I’d heard often about the chicken bus. I imagined it to be some rickety metal box, curtains flapping in the open windows, packed full of with people, and of course, chickens running down the center aisle. In all my travels through Mexico, I’d never had the good fortune to have such an encounter, until today.
I awoke at seven and enjoyed my last bit of freshly squeezed pulp-filled orange juice as I looked over my guide book. I was writing instructions on how to arrive at the day’s destination, a beach about 40 minutes to the south where I’d learned, from a couple staying at my hotel, that you could rent a kayak for some excellent birdwatching in a nearby lagoon. Being a birder, I have to take such advice with measured skepticism as these are the same types of people to point to a Magnificent Frigatebird and exclaim, “look at that huge seagull”, but I was intrigued at the idea of trying a new activity and relished the excuse of staying another day in Zihuatanejo.
After my planning session, I headed out the door and walked the three blocks to the bus station. Just before reaching the terminal, I had to weave my way through several men in plastic chairs as if it were an obstacle course along the sidewalk. I’d passed through this group several times already during the past couple of days, but this was the first time I noticed they all held plastic cups filled with beer. Here they sat, talking away at what was now apparent to me, an alfresco bar, drinking beer at 8:30 in the morning. With a discerning ear, I was able to determine they were speaking of the days catch, and I realized this was a fisherman’s bar, and they were doing nothing more than relaxing at the end of a hard day’s work, one that started when the rest of us were sound asleep.
After asking the driver if he went to my desired destination, I stepped onto the bus and took my seat. It wasn’t until after the bus had crept slowly along for a few blocks that I noticed a puppy sleeping beneath a seat across the aisle from me. I wondered if he belonged to the driver or was just a stowaway who had also heard about a beach with giant seagulls he thought might be fun to chase.
I got off the bus at a dusty intersection in a town so small it seemed as if everyone was immediately aware of my presence. I felt several pairs of eyes looking at me from beyond the shadows cast by cantilevered tarps that shaded the doors to all the shops. A man approached me and asked if I wanted a taxi to the beach. I guess it was obvious that gringos only came to this town as a transfer point to the beach. When I told him I wanted to wait for the camioneta, he told me that the taxi would be about the same price. I replied, “yes, but it would not be the same experience“. I went on to explain that I’d read in the book about the unique way you get from the town to the beach in the back of a pickup truck, that essentially served as the town’s unique public transportation system.
I’d tried to imagine what this pickup truck was going to look like, and having now ridden in one, I’d say it’s best described as a motorized covered waggon. In the bed of the pickup were two home made benches facing each other. The sides of the truck were narrow slats of wood spaced evenly so you could watch the landscape as you bounded along farms with never ending rows of coconut trees. A hooped canopy to shade passengers from dust and sun completed the image of a covered waggon.
The camionetta pulled up across the street from me, and the driver motioned his head toward the back as if to ask, “are you coming?“ I stepped up the ladder and squeezed onto the bench next to a woman with a child on her lap and, you guessed it, a chicken between her feet. I was on my first chicken bus. To make it more surreal, the truck’s bed was also shared by the woman’s chihuahua, who spent the ride darting from one side to the other looking for mischief but clearly knowing the chicken was out of bounds.
I wondered, at one point, how I would signal the driver when I wanted to get off as the cab of the truck was completely separated from the bed. My concern was soon relieved when a man on the bench across from me banged his hand on the cab of the truck, and it quickly came to a stop. I stepped off behind him, and he turned to ask me if I needed to rent a fishing boat or a kayak. You see, everyone in Mexico can always set you up with anything you need. There’s always a brother or a cousin or a friend who provides whatever service it is that you looking for. He told me to ask for Orlando and say the Machin sent me.
When I got to the beach, I did ask for the friend but apparently he was already out fishing. The guy who told me this coincidentally rented boats and kayaks himself, so I wondered how honest he’d been about Orlando’s whereabouts. No matter; I was soon in my kayak and headed into the lagoon. As I had expected, there were no new species of birds for me to catalog, but I was able to snap some good pictures of ones I already knew as I drifted noiselessly by in my aerodynamically, or should I say aquadymically, designed watercraft.
Along the water’s edge there were tangled roots of mangrove trees creating an impenetrable barrier to the land beyond. Impenetrable to me anyway, but not to the green herons that hopped through the net of roots whenever I got too close. Occasionally, there would be a break in the entanglement that served as the entrance to a narrow channel deeper into the swamp. I took a couple of these before my imagination crept in, and I started looking for crocodiles lurking beneath the surface of the water or an anaconda draped in the branches that occasionally touched my head.
Most of my life I’d wondered how a creature as lumberingly slow as an anaconda could manage to capture the prey it hunts. I mean, as soon as you feel the thing start to wrap around you, you just run, right? I’d always understood that these serpentine beasts were not quick like a sidewinder or water moccasin, and they had no poison to immobilize their prey. What I learned, embarrassingly recently, is that they don’t need to sneak up on you and wrap you up before you flee. They just have to bite you, and once they do, they don’t let go. They just begin winding themselves around you, and they can take all the time you need as there’s no prying their muscular jaws from the point at which they’ve attached themselves to you. I really to need to get better at letting people knowing where I intend to go each day, especially when it’s 40 minutes, a chicken bus and kayak ride from where I’m supposed to be staying.
