Transportation in Colombia

 Si, it is illegal, but no one says anything  and it's pretty normal to travel like this in the middle of  a busy street, and it doesn't matter if it's not safe. There aren't tickets for them because they are working, aren't they? In this picture the jeeps are not really busy, most of the time there are a lot of people on the top of the car, plus ten or twelve inside, plus the ones who are standing up in the back— many times there are more than six all together holding themselves trying to not fall off. 

 Here, "la chiva" (the way we name this funny bus) is the normal transportation in the remote villages in Colombia, mostly in towns that is very hard to visit because of the hard roads and distance from the big cities. It's the native transportation and almost always it is like in the picture, very crowded, and the natives not only bring their kids and stuff with them, but also chickens, turkeys, or even pigs (alive). In the big cities however, "La Chiva" is not a way of transportation, but an entertaining distraction for the locals and tourists.

 

 As I wrote in an older post about "La Chiva", inside of these buses there is a big screen playing the most popular Salsa orchestras, a nice dancing floor in the middle, loud music and a disc jockey who makes everyone feel happy and ready for the fun. Everyone drinks, dances, sings, and over all, we laugh till we cry. This is my favorite thing to do when I visit my family and friends in Cali. La Chiva goes around the city and for three hours we pay $700,000 pesos which is more or less $350 CAD. Some Chivas hold more than 100 people, but of course, we don't go on the top!

This is the modern form of transportation in Cali, and the rest of  the big cities of Colombia, nothing to do with La Chiva.