Dragon Buses – by Vicki

Catching buses in Central America is a cultural experience best enjoyed when you have lots of time and no appointments. We mostly enjoyed bus travel in Panama – it is very cheap, has frequent services, and people try to help non-Spanish speakers find the correct bus to their destination.

Outside of Panama City the bus fleet are ubiquitously known as “dragon” buses. They are loud and colourful, and at night, are brightly lit. The dragon bus fleet are souped-up ex-USA school buses.

A Dragon Bus: blocked up front suspension, extractors, turbo-chargers, a lowered drivers seat and a paint job are all standard equipment.  Tyre tread is optional.

Extravagant chrome work is definitely the go.  Hood ornamentation is a must.

Why you may ask are they called dragon buses. The buses have amazingly colourful paintwork – paying homage to the bible, to sweethearts and to children. They race uphill, down-hill and around bends at break-neck speed, given the road conditions, flashes of colour in the landscape. The buses are loud, a combination of exhaust pipe noise, the whine of the turbo-charger and the thump of loud Spanish music through woofers and sub-woofers. Added to all this is the constant blast of horns.

Watching the road ahead is a low priority. Most of the windscreen is painted and tassled out – visibility is limited to a narrow 150mm strip at the bottom, but further reduced inside by fans, coin holders, destination cards and etc.

 Buses are personalised in a multitude of ways, inside and out. Paintwork, side mirrors, hood ornaments, one or two horns and combinations of LED lights. Some support double vertical stainless steel exhaust pipes and roof domes or fins. Inside the driver is surrounded by feathers, strings of LED lights, mirrors and more artwork – unfortunately for us safety conscious westerners at-least half of the front windscreen is covered.

Speakers blast out music non-stop – the bus shown above right even had a screen playing the appropriate video clip. Note the view out the windscreen.

There are no limits to the number of passengers a bus can carry - only that the doors must shut, which can see up to 70+ people crammed on a bus. However the doors are rarely shut except at a police checkpoint.

“See ya!”

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