After my excellent meeting with the General Director of Managua’s Transport Regulatory Agency, he graciously arranged for me to visit the facilities of Alba Transport (shared with Alba Equipment), where the city’s old buses amarillos (yellow buses) were being decommissioned. Here’s what opposition newspaper El Nuevo Diario had to say about the Alba companies and a reporter’s attempt to investigate Alba Transport:
The private firm doing business as Alba of Nicaragua, Ltd., Albanisa, tied to the presidential family, constitutes only the name and face of an emporium of businesses that offer all type of services, making itself into a new economic power in the country…The mother company or head of the octopus was formed in 2007 with the oversight of President Daniel Ortega and his Venezuelan partner and provider, Hugo Chávez…But from it also extend Alba Caruna, Alba Equipment, Alba Security, Alba Generation, Alba Ports, Alba Deposits, Alba Wind Power, Alba Food, Alba Transport, Alba Tenosa, and “at least two more which are being formed,” indicated informants.
El Nuevo Diario arrived at the facilities of Alba Equipment…and as we approached, the guards of Alba Security came out to meet us, and after making phone calls and making us uncomfortable, indicated that we could not wander around the site. Right there, in the gates of the two “Little Albas [Transport and Equipment],” we asked if [Alba Transport's Director Freddy] Acevedo could be found, but the guards, now warned by the gray-haired man, did not respond to more questions and asked us to leave “to avoid problems.”…To these facilities were brought the 130 buses donated by the Russian Federation to Alba-Caruna, to open the windows, put in radiators, and change the brake system, i.e. adjust them to the climate and needs of the country.
When I arrived at the front gate, I was also greeted with a bit of suspicion by the Alba Security guards. They took a bit to confirm my identity (a Japanese reporter writing for a US school bus magazine – I highlighted my Japanese heritage rather than my “Yankee imperialist” heritage for the Sandinistas) and that I had an appointment with Director Acevedo. In the meantime, I saw a couple of buses skidding around in the compound, presumably testing their newly acclimatized brakes.
Director Acevedo gave me a great tour of the Alba Transport facility. Sitting in a lot were 104 dilapidated former US school buses, between 20 and 30 years old, waiting to be disassembled. Oil and other contaminants were drained in a process authorized by the national environmental oversight agency, then the buses were scrapped. I saw a couple of 18-wheelers with FSLN (governing Sandinista party) flags on the dashboard hauling away the scrap metal during my visit. There were also a few buses painted bright pink, which Director Acevedo said were used for entertaining children.
I rode just over one hundred different vehicles during my time in Nicaragua. I spent a total of 33 hours in 42 different former school buses, traveling 587 miles. I also rode 273 miles over 15 hours in 22 different microbuses. Compared to Belize, the average age of buses in Nicaragua was more difficult to determine, since fewer still had the manufacturer’s registration plate affixed to the headboard. The buses in Nicaragua, however, were much more diverse than the almost exclusively school bus based fleet in Belize. On the streets of Managua, I saw buses from the United States, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan.
The former school buses on Ometepe were quite durable. I talked with one of the island’s first bus owners, and she told me about how, despite the island’s rough roads and lack of any garages (meaning the buses have to take the ferry to the departmental seat of Rivas for maintenance), the buses hold up pretty well. After completing a paving project between the port towns of Moyogalpa and Altagracia, the government is now slowly proceeding to pave the road out to the town where I stayed, Mérida. I unexpectedly got the chance to help out with this construction work.
Moyogalpa-bound bus along the shore of Lake Nicaragua
Bus in Moyogalpa
1983 Blue Bird conventional starting a run from Moyogalpa to Merida
Rough patch of road between Merida and Altagracia on Ometepe
Bus shed
Construction trucks unloading paving stones halted buses on the road between Merida a…
…so the buses’ passengers left the buses and helped unload to expedite the process
One of my first weekend trips outside of the Department of Managua was to Las Peñitas, a surfing beach near León. The surf was marginal, but the bumpy ride on the Old Highway on the way there was redeemed by sharing the smooth ride back on the New Highway with a rooster.
Managua is a relatively low-density, sprawling city. After the 1972 earthquake heavily damaged the historical center, rebuilding radiated outwards, with a great deal of construction taking place in outlying lots owned by the Somoza regime. The first old school buses from the US came in the mid-1970s as a response to the earthquake, and their history in Managua is intertwined with the city’s sprawl. On an average day, about 800 local buses are on the road in Managua, transporting 855,000 passengers on 34 numbered routes. While many of these buses are conventional and transit-style former school buses (with back doors added), some are transit buses manufactured by Dyna (in Mexico) or Kavz (in Russia).
Daniel’s smiling face
Buses passing under Daniel’s triumphant face
School bus exiting the Santo Domingo Roundabout
God’s Blessing heading towards the Santo Domingo Roundabout
Microbuses at the University of Central America (UCA) Terminal
Buses and taxis in front of UCA
A Route 110 bus in the Metrocentro Roundabout
A microbus exiting the Metrocentro Roundabout
A 111 bus in the Metrocentro Roundabout
Buses passing Banco Produzcamos
An immigrant from Philadelphia
Neshaminy School District’s old bus #44 needs a wash
Chaos resulting from the repaving of the Huembes Bus Terminal
I found a frequently running TV commercial for a local Nicaraguan radio station to be quite interesting. The commercial opened with a scene of a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop, looking frustratedly at their watches (a situation that most Managuans can easily identify with). A new Kurgansky Avtobusny Zavod bus finally pulls up, and the petulant passengers board and sit down. The bus driver then turns up the volume for the advertised radio station, and the passengers start smiling and dancing happily in the aisle.
