On the Driver's Schedule

June 14, 2009

A snack. A cat nap. A drink of Coke. A chat with the local Soda owner. A quick skim of La Nacion’s latest news. Staring at the clouds. These are all completely justifiable reasons for not allowing the line of passengers into the bus to get to the airport, work, hospital, or some other time-sensitive destination.

Where I live in Costa Rica – the mountainside rainforest of the San Jose suburbs – two bus lines end in our remote location. On break, these two buses park outside our local mechanic and Soda (for snacks). Here you’ll always find a fraternity of Ticos passing the time talking, eating, drinking, and making fun of the local villagers who spend hours standing patiently for the driver to restart the bus.

And the fun doesn't stop there: they sometimes take this mini-breaks while EN ROUTE. I was on a bus last week that pulled over to a market to get loaves of bread while his bus was full of passengers.

You can’t blame the Tico (Costa Rican) bus driver trying to relish in a break at the end (or in the middle) of the bus line. It makes complete sense for them to wait until the last second – and in some cases, a few minutes late – to turn on the bus again. You would, too, if you drove around on narrow, bumpy roads crowded with traffic, right?

All of those hours slaving away to:

1. Count change (yes, they manually count and make change) for EVERY passenger
2. Turn that two-foot-diameter steering wheel
3. Shift the stick on a manual bus (up and down mountains)

can be exhausting.

So, if you’re standing at the bus stop in the pouring rain, sinking in mud, running late for catching that only connecting bus to Puerto Viejo for the weekend, staring hatefully at that driver taking an extra few minutes to clean the dirt from his nails, you may want to take a deep breath, realize you’re in Tico-land, and give ‘im a break. Literally.