cola a diez

i was on the bus today - quelle surprise - and i got thinking that it's the bus vendors that i'll miss the most when i come back to canada. not that i'll get teary eyed making my way across town in public transit only to have a craving for caramels and remember that no one will be plowing down the aisle any time soon to satisfy my sweet tooth. it's more the fact that they're always there, a part of the landscape that is inseparable, an indelible mark on the fabric of guayaquil.

i'll try and start with an overall image of the practice. you see, the buses in guayaquil have turnstiles at the front that record the number of people who get on and off. this is interesting because if you're 60 or older, a student or disabled you get to ride for half price but i never see the driver marking this down so i don't really know how reliable the turnstile is as an indicator of who has paid. children don't pay, as long as they're small enough to squeeze under or through the gate, and there is always a seat just to the side of the driver before the gate and obviously the people who sit there are not counted. the seat also says disabled across the back but this rarely deters the beefiest of jocks or swankiest of college co-eds from sitting down. lately there have been calls for the removal of the turnstiles - people of girth and people dependent on canes and other walking devices find it hard if downright impossible to get on board and have taken their plight to city council. the city agreed and demanded that the buses remove the turnstiles starting soon - or something similarly vague. this led to quiet for all of a few seconds and then small groups of angry passangers started sprouting up all over the city, accosting buses and ripping out the turnstiles by force. luckily i managed to avoid this but the pictures in the paper were quite interesting to see.

this led to a 48 hour strike that lasted all of a day (the paper said 48 hours but it barely made it through one day...). of course the entrepreneurial spirit being what it is for a day the city was overtaken by vans, flat beds, school buses and rickshaws (ok, maybe not rickshaws), all trying to pick up the slack and make a buck or two along the way. it was fun to see flatbed trucks oozing with people, small make-shift signs declaring the destination, or simply listing the bus route.

anyway, every time you take the bus you are guaranteed to face at least one if not a handful of vendors, hawking their wares. these people do not pay the quarter to ride the bus and have to fenagle themselves over the turnstile to get to the paying public. some will mount the first few steps of the bus and shout out what they're trying to sell to see if there's enough interest beforehand. others come in teams and vault the gates in a single bound. it's a regular smorgasborg of items as well, and nothing is predictable. along with the hordes selling a variety of carbonated beverages for ten cents the cup there are streams of candy sellers - although they promise, in memorized blurbs they spout out beforehand, that they are not selling the items for any price, it's merely how much they wish to give them to you for. they usually hand out the candy beforehand and then make a swoop to see who wishes to keep their stash.

there are also people roped into selling puzzles, agendas, leather satchels, jewelery, hair scrunchies, pens, along with the variety of fruits by the bagfull and slices of watermelon or kebobs of chicken or beef. some sell bags of corn with something rather unapetizing stuck on top, while others sell mammoth panes de yuca (yuca bread). of course there is the ubiquitous bottled water sellers, sometimes three or four of them will come on at a time, sift through the aisles and all come away empty handed.