Money, money, money Have not ventured into Hong Kong and Macao yet but have seen the explosion of wealth in China over the last 15 years. Macau looks as if it takes the cake!
I know why I travelled through central America a lot back when I was in my twenties. Oh jeez, is that almost 30 years ago? Anyways, we started calling the public buses 'chicken buses' because most of the locals had at least one chicken on the bus with them, mostly on their laps (chickens were considered currency back in those days) so they would take a chicken into town to buy maize or to trade for something else. I think they would even pay their bus fare with a chicken because the driver or his fare taker always seemed to have a couple. Those chickens would walk up and down the aisle. There were never windows, for air conditioning and the seats weren't always bolted to the floor, so in sudden stops you had to use your feet to brace. The buses back then were even more run down, but the bus drivers would polish them and decorate them up to get people to ride them. Crazy tourists like me thought chicken buses were the best experiences of our lives!
Thanks for the wonderful comment Thank you. Wonderful story you gave us. So now we know for sure that the name comes from poultry being transported on board the vehicles (and you were one of them who came up with the name! How cool is that!?!). /Ake
Where school buses go to Heaven Another Ake first...a Chicken Bus blog! Fantastic pics and my favourite Who song to sing it by..."I don't care how much I pay. Magic bus, Magic bus. I want it, I want it, I want it...I said I now got my magic bus...Each time I go a different way...Magic bus"...aaah!
Where's the seat? These colorful cheapies are the buses I always rode in Guatemala. They would pack people in so tightly that someone "sat" in the aisle, held up just by the pressure from the those packed into the seats on the sides. I never knew that 10-year rule about our school buses-very interesting, and handy for poorer countries. Love your photos of these 'magic buses.'
I love them! They are colorful like the buses & trucks in India! Although not colorful, the local buses that serve the villages (vs the urban ones) in Mexico are called chicken buses by tourists because there's often a passenger or two with a live chicken in a cage on their way to market or from the market. Many locals prefer their chickens live when they buy them. I love riding them as It's an ideal way to bond with the locals ;o)
Graves en masse Cemeteries are places of memories. Wonderful to see the colourful and well maintained Chichicastenango, Ake. I do a fair bit of Deceased Estates legal work so I see the best and worst of people at those times. I thus find it quite uplifting to see memory of the dear departed preserved but I also find neglected cemeteries as sad places albeit interesting.
Neglected cemeteries being interesting You wrote that neglected cemeteries are sad but can be interesting. I find abandoned places very fascinating. I often find for instance ghost towns or crumbling houses very beautiful and picturesque. Sure, they also make me a bit sad because they are also a reminder that our life here is short and fragile and that we all one day will be gone and forgotten.
We have over the years published a few blog entries with pictures of ghost towns. Most notably would be one on Chernobyl and one on Bodie in California. But we also have one named Unusual sightseeing in Smaland (blog #818773), it is about an abandoned car wrecking yard. Places like that we call modern ruins and when we come by them we try to visit them /Ake
Another cemetery buff! I love cemeteries and always always visit them, too! Great that you dedicated a blog to three very contrasting ones! I adore the one in this photo with its virgin and holy ghost, clearly painted with love by a local. And the three styles reflect their cities from elegant Antigua with its colonial monuments to colorful, indigenous Chichicastanango. The monumental ones of Quetzaltenango remind me of monumental Arequipa, Peru, and of the wonderful ones in Punta Arenas, Chile. So many cemeteries, so little time (hehe).
Glad you liked it Thanks for commenting and I'm glad you liked the blog entry. Your comment also adds a better perspective of the three cemeteries. Thanks for helping me make the entry better. /Ake
We think alike We think alike then. You can explain it better than I do. Finding the right expression is difficult since English isn't my native language. /Ake
There is something about Ruins I recall the Romans destroyed Caperneum "so that no stone was on another." The Taliban blew up those giant twin buddhas in Afghanistan. Tragedies no ruins in those places...nothing survived. The wonderful thing about restoration works is that in some places their are ruins discovered that are brought back to life ensuring they continue to survive. Ancient histories and cultures can thus be appreciated with the awe they deserve. Many sites are thus revived to endure. Tikal looks like a jewel of the Mayan World and the restored ruins should be celebrated as such...no apologies! Great pics Ake.
Love the ruins! Brilliant plan of attack to get photos before the hordes arrived! This is such an evocative photo of endless jungle with the tops of major temples poking out. Part of what I loved about Tikal was how isolated it is and the adventure getting there. Since Tikal was a big city, lots of the administrative and residential buildings were small/normal size. I worked with archaeologists outside Tikal in the jungle where the structures were completely hidden by a thousand years of vegetation. We'd know there was a building only because of a mound and a certain tree that grew out of the structures because they loved the limestone. Love your photo of the little rascal coati.
So you have actually worked in Tikal So you have actually worked in Tikal. That must have been interesting. A long time ago I wanted to become an archaeologist but I later ended up studying science. /Ake
Perhaps You say you are not a ruin type. Well, I am not a bird type so I really can't tell if the peacock was OK or not. If he had displayed his feathers I might have been able to tell but he never did. /Ake
We are Emma Holmbro and Ake Dahllof. We live in Stockholm, Sweden.
We have travelled more or less regularly since the mid 1990-ies and it seems like the more we travel the more difficult it is to decide where to go next. Not because we are running out of places to visit but because we find more places we want to go to faster than we manage to travel to them.
Some of the things from our travel bucket list we have ticked off since we started this blog in 2006 are
Angel Falls in Ven... full info
Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Money, money, money
Have not ventured into Hong Kong and Macao yet but have seen the explosion of wealth in China over the last 15 years. Macau looks as if it takes the cake!