Back on the open water, I took some more photos before heading back to the beach. Along the way, I was able to get a glimpse of a local fishing technique used for more years than I can imagine. There were two men boats with one guy in back doing the paddling and while the other stood in the front casting out an expanding net that splashed into the water like a handful of pebbles. There was also the occasional snorkeler I’d seen among the reeds. I thought it an unusual place to snorkel until I saw a man come up with a fish impaled at the end of a tri-tipped spear.
By the time I reached shore, it was lunchtime, and I decided to go find Machin since he mentioned he worked at one of the palm covered seafood shacks along the beach. I enjoyed grilled Mahi Mahi while my bare feet dug into the sand, and I felt the warm caress of the ocean breeze upon my face, all at a cost of ten dollars.
I strolled back to town after lunch and decided to explore its two blocks while I waited for my return chicken bus. The houses were particularly colorful here as if the entire town was a primary school with striped columns and brightly painted picket fences. I’ve never understood why places with bright sunshine year round paint their buildings so colorfully, while places like my hometown of Portland, which spends most of the year beneath a pall of gray, paints its houses with muted colors.
I made my way back to the main road and hopped onto the chicken bus to return to the main highway. I speak enough Spanish for basic travel, but I wasn’t able to fully understand what the driver tried to say to me. When it gets outside the bounds of the words I’m expecting to hear, I can get easily lost. I repeated that I wanted to go to the main highway. He seemed to indicate that we would be going to the main highway, but given the number of words uttered after that, something I couldn’t make out was going to happen as well. It turns out that we did go to the highway but by a different route, which presented a host of diversions. Best of all was that this route followed the palm tree lined beach for miles. It was nice to see stretches of virgin beach absent of vendors and restaurants.
Along the way, we stopped by a school to pick up what appeared to be a handfull of printouts. Based on the stops we made afterwards and the exchange of money, I guessed that the locals used the school as the town printer. Equally interesting was a guy who got on board halfway through our trip with two bags of items I assumed he would sell in town. What I found curious is where he acquired these things in the first place. Here we were in the middle of nowhere, and he had a bag full of sponges, beach shovels, and boxes of laundry detergent.
Eventually we ended up at the airport, a word I had remembered hearing in the driver’s extended explanation earlier. I hopped out of the pick up and was left to determine how to get back to town from there. Certainly, there were plenty of taxi drivers vying to get me back to town, but I have historically avoided taxis. If I am going to use public transportation, I would rather take mass transit than be a single rider in a car. Besides, taking the bus usually costs a fraction of the price of taking a taxi. Many times the difference amounts to a night’s lodging or my day’s meal allowance so I am usually happy to take the extra effort to figure out the bus system.
I ended up on a combi, my third type of public transport for the day. A combi is basically a mini van with the traditional forward facing seating removed and replaced by bench seating around the inside perimeter. It makes for a cozy arrangement as you’re always bound to be facing someone. That’s no problem as they are very communal. Whenever someone gets on a combi, they greet everyone with “buenos dias“, “buenos tardes“, or whatever greeting is appropriate for that time of day. And everyone responds back with the same. Basically it has the feel of sitting in your living room as a guest arrives.
It was close to dinnertime when I returned to Zihuatanejo so I decided to continue my combi experience by locating the one that would take me back to the hilltop Pozole restaurant I’d scouted out a couple days earlier. Every combi is labeled with the neighborhood they serve, and I’d had the foresight then to note the neighborhood on the front of the combi that passed by the restaurant. Since I had walked there the first time, I wasn’t exactly sure when to get off the combi and began to regret my decision to offer up my seat to a woman with several bags because I was no longer able to see out the front window. By the time some of the roadside landmarks began to look familiar, enough people had gotten off that I could again sit and see through the front window and was able to spot the restaurant in time to request that the driver stop there.
I was pleased to see it was open even if I was the only person there for dinner. Clearly it was not Pozole day. Still, the woman cook was excited I’d come from so far to taste her cooking. I’d had Pozole once before and didn’t remember liking it, but since I was in a region famous for the soup, I decided to give it another try.
As I sat in my alfresco restaurant with a view of the harbor below, I took in my surroundings. The restaurant was made up of a 3 foot high fence defining the boundary of the eating area. Above me was a corrugated tin roof. The rest was open to the weather, which apparently is mild enough for such construction. In one corner was the kitchen whose cooking surface was supported by poured concrete decorated in a mosaic of broken tile. Pots and pans hung from makeshift hooks, and beyond an opening in the kitchen a fire was going, apparently intended to burn waste. A dog was doing his best to scavenge the scraps that hadn’t quite made it to the incineration heap.
I took a couple bites of my Pozole and remembered why I didn’t like it. It’s flavorless. It’s generally made with pork or chicken and hominy, and usually has some sort of bone in it like the spine of a goat. I imagine it was originally made up of what was left of the carcass of some small animal which is probably why it tastes like dishwater that’s lost its ability to sud.
Disappointed and determined to not make the same mistake again, I headed home. It was almost dusk, the temperature had cooled, and I’d taken enough transit for one day, so I decided to walk home and enjoy the neighborhoods of Zihua one last time before I left.