So this how I described it to my sister back in New Mexico: Imagine you just came to Albuquerque for the first time. You have the address of some friends-of-friends that you want to meet, but you have no idea of the layout of the city. Your friends live, say, on San Mateo SE. You don´t have a car, a map, or a phonebook. You´re imagining the city, from a single point on its surface. You could find a computer and look it up online, or just start walking and hope you get there, or ask at random of people on the sidewalk.
You´re about to start doing the last of these when a white Volkswagen minivan passes you. It´s packed with people and looks like it´s going somewhere in a hurry. There´s no company logo painted on its side, no sign up top to give it an official appearance -- only, in the lower corner of the windshield, a placard, like the ones you´re used to seeing with the words "For Rent" or "Garage Sale". This one says, "Nob Hill Ridgecrest Trumbull Int´l Dist." Now, if you _lived_ in Albuquerque, you´d have no trouble knowing where this bus was going. You might even stick out your arm and flag it down. But you, with your sparse public-trans experience and too many years of driving your own car, are used to thinking in terms of addresses, street names, mileages. Of giant artificial grids, overlaid on the earth. This list of locally-known place names means nothing to you.
That was my first impression of the combis here, the little local buses that for many people are the normal way of getting around town or between towns. Except, in central Mexico, that list of names on the card might be something like "Yucuchito Culhuacan Ozolotepec Anenecuilco".
I was avoiding the combis, around the Capital, until the day I got myself good and lost in its far southern reaches. In order not to spend another couple hours walking unknown streets overdosing on carbon monoxide, I had to swallow the poor ego (so proud of its self-sufficiency and its illusion of knowing), and ask for a little help. To be fair, this wasn´t an entirely new action. Being car-free for three months this winter, and re-learning to use buses in Albuquerque and Portland, was a refresher course in the level of human interaction that public transportation requires. The other riders had reminded me, happily, that (even in New Mexico!) it´s common to wish your bus driver a good day on boarding, and thank him or her as you get off. This only left translating those little courtesies to Spanish, and figuring out where in the world those unknown stops might be.
Or, a little more than that. The things you take for granted. Once on board, I realized these mini-buses don´t come equipped with a signal, a cord to pull or a button to push, that informs the driver of your stop. What to do? Of all things:
communicate. I finally got it that day in the City, when an old man wobbled up suddenly from his seat and shouted "BAJO!" "I get off here". Okay, I can do that. Or, I can pay attention, and hear the slightly more subtle ways other passengers make it work.
The day that I followed the winding road around Lake Patzcuaro to make an acquaintance 3 years in the waiting, combis were the only option. Actually, the couple living off-grid in these green hills had told me, via email, that a rather expensive taxi was an option. But the fare they quoted was the needed motivation to make the people´s mode of travel a habit. It really wasn´t that bad. A few inquiries at the plaza and I´m on board the first one. That takes me to the town's central station, where I board a second combi for the next smallest village, Erongaricuaro. En route, a young woman tells me about ruins nearby that are worth seeing, and a man who hears our conversation offers to walk me the couple blocks to the next combi stop. This one´s an even more diminutive bus (my head almost scrapes the ceiling), to a similarly proportioned town, Yotatiro. On the 15-minute drive, a friendly woman opens up more conversation than my Spanish is ready for: comparing the state of public education in Mexico and the U.S. This is prompted by half a dozen students who have joined us, who as the woman informs me, have to pay combi fare to get home from school, while "your kids there have busses they give them to ride". En serio? I knew there were often other expenses not covered by schools here, like some books and materials, but I never thought of not taking schoolbusses for granted. The woman checks her information with the boy next to her, and says yes: they do have to pay, although they might get a discount rate.
That afternoon cruising the silver green shades of Patzcuaro´s shores leaves me daydreaming of a job as a combi driver. What a simple life: greet your neighbors, take a few coins, and wind around these gorgeous roads at a pace slow enough to breathe in the beauty.. Driving´s what I do. Surely I could do this. Except so far, I haven´t seen a single woman bus or taxi driver here. And in this country it seems the odds might be slightly against that happening.
A few days later, in Morelia, I get a chance to ask. The quiet young guy driving a colectivo (which I think is its proper in-town name, though my friends here call them all combis) gives me an unusual opening. The bus is crowded, traffic is noisy, and we can´t hear each other´s queries on fares and destinations. So he asks if I'll climb up in the front passenger seat, and we get about 15 minutes of really pleasant conversation. I question him about his job (you don´t have to join a union, or even take a driving test -- only know how to drive). He asks where I live, says he has relatives working in the Southwest. He describes the local scene for me: the stripes of varying colors on the combis combing Morelia represent different companies (red, blue, purple, and they must´ve started to run out, because there´s also "cafe" and "crema"). And from now on, he smiles, you should always use the Green Line. And he grins again when I say it looks like a fun job, and ask if they let women drive. "No hay muchas, pero si, hay algunas.." Yeah, there´s a few.
My point in all of this: it´s about communicating. And that entering such simple exchanges present to the moment may open more than the intended doors. Surely, one of the traveller´s fundamental lessons. My limited bus experience in the States seems to suggest, better to keep your head down, don´t meet any eyes, try to tune out surrounding conversations. But then -- why is it that the surrounding conversations, on U.S. buses, are so often about drama and betrayal and suffering? Are people in Mexico constrained by a social code of courtesy and acceptable public behavior, or are they actually much more practiced in harmonious coexistence? Either way, that imaginary 10-foot boundary doesn't work here. You can´t make it shuffling head-down, ignoring your fellow humans and keeping them at the distance of an electronic signal or a prearranged set of regulations, as we´ve somehow learned to do and accept in the States. Here, more likely you´ll have to state your needs, and clearly.
But more than practical observation, I´ve been touched by so many unnecessary kindnesses in my short public-trans experience in Mexico. That first driver in the Capital who offered me two options for a stop and told me how to walk from there to my goal, all while negotiating heavy traffic. The riders in Morelia quietly passing a new person´s fare forward, hand over hand, to the front. The guys with a juice stand in Yotatiro who yelled and stopped the return combi when they saw me coming, from the other end of the street (who knows how long I would´ve had to wait, otherwise). That woman on the road from Eronga, who not only told me where to get off but that she had a friend in the _next_ village up the road with a rental house that I should keep in mind. And the Morelia driver who, when I got to my stop and asked the fare, told me with another quiet smile, "Don´t worry about it."
