The Bus

The bus is a window to the people and life of El Salvador. For 20 cents one can ride anywhere in the city. It is a great system with many buses and many routes. For each trip, we plan to travel light – only money and whatever needed for that day. This week we traveled to new areas in preparation of documents for our residency visa.

A bus ride in the central city includes vendors entering the bus to sell sweets, preachers who have a captive audience, beggars and petty thieves. This week a young man got on the bus and begged for money, walked down the aisle holding his cap out. Everyone put coins into his cap. The first time this happened, we did not. He approached us a second time and I noticed the smell of alcohol. Nancy had bus fare coins in her hand and dropped them into his cap. He thanked Nancy and left.

Attire on the bus has a wide range – old women wearing the seller’s multi-pocketed apron, well-dressed business people, women with bags and baskets on their heads either for selling or going home from shopping, casually dressed moms with children, poorly dressed people of all ages, young people in uniforms of banks and restaurants, and more.

The buses travel through zones of heavy traffic and raw exhaust pollution, zones of cooking and produce smells (even raw fish – that’s another story!), zones of street “hawkers” and noisy crowds, loud music, gang graffiti, and fascinating architecture – both good and bad.

Christmas decorations are evident everywhere; it is strange to have 95 degrees and see snowmen and icicle lights in stores and homes. We had two nights that got down to 70 and people were complaining of the cold. We saw sweaters, winter jackets and wool hats on the bus. We had on typical summer clothes and we loved it.