Advertisement
....Now la buseta...this hellish fun deserves a blog of its own I think!
Yup, so every morning at 720am I leave my house to go catch the school bus. As I wonder (or run, depending on how late I am!) along, whilst considering, in my fuzzy brain, why the hell Im walking in the street at such an early hour, I also consider what the bus journey will bring today. Because yes, it is nearly always an adventure in itself. And I am truely thankful that I never had to catch a school bus when I went to school, because I imagine it would be even more traumatic as a child....
Firstly, to get the real idea of the buseta experience, you have to be able to picture what it looks like. Yes, it's yellow. Now, there are so many yellow school buses that bounce around at that time of the morning, that it would be impossible to tell which was mine, they all look like little space shuttles, cars of the future things. But fortunately for me, our buseta comes from a distinctly different era. Think yellow cardboard box with wheels, chugging along, bits of metal sticking out, sounds like its going to explode any second. I can actually usually hear it before I see it. Inside is worse. There arent enough seats for everyone, and thats even when all the fold down seats are used as well, so the kids squidge all around on the floor, two to a seat, and there's one boy whose place is with his legs straddling the gear stick. And surprisingly, it doesnt seem to matter here. Once every so often, we find random bits of metal on the floor of the bus, which worryingly obviously used to have place in the machine....
Plus there is a hole over where the electronics are underneath the buseta, so wires stick up. Dont worry, this is also quite usual for some vehicles here! Apart from the other day, when smoke started coming up through the hole from the wires, heh, and the only reason everyone realised was that the girl sat over the hole started screaming...in a kind of "haha this could be really fun" way. Personally I think all the kids are insane.
Not surprising, as when I get on the bus at 730, they are all usually scoffing extra sugary sweets and chocolate and fizzy drinks, making them nice and hyper for the whole day (speaking of choclate and sweets here, they actually write on the packaging that they are nutricious! And once on a 10 hour bus journey, we had a guy get on trying to sell chocolate bars, with a sales patter that ended in "to be healthy, you should eat 40 chocolate bars every 40 days...."this guy had 3 teeth left. You have no idea how many people bought the chocolate...) So when I get on, or jump on the buseta, as the driver , pepito (he does insist on being called that, what was I saying about them loving the nicknames...) doesnt really like to stop to pick people up, I am greeted by 15 already hyped up kids, who fling themsleves around as much as the space will allow. This would be lovely, and great fun Im sure, if I wasnt still trying to open my eyes and focus. Usually we get to school without too much trouble, although most days involve quite a few near misses with other vehicles, mostly other school buses in fact, and I can only imagine that all the other bus drivers are in the same position as me with my eye struggles. Which means that by the time we get to school, my heart is beating so fast from terror, that i am nice and awake.
By the time 1 o clock and hometime comes, the kids are even more hyper, and so is Pepito, who sometimes I am sure is actualy a kid too. Definately a character anyway. As the drivers door doesnt open, he gets all the kids on then climbs through them to his seat, blasts out some funky ecuadorian music, sings and dances along, having much more fun than he should be really! But its all good. Obviously, it is lunchtime, and he is hungry, so he usually, whilst driving, leans back to steal some of the kids' sugary snacks, resulting in a few swerves, but again its all fine. This is a usual day on the buseta. If you add in a few incidents with a kid crying, or them slapping each other or something like that of course.
Now a more exciting day on the school bus....this could involve an animal being on board. For example, the other day, I got on the bus and I was surprised to see a chicken sat there. Now really this shouldnt have surprised me. This didnt cause too much trouble, all the kids thought it was very cute and were rubbing there faces on its feathers, despite the fact that Pepito was blatantly about to go home and wring its neck and make a nice almuerzo out of it. Things only got out of hand when it pooed on one of the girls.....
I was even more surprised about two weeks ago, when I was sitting up front next to Pepito, and some sort of chaos was happening behind me that I was trying to ignore. This failed, because the chaos was approaching me in the form of a crab that one of the girls decided to put on my shoulder. Again I shouldnt have been surprised, anything can happen...my shoulder is obviously not that comfy, cos the crab decided to fling itself off in a bid for freedom onto the buseta floor, narrowly missing the hole in the bottom, but scamperring around, accompanied by a whole lot of screaming children who were also sat on the floor. It was hard not to join in with the hysterical screaming, partly from fear and partly the fact that it does make it a lot more fun! Especially when the crab made it through somehow, to where my feet were in the front, but dont worry, I was saved by the kid who has his legs around the gearstick who picked the little crabby up. Of course, Pepito wanted to join in with the fun, and so snatched the crab off the kid and tried to haggle a price for the crab with the girl who had brought him from home. Of course, she was having none of it. Again, Pepito was paying much more attention to the crab than to the road, especially when it nipped him then jumped, so he was also screaming hysterically, and bending down to fish him out from the peddles....whilst driving. I honestly down know how we all survived that trip.
But all buseta incidents came to a head last week. The bus was outside waiting, but Pepito and all the kids were inside...eating...heh. We all sauntered out after, ready to go home, to discover the buseta swerving down the road, nearly hitting all the parked cars. Everyone, again screaming, ran towards the bus, to find one of the kids in the front seat, god knows how he got the thing going cos even pepito has trouble, and the teachers had to stop the bus with force as the kid panicked and tried to drive faster. Eventually it came to a halt. The boy was crying from the trauma of stealing a school bus, which also made him be sick on the way home. Lovely. I have to admit, it did add quite a bit of excitement to the day though.
These are just a selection of things that go on on the buseta...the rest I will leave to your imaginations...I have about three weeks of school bus fun left...who knows what it will bring. Fun fun fun!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 56; dbt: 0.05s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lucy
non-member comment
Soph it all sounds like utter madness, in a good way of course! Sent you a letter a few days ago, hope it gets to you! Much love x