The Boating Life

Island Transport

When my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers want to meet up in the city, they can walk to a street near their school or house and hop a bus during normal hours. If it’s super late, they can spend the money and take a cab and arrive in anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and change. Life is not that simple if you live on an island. Transport to and from the island naturally defines life here and provides excitement and frustration. Here’s a breakdown about island transport and how I can make it into (and back from) the mainland.

Can't hardly wait

Lancha

The main transport to and from the island is a large motorboat, called a “lancha.” Lanchas typically fit between 18 and 30 passengers and run trips from the mainland to the island. Sometimes lanchas have multiple motors to speed through the water, other times they have one motor. The boat driver is called a “piloto de lancha” which is more closely related to its English cognate “pilot.” In English classes, I make a point out of explaining to students that the word “pilot” is used mostly for vehicles that fly (airplanes, helicopters) and we would call the person in charge of maneuvering the boat a “boat driver.” In addition to the piloto, these boats have an assistant or two who are in charge of collecting money from the passengers, looking over the stern for any oncoming traffic, and addressing any mid-trip motor issues. Lanchas usually cost $4.000 pesos each way (around US$2.25) but can cost a little more on holidays and Sundays.

Lanchas at the main pier

Lanchitas

A smaller lancha. Typically holds 6 to 10 passengers and is driven by a piloto de lancha. Used mostly for private transport and to run errands around the island.

Chalupa

No, I’m not talking about an item from a Taco Bell menu. A chalupa is a large wooden boat that transports either people or cargo. If you move to or from the island you’re going to hire a chalupa to bring your stuff. If you need a ton of beer for a town party, you’re going to fill one of these up with case after case of Aguila. My neighbor has a chalupa with large water tanks inside; he drives it to the market and fills the tanks to bring back and sell water here in town. These are traditional, craft boats made and repaired using techniques that have probably not changed over much of the past half century. If I catch a certain chalupa from my town it costs me $2.000 pesos (about US$1.10).

A chalupa and a lanchita

Tearing apart an old chalupa to repair it

Chalupitas

Small chalupas. Primarily used by local store owners – or hired by local store owners, beer vendors, and construction/builders – to transport food, goods, and materials from the market to the island.

Two Chalupitas

Some close-up chalupita repairs

Yate

A yacht. Usually packed with tourists or partying Colombians from other cities. Not for local transport unless your neighbor happens to be driving one into the city and can give you a lift in which case you’ve got twenty minutes to feel like a celebrity.

Getting in to the Mainland

Getting in to the mainland from my site is always an exercise involving precision timing and lots of luck. Say I need to go into the town to buy something like a fresh vegetable, meet a fellow volunteer for lunch, hit up the ATM to pay my host family, or just get away from site for a few hours. I’ll be waking up early to try to catch a boat. Most boats from my town leave around 7 a.m. so I am up early to run to the pier and hop into a boat with lots of other locals that have something they need to do in the city (go to work/university classes/the market, run an errand, etc). In order to maximize their earnings, boat drivers bounce around the different piers in town collecting passengers until they are full. This can mean that I hop into a boat at 7 and not actually leave town for another 15 minutes to an hour as we wait to fill up.

If I’m late, I might miss the last boat or arrive just as they run out of room for me. When that happens, I run to another edge of town and hope there are other boats still circling around there. Other times I have had to call a neighbor I knew was going into the city on his lanchita or ask other boat drivers that I run into while running around town. At least once, having no such luck, I have had to cancel my plans and resign myself to being stuck at site for another day.

By any accounts this is not the most reliable method of transportation. University classes start at 8 a.m. downtown? You’re probably going to be late. Doctor’s appointment at 3:00 in the afternoon? With the only reliable transport at 7 a.m., you’re looking at spending the day in the city killing time before your appointment, let alone not attending to everything else you needed to do at home.

