el crispito

The main reason that I previously avoided taking the bus here is that the one time I took the regular bus with Shawn, it violently and completely disillusioned me of the notion that Mexicans are always sweet and polite. Before taking the bus, I found most Mexicans (apart from the one "Gringo Go Home!" driveby shouting we managed to survive) to be unfailingly friendly, kind and welcoming. In almost all other situations, Mexicans seem very polite and nice. On the bus though, they have some socially acceptable licence to be complete jerks and they revel in it. That is not to say that they are in your face, what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it jerks. It is a lame passive-aggressive rudeness that has a particularly Mexican (or is it tapatio?) flavor.

When I went on the bus with Shawn before, we had to stand because all the seats were already taken. No big deal there; I don't mind that much at all. I did not expect any of the people on there to give up their seats for us. Yet when old people boarded that were barely able to remain standing on terra firma and not a single able-bodied person offered them their seats, I was aghast. Mothers with infants and bags of groceries got on, and nobody offered up a seat. When someone got up from an aisle seat to exit the bus, the person sitting in the window seat would quickly slide over to block access to the empty seat. Riders are instructed to board through the front door and exit from the rear, but even when politely asked, people would not budge to let others move from the front or middle of the bus to the rear exit door. I suspect a frail, blind abuelita who was missing an arm could board carrying a hacking Tiny Tim on her back and nobody would surrender his seat to her.

No, because of the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the regular bus, I was not all that keen to use it. Yet with Charles out of town, the need to start trimming the budget, and my desire to get out and about more, I decided it was high time for me to start using the bus in Guadalajara.

There are two primary types of inner-city buses, the TUR/Turquesa line and regular lines. They differentiated by their service class, with TUR and Turquesa being more upscale. That just means they have cloth-covered seats, air conditioning that usually works, and best of all, they are rarely full. I am not sure if that is because their price being double the cost of the regular lines keeps their ridership down, or if that is because they have a policy of not stopping for new passengers if all the seats on the bus are taken. We have heard that the latter is the case, but I've seen Turquesa buses go by with people standing now and again. The problem is, there are a very small number of routes (like 2-4) served by TUR/Turquesa, and the remaining hundred or so are served by the regular buses.

A regular bus costs MXN $4.50 (about USD $0.40), and there are no transfers. If you need to take only one bus to get where you are going, the trip costs you MXN $4.50. If you have to take two buses, the trip costs you MXN $9. If you have to take three, it is MXN $13.50. You get the idea. There are so many different routes though, it is unusual to have to take more than two different buses to get to your destination. Of note is the fact that here, bus drivers make change for you. You don't have to have exact change or forfeit any extra.

Local Area Bus, Guadalajara

The TUR/Turquesa buses are turquoise in color, and the regular buses are white or tan, for the most part. Each bus is numbered for its route, although some numbered routes are split into "A" and "B" or "Via 1" and "Via 2" because they have slight differences somewhere along the route. The routes are all loops, although it is often the case that the loop is just turning around at the end and tracing the first half backwards. I'm not sure if a passenger could pay once and just ride around indefinitely, or if they charge you each time you pass the start or end point of the route. Most routes start in the early morning (between 5 and 6 am) and stop between 11 and 12 pm. Much to my annoyance, there are no late night or 24-hour bus routes.

To catch the bus, one must go to a designated bus stop, and when the desired bus comes along, put out her hand to flag it down. Most stops are used by multiple routes, so the driver does not know that a person wants to get on his bus unless they signal in this way. From inside the bus, a request to stop is made by pushing one of the little buttons on one of the handrails that run along the aisle.

Shawn has had buses fail to stop at a designated stop even though he has his hand stuck out to signal the driver. Did they not see his hand? Did they not stop because he is a gringo? Were the bus drivers just being jerks? Any one of those is possible. Sometimes if the bus is in the left lane and there is other traffic in the right lane, the driver will just skip the stop, just like our water delivery guy will sometimes skip bringing us water if there is no good parking spot right in front of our building.

Bus Stop, Guadalajara

There is a book for sale at newspaper and magazine stands called the Guía de rutas del transporte público, which details the bus and light rail routes. It is about 5" x 7" and costs about 15 pesos. In the front of the guide, it has an indices of colonias (neighborhoods), major streets and sites of interest. Each entry in the index lists the route numbers that run by that neighborhood, street or attraction, so to go from point A to point B, one must find a route number that is common to both. If both places do not share a common route, the map of the route must be used to determine where two routes, one for each point, intersect. The hard part about doing that is that the route map shows the route on a map of the entire Guadalajara metro area that is like 2" x 2". It is nearly impossible to really determine what streets the buses run on by looking at the map, so they just give you a general idea. Then one has to verify that the routes actually do cross (or to which they come close) by reading the list of streets the each route takes, also listed for each route in the guide. They do not make it easy.

Macro Shot of Route Map, Guía de rutas del transporte público

At times, people get on the bus with guitars and sing for tips. The guy on my bus today was not too bad. Shawn, on the other hand, tends to score people that bang on guitars not set to any recognizeable tuning with no recognizeable rhythm while they yell along. It would be really cool if they had a 15-piece mariachi ensemble strolling up and down the aisle playing music like on the Tequila Express, but I do not think that is likely to happen any time soon. Nor are they likely to have go-go dancers or geishas serving tea.

It would probably take something like that to make me sincerely love taking the bus in Guadalajara, and as it is, I am not sure that I will ever be able to stomach how inconsiderate people are on it here. Maybe I will just try the old chestnut that is so good for dealing with crazy people that yell at you on the bus in the United States: plug in the headphones, crank up the iPod and just pretend they are not even there.