1. There is no announcement from the bus driver thanking you for choosing Greyhound and please use headphones and refrain from making phone calls. Here, I spent a night bus ride listening to another passenger's tinny Bluetooth speaker play "a Dios" music (think Christian pop but in Spanish) all plaintive stretched-syllables and unvaried baseline, loud enough to fill the whole bus. No one else asked them to turn it down, no one else seemed bothered.
2. At the beginning of a town, a vendor will hop on the bus, and weave up the aisle, "hamburgesas!, mangoes!, cafe!", selling snacks, and at the end of town hop off again. I imagine then they hop on a bus going the opposite direction and repeat.
3. Tickets are about 10 times less expensive than in the states. A solid two-hour ride between cities near the edge of the Amazon cost me $3.25, for instance.
4. The bus may stop for no known reason. Upon leaving a city terminal, once, we drove achingly slow for 5 minutes thru town, and then stopped by the city park. The bus driver got off and talked with some people at the park's edge, but as far as I could tell, no passengers got on or off.
5. For what feels like a "fancy" bus with decals and bright paint and a company logo, it makes lots of stops en route for a person and their dog, or seemingly every chicken roadside.
6. They may not leave on time. If the ticket says "18:30" this can be translated to mean, "we will not consider leaving before 6:30pm but will consider leaving some time after 6:30."
7. Item 7 actually is a cross-reference for another list, Does and Don'ts of Ecuador: Don't eat a dragon fruit on a bus. Especially if you don't want to get your single pair of pants dripped with delicious juice and your entire right arm coated in stickum. But the mess may be worth it, dragon fruit are soft and lofty and juicy, with tender seeds like chia so satisfying to munch, and flesh that tastes sweeter than dates but has a floral attitude in the way that fresh strawberries do.
8. Movies are shown on all rides over 1 hour, and if under 1 hour, cumbia or bachata music will be played over the speakers. Movies qualifying for showing include anything egregiously violent, mortifyingly stupid, or disgustingly sappy, originally in, or dubbed into, Spanish. Volume will be high enough that you need to strain to hear your NPR podcast on your earbuds.
9. You can catch a bus without buying a ticket first. Just get on at the station, confirm where it's going, and at some point during the ride the attendant will come by with a handful of coins organized neatly by size and collect your fare.
10. There will be either a Jesus or a rosary decal on the front window of the bus.
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