If you weren’t already aware, Lima is infamous for its traffic. The sheer quantity of vehicles on the road is unbelievable. “Vehicles” is a generous term applied to literally anything with a motor. Sedans, trucks, vans, combis, buses, motorcycles, tricycles, motorized carts, and even motorized bicycles (that’s a thing? Yes, they’re called bicimotos) waste hours and hours in Lima’s traffic. In fact, Lima loses US$500 million annually in lost productivity due to its traffic (shout-out to my Macro y Negocios class for the fun fact). The sheer number of vehicles on the road is enough to incite any traffic jam, but it’s the lack of traffic law enforcement that really causes the endless traffic. Sure, Lima has traffic laws. But they’re more guidelines than law. Three lane highways are driven five cars wide, with buses ruthlessly cutting off smaller vehicles, and combis racing each other to bus stops. Lanes are pretty nonexistent here, and the concept of a “single file line” is totally ignored. Intersections are quite literally a free-for-all, and generally resemble a Tetris game. Despite the chaos, I must admit I have never seen an accident. I’ve seen a lot of beat-up cars, and several broken down on the side of the road, but I’ve never seen an actual collision, despite coming within centimeters of other cars on the road. Honestly, I’m impressed with limeños on the road.
I take public transportation to my school. Despite being only three and a half miles away, it can take me anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes on the bus. At the bus stop, there are two different kinds of buses that I can take. The best is the SIT bus (Sistema Integrado de Transporte). The SIT bus is the most regulated by the city, so it’s the safest, cleanest, and most expensive (S./ 1.50, or $0.50). My next option is taking a combi. To quote a friend who went on a dialogue in Lima, combis are kind of like the van from Little Miss Sunshine. They’re small, crowded, probably unsafe for a gringa to take after dark, and cheap (S./ 1.00, or $0.30). Combis are actually responsible for roughly 50% of all traffic accidents in Lima (shout-out to my Ethics class for this factoid). In my experience, limeños either hate combis, or tolerate combis. Personally, I don’t mind them. When I travel to school during off-peak hours, I can easily take an uncrowded combi to school. The combis are smaller than the SIT bus, and the drivers generally drive more aggressively, so I get to school faster. The chant of “sube, sube, sube, todo Javier Prado, Jockey, sube, sube,” shouted by the combi’s fare collector is even starting to grow on me. Granted, the jam-packed combis are a little uncomfortable, and definitely have a less than pleasant odor, but I generally avoid those. I haven’t personally taken a photo of a combi, since it isn’t advisable to flash your smart phone on the streets or in a combi, so here’s one from Google. Hi, combi!
