The Earth + Nat

To get around Central America without wheels of your own, you have two options: chicken buses, or tourist shuttles. Many travellers are nervous of chicken buses and choose to pay very high prices for shuttles, but you don't need to! Here is my list of reasons for shaking off the chicken bus fear and taking the wild ride with the locals: - Chicken buses are cheap! The general price for an inter-city chicken bus is about $1-2 per hour of driving. For example, the bus between Leon and Managua that takes around 2 hours generally costs 50-60 Cordoba or $2, while the minimum shuttle price is $9 for the same amount of time! - There's snacks on chicken buses! Nicaragua in particular has a thriving network of people dedicated to selling fresh food on chicken buses. Whether you want some fresh baked corn bread, donuts with treacle sauce, coconut bread, hot tamales, pineapple pastry popcorn, sweets or just some fruit and veg, the chicken buses have it all. The vendors board the bus ...

I thought I would end my blog's long hiatus by doing a few posts about the 6 months I spent in Central America, most of that in Nicaragua. First up in the series is the iconic method of public transport in all Central American countries: the Chicken Bus! These types of buses run inter-city and suburban transport routes across Central America. The name comes from the habit of some locals to take their farm animals with them, and the name has stuck in the tourist community. It isn't as common as people make it out to be - I think in over 100 chicken bus rides I only saw a handful of chickens and a few boxes of chicks. That said, it does always make you giggle when you hear the box above your head tweeting as you drive. To run the bus you need at least two people: the chofer  (driver) and at least one  ayudante  (assistant). The driver's job is simple: navigating the route in as little time as possible, usually achieved through driving that would make Vin Diesel ...