OLO

Starting with general impression of the traffic – it´s not a complete madness, but still close to it. Besides, probably many cars don’t use unleaded petrol, so they pollute the air horribly.

Buses:
There are few kinds of them – combis (very small buses for around 10 persons, which means, that there could be also 15 or 20 people inside) and micros (small or a bit bigger buses). Those buses are old and don’t look reliable.

In each bus, besides the driver, there is another man at the door. He, or sometimes she, collects the money (1 sol for longer route, 50 centimos for short one[1]). Besides his/her job is to look for potential passengers, shouting out the names of the streets, etc.

The buses go literally every few seconds, they have set routes, and sometimes two or more of the same “line” are going even right one after another. In this case the drivers fight over passengers by racing to the next person on the sidewalk.


Another way of travelling around the city are taxis. They don’t have taximeters, so you need to negotiate the price with your driver prior to getting in. Which sometimes causes a jam if a cab stops for too long to discuss a price with a person on a sidewalk.

Not only cars are serving as taxis. There are also so called mototaxis, which are made of three-wheeled electric motorcycles. You don’t find them everywhere, only closer to the city centre. I wouldn’t dare to get into such thing.

Pedestrian crossings (a.k.a. zebras).
No such thing. Almost. Only on very busy junctions. But normally you have to cross the street in any place convenient. Just watch for the cars, so you don’t get run over by one. So each time I go to work during morning rush hours, it can turn to life-thrilling experience.