No visit to Guatemala is truly complete without taking at least a short ride on a chicken bus. Step inside and dive into the heart of authentic
Guatemala—the lively noises, rich aromas, vibrant colors, and yes, the chickens.
Imagine being squeezed into an old American school bus, filled with Mayan passengers, as it hurtles down narrow mountain roads, brakes smoking and horns blaring. It’s a thrilling cultural experience you will not soon forget.
Here, the ever so humble yellow school bus is reborn with a dazzling makeover. Picture a mechanical pig decked out for Carnival. The bizarre blend of American functionality and Guatemalan flamboyance is wonderful to behold. They are simply fantastic… as long as you don’t care where you are going or when you get there.
You might think an old school bus is unsafe. Not so! This is a vehicle built to transport the youth of America.
At some point in the middle of the last century there was meeting of Blue Bird Bus Company engineers; a room full of short haircuts, polyester suits and doctorates from Cal
Tech and MIT. “We are here to design a school bus.” Declares one. “Price is no object…” (school districts had money back then) “but it absolutely, positively must be safe!”
While they are uncomfortable, especially for
anyone with legs longer than the typical six year-old, chicken buses come well equipped with industrial-strength brakes, extremely loud hor ns,stiff suspensions, and very very solid bodies. The roads and sometimes even the drivers can be suspect, but the vehicles
themselves are quite safe.
Years ago, when I first came to Guatemala, the only way to get around were chicken buses. On one trip from Antigua to Lake Atitlan, my driver and competitor company’s ‘piloto’, as they are rather grandly called, decided that what they were driving were not two old clunky school buses but finely tuned race cars. They tore down steep mountain roads, whipped around blind, hairpin corners. I vividly remember 
horns blasting and brakes squealing as we rocked violently back and forth. Now I consider myself to be a fairly game traveler, at least I didn’t want my fellow passengers to think that I lacked the right stuff, so I played it cool.
But when they also started gasping, 
I felt a strange sense of relief that they too found this alarming along with a swelling realization that this was every bit as precarious as I feared.
I don’t recall who ‘won’ that ludicrous race. What I do remember is that we arrived well ahead of schedule and none the worse for wear. Don’t let me scare you off; that was by far the most white-knuckle trip I have ever taken, but even the tamest of chicken bus rides have their twists and turns. heart-pounding So how do you actually go about taking one? Sorry, but you’re on your own. Schedules, if they exist at all, are unreliable.
Likewise, if someone tells you that this or that bus will arrive or depart at a certain time, it might, but don’t count on it. The best strategy is to look for people that seem to be waiting for a bus. Odds are good that they are doing just that. Ask directions as best you can (the Spanish word for ‘bus’ is ‘bus’—it’s easy to remember) and hope for the best.
Fares are cheap, but beware the gringo tax.
Watch what locals pay and hand the driver’s assistantexact change. Act like an old hand. If the worstcomes to worst and you end up lost, take the samecolored bus going back in the direction you came from. Odds are reasonably good you’ll end up whereyou started. You’ll have gone nowhere,but you will have had a great timegetting there.
One word of warning: do not travel in or out of Guatemala City on chicken buses. It’s too easy to end up on the wrong bus, going to the wrong part of town at the wrong time— 
seriously, don’t. Once out of the city, you can think about it. Chicken buses are cheap, uncomfortable and, with any luck, slow. Yet I recommend them highly. For local color and character they can’t be beat. Give it a whirl! What have you got to lose?
