A lot of things happen in Colombia that make me cringe a little bit, but because it’s Colombia, I just sort of look the other way and let it happen. Many of the safety regulations are shockingly less stringent than those in the United States. But it’s not like people are dying left and right here from more lax restrictions, so maybe they’re onto something.
Because of this, there was one thing that I was both eager and terrified to try: a chiva. If we have a word for this in English, I don’t know it. But I’m going to pretty confidently assume we don’t, and here’s why…
After the sun sets, you and 30 of your closest friends (or in my case, a couple people I knew and a bunch of strangers) get on this big, colorful, open air bus type vehicle and ride around for hours dancing, spraying each other with foam, and pouring bottles of alcohol down each other’s throats. I mean it's Colombia, so I'm sure you could also do it during the day if you so choose. It’s like a party bus, but the goal isn’t actually to reach a specific destination, and you can easily topple out the side of it at any second. And it’s being driven around Colombia, where I usually feel like I’m about to fall out to my death on even a standard city bus ride.
I arrived at the meeting point at 7:10, 10 minutes after the planned 7:00 departure time. Right on Colombian schedule, we ended up leaving at about 8:30. There was a decent mix of people. A family on vacation, a bunch of Colombians, some random stragglers from other parts of Latin America and the USA, like yours truly.
A couple minutes past departure, amongst a lot of screaming and dancing, a guy pushed his way through with a bag of alcohol – rum or aguardiente, I don’t remember which. I don’t know the name for it in English or in Spanish, but it’s literally a leather bag you can sling over your shoulder with an opening at the end like a sports drink bottle. He held it up to Robert, an American guy here visiting his Colombian girlfriend. Robert offered up the small coffee cup that was hanging from a string around his neck – something he’d been given before we left. The guy pushed his hand away and pointed at his mouth.
Robert craned his neck back and opened his mouth. The guy tilted the bag up and squeezed with full force until the rum, or aguardiente, or whatever, was about to spill out of Robert’s mouth. Then he proceeded to go around to every single person on the bus, before making another round.
The chiva made three stops throughout the night at various tourist sites in Medellin. Each time we unloaded, the “leaders,” leather bags in tow, would yell at the group in Spanish “AGUADIENTE HERE, RUM HERE” while motioning for us to make two lines. It was like a weird fraternity initiation hazing. Except actually not at all because it was the most fun thing ever. Colombians are completely insane. Literally all of them that I know. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
Maybe not even just Colombians. Maybe everyone south of the US border. Because at one of the stops we picked up new passengers – three guys from Mexico. Three guys that no one on the chiva had ever even seen or spoken to before. They wandered onto the chiva and everyone just kind of let it happen. I didn’t know any of their names so I refer to them as Muscle-y Tank Top Guy, Black Shirt, and The Other One. Black Shirt and The Other One huddled together chugging aguardiente straight from the bottle while Muscle-y Tank Top Guy gambled with his life on the side of the chiva.
I looked over at the guy next to me. He was on vacation withhis family from Florida. He was leaning in and out of the chiva.
“Seriously, can you even imagine this in the US?” I yelled.
“No! Not at all!”
“Like how many people would die the first weekend it was operating?” A lot. The answer is a lot.
The chiva slowed down and the Muscle-y Tank Top Guy jumped off only to take a running leap back on when it sped up again. He held on with one hand while leaning off and attempting to high-five random strangers on the street.
“He’s definitely going to die.” (Spoiler alert: he didn’t die. At least not while on the chiva. I’m not sure what happened during the rest of his night. He probably died.) In a questionable moment of judgement, I passed my phone to the guy from Florida so he could lean out the side and take a picture. This is the best he could do (but thankfully my phone is still in my possession, not in multiple pieces on the side of the road):
It was the best picture he could get, given the circumstances.
After several hours, we were all dropped in a park in Poblado, in one of the party areas of town so the night could continue. And just like that my first chiva ride was over. We all made it sort of alive and sort of well.
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