Organized chaos?

Hmmm, not quite.  I'm talking about the bus system.

When I first arrived in Lima, the bus system seemed like the most chaotic "system" of transportation I had ever seen.  I didn't start taking the bus on my own until we moved out and I was forced to take the bus.

The way the bus system works is that the bus rattles and zips and clangs and speeds on by and there is someone hanging out the door who is yelling destinations.  If the bus gets flagged down, then it pulls over, the person hops in and as soon as the passenger's foot if off the ground the bus takes off at high speed.  The busses will zip into and out of traffic like no tomorrow to get one car length ahead of the other bus and then cut that same bus off to pick up a passenger.  I used to think the buses went only in straight trajectories, I know know that I am mistaken, however on the road past my house about 20 different busses will take me the same location.  Lucky me.  It also appeared to me that the buses have absolutely no schedule, this is also false.  Well not entirely.  They seem to come at whole times. Like 10:10 or 3:30.  However, they all happen to come at the same time, which makes everything even more confusing-but the  point is, they have a routine.

I have figured out that to get from my house to either of my jobs, I can take one bus.  I could also take 2 buses, but why take two (and pay double) when you can take one and pay once?  This bus passed my first day job and then it continues and turns right where I need it to turn and drops me off right in front of my night job.  AWESOME!  It comes every 10 minutes  more or less, on intervals of 5..so like 5:05, 5:15 etc.  On a no traffic day, it takes about 20-30 min to get to my teaching job.  I'm very glad I have found the bus that takes me where I need to go.  Now the only problem that a co-worker pointed out is that since my bus is one of the big ones, more people get on and that means more stops are made.  Like on every corner.

This is the chaotic part again.  You can get on an off ANYWHERE.  You can get off on the corner of your office even if the bus stopped at the stop that was a few meters ago.  Its a bus mentality that makes things great for the person getting on and off and really bad for people who want to get to their location on time.  I am still working on figuring out the entire system, but I like that I am able to figure out the organization in the chaos, even if its just a little bit.