El autobús Colombiano

Take the bus in Colombia.  Take it like you’d eat a handful of acid, or a nibble of a cyanide pill.  Not enough to stop the heart forever, but enough to run it over a few hundred speed bumps at 120 miles per hour.

Look into the driver’s eyes.  Notice the ruptured and twitching veins.  Notice two-thirds of a booger hanging in his mustache.  Don’t worry.  Bloodshot eyes are better prepared for looking into oncoming traffic.  The booger will lose its grip on one of the many switchbacks and tumble into his lap.  It will roll back and forth along with other bits and pieces which have escaped his mustache.  Potato chips, spittle, narcotics — all settling in the driver’s lap like a homeless trail-mix.

The music will be bad, but it’s only a nuisance for those sitting in the first two rows.  Beyond that, engine noise, rogue horns, and disturbing window rattling will drown out the static.

Pick your poison.  Keep the window closed and watch it vibrate off its hinges.  Slowly suffocate.  Poach in a stew of your own sweat and the cumulative funk of the other passengers.  Or keep the window open.  Violent rattling.  Suffer the toxic fumes, black clouds of brake dust, nuclear waste and toxic rain.  Still too hot for comfort.  Humidity turns you into a sticky surface, best suited for collecting grime, dirt, and dead insects.  

Empty your bladder before you board.  There are no accommodations of any sort.  The quarters are too close to wee into a bottle.  The turbulence would never allow for it.

You may eat, but it’s not advised.  Especially if you are prone to motion sickness.  Drinking is a task of tremendous effort.  By the end of the voyage, your beverages will be splattered down your shirt front.  You will likely have a puddle between your legs, a combination of your drink and tiny squirts of urine, excreted upon moments of pure unadulterated fear.

The Colombian people will not provide any sympathy.  Your dread is completely your own cross to bear.  Colombians are accustomed to this type of travel.  Maybe they thrive in this environment.  An eighty-foot bus, passing a semi-truck full of diesel, on a blind curve — this is where they find peace.  You’ll notice the locals becoming drowsy, a display of boredom, or a defense mechanism to the high-speed horror.  Many Colombians will fall fully asleep.  Toddlers in their arms, also unbothered.

Every four miles, be ready for a rolling stop where some ill-advised soul will climb aboard and scramble to their seat.  Also, be prepared for the vendors.  The vendors are an experience all on their own. A wide array of old and young.  Everything from sweet-faced students, selling candy-coated peanuts, to the one-footed ogre, sweat-stained and agitated, looking to sucker a few people into buying hygienically unsound, crudely chopped fruit.  Napkins, utensils, containers never provided.  Eat with your hands.

A transaction with a vendor entails a slick handoff, a trade of sorts.  A potentially edible object exchanged for a few pesos.  As quickly as the bus vendors arrive, they disappear again, leaping from the death carts at fifteen miles per hour.  Tumbling to a dusty stop.  A few seconds to compose themselves and to gather their belongings.  Another bus will be traveling in the opposite direction.  They’ll sprint and cling to the open door like a Somali pirate.  

Maybe your experience will end in a head-on collision.  Maybe you'll learn true weightlessness as your sleeping driver sends you careening off the edge of a cliff.  But most likely, you’ll survive.  Despite their bloodshot eyes and shaky hands, these are professionals. The precision of maneuvers. Obviously not paid by the hour.  You can feel it in the velocity as you are driven into your seat.  You’ll arrive at your destination disheveled, covered in fear-stink and or vomit, but you’ll be alive. 

More alive than you’ve ever been.  

Take the bus in Colombia.