This post has been sitting in my edit box for a week now. It's behind the times. So I sped through it. check my facebook for pictures if you want. --
I think I've re-edited this new post, like, five times now because I just haven't been able to finish it. Now, here we are back at home getting ready to take off for our next adventure tonight. I haven't blogged near as much as I wanted to. For that, I apologize. But, we had an amazing time in Mexico and hope to return some time in the future.
I've been thinking about this topic since our first day of school and simply haven't had time to write get it down. So here it is:
The Queretaro bus system is much different than our own back home. In Eugene the bus system is owned by the county - Lane Transit District. Buses are clean and big, accommodating all who want to ride. In Querétaro, there are four or five different bus companies who are all competing for business.
I'll start by saying, the roads there are already terrifying. Our first experience was in a taxi, swerving in and out of traffic, honking to let other drivers know we were there. I figured that that was just how taxi drivers drive. We've all seen the tv shows portraying the madness of of the taxi business. Then we rode with our host mom. Lanes and stop signs are more for the sake of image there. Drivers simply slow down at stop signs to make sure no one else is coming. We'll often see cars straddling the lanes while driving. Many will just stop in the road and hang out for a while or make a right turn from three lanes over.
Imagine this kind of traffic in a bus. They aren't all that careful, either. Since they've got competition, they need to make sure they get to the bus stop first. So the buses are all passing each other in whatever opening they can find in traffic. If there isn't an opening, they will make one. They cut pretty close to each other, too. At one point our mirror slid along the side of another bus as we were trying to squeeze by. Sometimes riding the bus feels as though we're in a racing game. The purpose is to go as fast as possible to be in first place, but then at the same time we have to stop where people are waving us down. So we're slowing down, speeding up, swerving to the left, swerving to the right, slamming on the breaks, and so on. At one point we went to pass another bus and our driver just slammed the gas. As we passed the first bus at full speed I noted the drivers making some sort of signal at each other. Our driver smiled because we won the race.
Grabbing a bus is interesting. I'm pretty sure the buses don't have any sort of time schedule. They simply have their route that they're supposed to follow. So we just knew that one would come eventually, if we stood in a certain area. There weren't real bus stops, except for little stations here and there, so we would just stand on a corner where other people stood, watch for our number, and wave it down. Sometimes it will stop, sometimes it won't.
Since they are different companies, the pricing is sometimes iffy as well. Since we were students, we should recieve a student discount with our ID cards. A half price discount. There were many bus drivers who simply wouldn't have it. We never took the S bus because the driver actually accused us of having fake cards. Normally, though, as long as we took the bus to and from school, we would get the discount.
end.
