop someone off. On other roads (e.g. Portoviejo to Quevedo that we took this week, a major thoroughfare) was pretty terrible. Windy as all heck, asphalt torn up, rocky, with more potholes and bumps than you can count. The bus drivers are generally excellent at navigating the roads, but it does mean that, at times, they can go no faster than 15-20 MPH.

And so, folks, there you have it, a little dip into bus travel in Ecuador. Bring a funda or two, anticipate entertainment, and pack some patience. While the same trip back home in a private car on well-maintained roads would have taken about five hours, it would be way more sedate, more solitary, less immersive, and hardly anything to write about. As the bus next to me announced proudly, "All you need is Ecuador."