Looking for adventure, and possibly some great stories? Road-tripping across Latin America could provide some of your most lasting memories—from a taxi ride with a  zealous soccer fanatic to a five hour bus ride with a pig in your lap.

Of course, the most comfortable option for traveling around is with a tour. If you spend any time in Latin America, you’ll see immaculate tour buses full of mostly elderly travelers sporting Tilley hats and fancy walking sticks riding, staring wide-eyed out into the Third World while their guide—who may or may not have been a military commando in a previous life—describes the local flora, fauna and culture.

Tours are great if you’ve got extra cash to spare. If you can’t spring for a tour, or if you simply don’t want to be an owl-eyed passenger traveling in sterilized comfort, you might prefer a local bus. In general, there are two kinds of buses in Central and South America: The first sort is the common ones used by most of the people, often to go to market. In Guatemala, they’re known as “chicken buses” because chances are you’ll be sharing a seat with a chicken, pig, goat, sheep or a dog for some or all of the way. The other human passengers are friendly and outgoing if occasionally unwashed and toothless.  

The nickname “chicken bus” may be Guatemalan, but you can expect to find variations of it anywhere you go. In some cases, you may find yourself on top of the bus, balancing on a sack of potatoes, dodging oncoming power lines and trying not to think about what it is that is moving about inside an oddly-shaped sack tied to a nearby roof rack. At other times, you may find yourself standing for several hours, one passenger out of 175 or so on a bus intended for about 40. Local bus rides are always memorable, whether it’s for a friendly conversation, a chance meeting with a fellow traveler, or the unbearable trauma of ten hours listening to tinny ranchera music blaring through the bus speakers (funny how those seem to be the only part of the bus that consistently works). It should be noted that local buses do occasionally break down, catch on fire, explode or plunge off cliffs, but not necessarily on the same trip. Oh, and there’s no bathroom on board, so try to refrain from drinking liquids for about two days before taking a local bus.

If you want to have a trip that is relatively free of chickens, explosions, toothless locals and stuff falling off of the ceiling rack onto your head, you may want to upgrade to a first-class bus. Generally, most places in Latin America have first-class bus services between major cities. These buses often have assigned seats, which is nice, and some even have a cabin steward who passes out Coca-Cola and very dry cookies. Best of all, they generally have a bathroom in the back (remember that when buying your reserved seat: the bathrooms can be smelly). They’ll often have a TV with DVD player and will occasionally pop in pirated copies of Hollywood movies. This may sound like a good thing, but the bus assistant is usually a male teenager, which means you’ll be watching such screen gems as Leprechaun 3 and Kung Fu Fists of Death. Still, it’s easier to sleep through a screen leprechaun running around with a cleaver than it is to sleep with a duck on your lap. Believe me on this.

Once you reach your destination, you have the problem of getting around within the town. City buses are the most common and cheapest way to see an unfamiliar city, but these come with complications.

Take the city of Quito, Ecuador, for example. There are numerous city buses which link every possible corner of the city, and the buses are clearly numbered. But this is where the problems start. The numbers on the front of the buses don’t actually mean anything. Hop on a #41 bus two days in a row and you’ll go two different places. What you’re supposed to actually do is read the signs in the front bus window, because they’ll accurately tell you where the bus is headed, most of the time. So, to summarize, if you want to catch a bus somewhere in Quito, you need to stand on the sidewalk as close to the street as possible, squinting through black clouds of exhaust, peering at the windows of buses as they zoom past. If you see a sign that indicates the bus is going your way, wave your arms madly.  The bus will slow but never stop: some long-time Quito visitors theorize that every bus in the city has a bomb in it that will go off if the bus ever comes to a complete stop. Jump on, find a seat and pray to the Transportation Gods that you made the right choice.

Difficult buses may make you want to take a taxi. This may or may not be a good idea.  Hailing the wrong cab on the streets of Mexico City may get you mugged, kidnapped, raped, murdered, ransomed, kidney-harvested and/or sold to Tunisian sex slave dealers, not necessarily in that order. Many other cities in Latin America have perfectly safe cabs where the most you have to worry about is whether the cabbie is going to charge you twice or three times what he would charge a local. According to my informal research, in several Latin American cities it is necessary to be a raging soccer fanatic if you want to get a cabbie’s license. Cabs are often decorated in the dazzling colors of the local team, and if you ask the cabbie about local fútbol, he will start ranting and raving so much, he may even forget to overcharge you.

Whether it’s by chicken bus, first class bus or soccer taxi, getting around in Latin America is an unforgettable experience. You’re looking for excitement, right? So grab the nearest chicken and hop on the bus!