The use of the bus in the commercial was interesting enough, but I decided to do a bit more research on the song to which the passengers were dancing. The song, which I also heard on some of my daily microbus commutes from Ticuantepe to Managua, was Juan Luis Guerra’s “Bachata en Fukuoka.” Yes, that’s Fukuoka, Japan – the lyrics include the “kon’nichi wa,” “ohayō gozaimasu,” and “arigatō gozaimasu.”
To sum up, I was watching a Russian-made bus in a commercial for a Nicaraguan radio station that used a Dominican artist’s song that includes the Japanese in the lyrics, and for which the official music video has shots of the Los Angeles skyline and the Metro Gold Line. As David Harvey writes, “collage and eclecticism have recently come to dominate” in contemporary music (The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 301). The song’s music video (which also happens to involve people sitting on a bus) exemplifies the “depthlessness…in a whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum.” The split-second clips of freight locomotives along the Los Angeles River or Japanese characters on a storefront have nothing to do with their actual significance or meaning, but are instead used just as images.
I couldn’t find the Nicaraguan commercial online, but here is the official “Bachata en Fukuoka” music video:
The “Bachata en Fukuoka” video’s various transportation mode are nothing compared to the buscentricity of another one of Juan Luis Guerra’s songs from this year, “La Guagua” (“The Bus”). The refrain of the song can be translated as “Shift into gear and straighten it out | so that the bus will go in reverse!…| Bring me the maraca and give me a party | so that the bus will go in reverse!” The majority of the music video (embedded below) was filmed on a 1980s Blue Bird All American FE. Highlights include the bus driving backwards through the countryside, the driver eating spaghetti and shaving behind the wheel, a cow with 3-D glasses, a trombonist wearing an I ♥ Fukuoka shirt (in reference to the previously discussed song), and the climactic scene of party-goers at a concert for which the stage’s background is the silhouette of the back of a school bus. I’m not sure why Juan Luis Guerra is so interested in buses, but I’ll take the music videos for these two songs (both of which were on A Son de Guerra, the 2010 Latin Grammy Best Album) as a… Read the rest
On my first trip to Nicaragua in 2008, one of our group’s last stops was Masaya’s old market (touristy and quite clean). This time around, I decided to visit Masaya’s new market (local and less clean) and the attached bus terminal on my walk around the city.
Masaya Lake and Volcano
Baseball stadium in Masaya – unlike in other Central American countries, baseball is …
One of Masaya’s many churches
Buses parked at Masaya’s new market
Buses on layover in Masaya. Though Masaya is smaller than Managua, this may be one o…
Buses in Masaya
Ciferal Minimax and Blue Bird/International Conventional
Enjoy the video above (filmed by someone other than me about 30 miles from where I spent my first night in Nicaragua). Note that the sound is a bit loud, and that if you’re reading my blog through your email, you may need to click on the title of the post above to view it on my website.
As the rainy season has followed me through south through Central America, I’ve managed to avoid landslides, downed bridges, and (completely) crazy drivers. I’ve heard of school bus drivers making it through some rough weather, but these buses seem to be taking an unnecessary risk. La Prensa reports on the government’s response:
The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (MTI) warned that it could suspend the concessions of companies that put the lives of passengers in danger, as was evident in a video captured of various public transportation vehicles crossing the flooded Coco River, in Quilalí, Nueva Segovia, during the recent rains…
Authorities from MTI’s Ground Transport Department noted yesterday that whatever company operates service in the country and puts the lives of users in danger can be subject to heavy sanctions and its operating permits can be suspended indefinitely.
This is probably a harsher response than would normally be expected. The video hits a bit to close to home for Nicaragua, which is mourning for five Red Cross workers and a journalist who were killed in a flash flood while trying to bring supplies to a community isolated by the rains.
While the fleet in Honduras had its fair share of old school buses from the United States, there were also a number of newer, more comfortable models. Bus and road facilities along the main routes were fairly well developed throughout the country. The Grand Central Metropolitan Bus Terminal in San Pedro Sula, Central America’s largest bus station, even has its own Dunkin’ Donuts.
Buses in El Salvador’s capital had some of the most eye-catching modifications I’ve seen yet. Quite a few of the school buses had lifted front suspensions so that they drove down the highways tilted backwards, some nearly to the point of having their back bumpers on the pavement. While I didn’t get the chance to ride on a bus modified like this, I imagine it would make boarding fairly difficult. Other common decorations included Freightliner truck-style spoilers and numerous shark fins; maybe the buses are trying to be scary to discourage extortion?
Bus in San Salvador
Buses in San Salvador
A Blue Bird surrounded by microbuses in San Salvador
I’ve compiled a few statistics on the vehicles in which I traveled from Los Angeles International Airport to the Benque/Melchor border between Belize and Guatemala.
In Belize, I rode 23 vehicles that were formerly school buses, the majority of which (16) were Blue Bird All Americans. Blue Bird was the predominant body manufacturer; I also rode two Thomas Conventionals, one Corbeil Type A, and one Crown Supercoach. In buses, I traveled 753 miles over the course of 35 hours – on average, more than an hour on a bus per day during my stay in Belize. Twenty years was the average age of the buses for which I could determine a model year.
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