Other Options

Almost all of the teachers at my school live in the city and boat in for school. With a school day divided in two shifts – primary school from 6:45 a.m. to 12:00 and secondary school from 12:15 to 6:00 p.m. – primary school teachers leave around noon. If I have something I need to do here at site in the morning but need to be in the city in the afternoon, I can run to school and ask the teachers to save a spot for me. With sporadic changes to the school schedule, I’ll then need to get to school well before the end of classes because they leave at the very instant they are finished. Likewise, if I need to go into the city in the evening I can catch a ride with the secondary teachers. It’s one of the perks of working with the teachers that they generally don’t mind me joining them. Both trips involve going to another part of town and then catching a bus to where I actually need to be, costing me about $5.500 total (US$3.00). 

These boat drivers though don’t always have the best foresight in planning their gas consumption. On three separate occasions with the morning teachers, we have run out of gas within site of the landing pier (once we were a mere 150 feet from dock). We then had to wait for another boat to pass us and drag us into shore or pass us a small amount of gas so we could finish the trip. (“There are ten passengers,” one boat driver once explained/complained. “I filled up with gas planning for nine.”)

Say, though, there’s no school owing to it being a holiday or a weekend day and I couldn’t catch one of the morning boats in. The main boat trip goes from the main pier to the next town on the island after my town. Since that town is much more populous than mine, boats coming in from the city stay there and fill up before heading back to the city. I can be waiting on the pier in my town – and indeed, have waited for hours – all the while watching boats full of passengers go right by. Every once in a while they will drop someone off in my town and I can get in if there is space, even if they are headed not toward the city but to the other town where my chances of waiting for a boat to the city are so much greater.

And when all else fails, there’s the old fashioned method of standing at the pier and trying to flag down anything that looks like it might stop at the pier. Two weeks ago and this past Saturday I caught a fishing yacht (along with the local priest) and a boat full of sandy tourists, respectively.

This blog is boat-driver approved

Back to Town

Catching a boat from the city to town is usually, but not always, easier than getting to the city. I often tell potential visitors that they can get to my town during the day, but they probably need to wait until the next day to be able to get back. Contrary to what anyone would think, there is no boat schedule for local transport (as opposed to the tourist boats). Starting around 8 a.m., once boats fill up they will leave, until around 5:00 p.m. or so. Getting to the pier and being the last passenger for a waiting boat is always fantastic, but usually a rare event. Most of the time I’m sitting in the hot sun with a near-full boat waiting for one or two more passengers before we can leave. Sometimes that can mean waiting for anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour.

When in the city, though, I can catch a boat at the pier in the morning and afternoon before sunset. After sunset, I’m stuck in the city for the night. Catching dinner with another volunteer and then hopping on a boat is not option for me; most engagements with other volunteers mean I need to have planned a place to stay the night or run to the pier in the afternoon. One of the things I miss the most is simply the ability to do anything at night and then return home.

Even with knowing the rhythm of the boats, things don’t always work out as planned. Lots of wind can mean that no boats are running, as can any rain. If the teachers can’t make it in, school is cancelled, like it was this afternoon.

Beautiful rainbow... To bad it means I'll be here waiting for the rain to clear up until I can get home!

 Sometimes there are simply no boats. The other day I ran to the pier just as the last boat was leaving. No other passengers around, I started to consider my options for staying in the city that night. Fortunately I saw a tourist boat being wiped down after a day out at sea. Knowing the driver of this particular boat, I was able to catch a ride back to town. This is not the first time he has helped me out like this. He will definitely be getting invited to my birthday celebration.

Costs Add Up

Commuting by boat can get expensive. If I remember correctly (and it’s been a while) I used to commute on the Washington, DC metro system for about US$1.50 each way. If I catch a boat and then a bus here, I am easily paying more than double that and just for one leg of the trip (and in a quote-unquote “developing country” to boot). After paying my host family and buying my food, my monthly take-home pay works out to be around $16.000 pesos per day. Say I boat in to the city to run an errand or two in the morning and then back to site in the afternoon. Even if I catch no buses during my trip, I am spending $8.000 pesos in transportation, about half my discretionary income for the day, plus whatever in-city expenses I have (coffee, lunch, things from the store). It adds up quickly so I make the trip only a handful of times a month.

To offset their transportation costs, teachers at my school receive a transportation stipend; otherwise the cost of commuting to work would be prohibitively expensive. Most of my students who go on to study full time in college end up moving in with extended family members in the city; with the cost of higher education out of reach for most locals, the added transportation costs make it an impossible investment for nearly everyone.