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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| A chalupa and a lanchita |
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| 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.
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| Two Chalupitas |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
