The bus

Every day we make a trip to the hardware store or to the marina to marine shop to buy tools or instruments. A good grocery store is further away, so we take a mini bus, well run public transportation on St. Lucia. For 55 US cents you go a long way and you never have to wait, so many buses, one leaves, the next arrives. Yesterday we went to Castries, the Capitol of St. Lucia, a 20 minutes ride. Suddenly, something blocks a beautiful turquoise view of the bay. It is another bus. This can not be a two lane road!? But it is and it is curving and the vehicles parallel to each other go through the curves exactly the same way or they wouldn't fit. And we know what happens if they don't fit. Drivers constantly beep short beeps to greet other bus drivers coming towards them, or to somebody walking on the side of the road (I don't know how they recognise the person at the speed they are driving), and to the cars in front, that don't go fast enough. Every ride on a bus is an experience and fun. People are in and out of the bus at every bus stop. There are Bus stop signs along the road, but the driver will stop, when the passenger calls out: "Driver, stop!" By the time we arrived to the Castries, faces on the bus had changed a couple of times. When school is out, kids ride home on the public buses. They look nice, but awkward in their uniforms, boys with ties or snowy white T-shirts, girls in pleated skirts, their hair pulled back tight, or braided. They all wear shoes that seem to big for them, but then, St. Lucians are tall, sooner or later they will need big shoes.