Chartered Bus Trips in Mexico

Traveling by chartered bus to religious sites and or to secular attractions and events is a very popular activity throughout much of Mexico. While most of these trips are one day affairs conducted mostly on Sundays as the majority of the employed in Mexico work five and a half days a week, some of these trips are longer, for 2-4 days. In the small town that I live in, Churintzio, Michoacan in the country's Central Pacific region, normally during the dry season from October through May, one or more of these journeys are arranged for weekly. The peak time for these excursions are in November through early January when citizens of the town who now live in the U.S., the Nortenos, return for the long Christmas season.

In our town there are three elderly women who are fierce competitors with each other who organize these trips; most of their recruiting for participants is done door-to-door to the houses of past participants in Churintzio and its surrounding villages or more often by chance encounters on the streets of the town. Occasionally notices for upcoming trips will be posted on local buses or near the town’s plaza.

Those who participate in these trips may do so for a variety of reasons. The cost which typically covers only transportation is about one half or less than what it would be if one were to take regularly scheduled buses from the closest city that has a bus station. It is convenient as the buses make pickups in both Churintzio and nearby villages. They provide a change in scenery (but definitely not a change in pace or change in mentality!) to get out of town for a day or so. Moreover, many trips provide opportunities to make substantial purchases and all of the goods may be stored in and under the bus.

Basically, there are three types of trips: one day with a single destination; one day with multiple destinations; and far less frequently multiple days (sometimes with hotel arrangements included in the price with three same sex people to a room) with either a single destination or multiple destinations. No matter wherever the Churintzio buses are destined for there will be dozens or even hundreds of other buses from other Mexican towns from all directions within a few hours radius there for the same purpose. Most of my towns’ trips will be “scheduled” to depart at 6:30AM and depending on the distance to be traveled often are “scheduled” to return about midnight while less frequently others will be “scheduled” to depart at 10PM such as the one that I went on to the port and beach town of Manzanillo, Colima, an eight hour drive that returned about 27 hours later.

Secular examples of one day single destination trips are many. They include those to Leon for the Guanajuato State Fair, to Camecuaro National Lake Park, to Ixtlan, Michoacan to visit a recreational area that featured geysers and mud baths, and to the textile and clothing town of Moroleon, Guanajuato. By far the most popular religious-oriented single destination trip are the multiple ones scheduled in December to visit, as do yearly millions of people, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica in Mexico City.

More common are the single day trips with multiple destinations, all of which have a combination of religious and secular activities. The most typical example of this would be a trip to San Juan Nuevo near Uruapan, Michoacan as many of the participants at the "Dancing" Church of the Lord of Miracles pay their mandas/promises kept for prayers that came to fruition to a “special” representation of Christ; after a few hours in San Juan Nuevo other destinations on the trip may include a visit to the town of Paracho which is famous for the making of stringed instruments and/or a visit to the unique and fascinating urban national park in Uruapan and/or a stop in the indigenous-influenced city of Patzcuaro and/or some time spent in the town of Quiroga known for its inexpensive crafts and for its carnitas/braised pork.

Examples of the multiple day trips include the following. Infrequently there are “scheduled” single destination trips to such beach resorts as Ixtapa, Guerrero or Guayabitos, Nayarit. Or on a yearly basis there is a trip scheduled to visit both a sacred Catholic shrine in the state of Zacatecas followed by a stay at the Aguascalientes State Fair.

For the first two years that we lived in Mexico either with my wife, Maria, or by myself, I went on close to two dozen of these chartered trips. That was when I was in my “anything goes observer” stage. At some point, I evolved into my current “focused participant” stage. At that point, I decided “nunca mas!”/never again and “basta es basta!”/enough is enough and I vowed both secularly and religiously never to go on another one of those trips.

You see, there was a definite clash of cultures, the “Mexican way” and my independent American and Type A organized/time-oriented way. Many of the trips that were scheduled, particularly to the beach resorts, never took place due to lack of participants and were called off at the last moment. Those that I did go on never left close to on time (with an hour and a quarter late being the “accepted” norm as per Standard Late Mexico Time-SLMT) and every segment of the trips, of course including the return, were significantly late as some of the participants invariably disregarded the announced times of returns/departures; sometimes “scheduled” stops were cancelled due to time constraints like the time the daughter of one of the organizers came back from a stop two hours late and we had to bypass Quiroga.

Then there was the frequent disharmony on the combined secular and religious trips when the “secular” and “religious” factions argued about which places to go to first and how much time should be spent at each with the organizer, in typical Mexican fashion, only doing her best to avoid direct conflict (meaning doing absolutamente nada to effectively resolve the situation!) - the result being on a combined trip to the artisan town of Tonala and a church in Guadalajara we were “only” five hours late in returning. Plus due to the timing of and the popularity of the places being visited, the crowds everywhere were enormous and once no longer just an “observer” the activities were anything but close to being pleasurable. Not to mention sometimes traveling (or more often than not just sitting and waiting for the inevitable and inconsiderate without-a care-in-the world-for-others perpetual stragglers) for hours in overcrowded, crampt, and stuffy unairconditioned buses with people sitting on stools in the aisle.

Nunca mas! Cheap and convenient yes, but... Perhaps I may have some masochistic and neurotic tendencies but... basta es basta...!