Greetings to all members of this new community. Thanks to the IYC-Team 
Note: When I started uploading the images the contest post had not closed yet. That goes on to show that our internet speed is one for the Guinness Records.
Believe it or not, I love the city wherte I've lived since I started college, back in 1991. Of course, if you visit my blog, you will see so many disturbing images from our streets that you may think I see only ugly.
I want to think I see the city just as it presents to me every time I walk its streets. Some people I know prefer to see the romantic images of the past or romanticize the state of destruction in which we live. I don't see how that can help the problems we face to ever be solved. We have a lot to offer to locals and tourists, but lack a lot of things. Seating accomodations, for instance is not our forte.
We used to have more to offer to the locals and the visitors, but in the last 20 years (sorry I have to repeat this phrase so much in my posts, but it's true) everything has deteriorated and bus stops are not the exception.
The picture you saw at the beginning must be the only decent bus stop we have in town, which offers users a relatively decent seat and a roof in case it is rainign or too sunny (the latter is always the case here).
Allow me to take you for a walk along a couple of miles of streets, bus stops and squares so that you can experience what locals and people who visit Cumaná, a 506-year-old city, which happens to be the capital of a state, usually have to deal with.
Let's start downtown. This is the first bus stop I see when I walk out of my house. It's on Blanco Fombona Av., the famous Gina bus stop. Users just wait there standing up. Pretty sunny in the morning, all the way to the late afternoon when the shadow of a building across the street provides some comfort to the tired pedestrians.
Most stops downtown are just like this one. We used to have a boulevard with nice stops with roof and seats. They are all gone now. If we walk some blocks down Bermudez Av., wand then turn left, we end up in an area called el mini terminal or mercado viejo (old market).
Here I'll show you some of the bus stops.
Users have find their own accomodations on the sidewalk or by the stores' window sills.
At least this one has a bit of a roof. The plastic seats you see belong to the juice vendor.
On average, people can wait 30 mins to an hour for a bus (on a good day). Usually, with the gas scarcity we are suffering, people wait for much more.
We turn around the corner to head back downtown via Arismendi St and we see the remaining of the Mini Terminal. Here we have some of the busiest stops with long lines and not enough seat for so many people.
Another one, closer.
Let's see this one from the South angle. People seat on the border of the small wall that separates the stop from the river bank.
I hate this particular stop. Scorching sun all day. You stay there, wait for hours and then all of a sudden, when the bus finally arrives, a lot of people come out of nowhere saying they were there before you, but were under some tree by the river.
Let's go now to the Prica bus stop on Arismendi St. This one is usually pretty busy, but with the pandemic, the few buses and cash shortage, people walk a lot and avoid the hussle. No seats here either.
Another busy bus stop by the Cathedral. No seats either.
Now, we are by La Copita, down Ayacucho St. Most of these stops have been vandalzied by people, but the government has never tried anything to stop the vandals, repare the broken stops, and come up with some prevention program to avoid further vandalism.
If we go around the rotary, next to the Copita building, you can see what remains of a similar bus stop. Thanks to some forensic photography I just came up with, you can imagine what the site was like. Now it looks like an abandoned ruin from an extinct civilization. It never had seats, though. It just never occur to them that bus users need to seat while they wait. Comfort for the people is not our governments' priority.
Now we go down Gran Mariscal Av. One of the main streets here, one with the most bus stops. Here we'll see the few ones with seats, but the show is pretty much the same.
This bus stop has been maintained by a newarby beauty parlor. Its rustic design is probably quite representative of our fixation with concrete/cement (I'll show you more of that at the end). I guess people figured out that our society is so self-destructive we would need seats made of cement to make it a bit harder for vandals to destroy them (that actually has not prevented them from doing it, but the argument remains, I guess).
This bus stop is one of my favorites. This is the design we had in the boulevard I mentioend earlier. I have no idea how this one has not been destroyed like all the other ones. Probably because it has not been washed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The roof used to be read. It is hiding under a couple of feet of soot and tree sap.
This one is just across the street from the bus stop I showed at the beginning. It may fall anytime, as you can see. It looks like a drunkard about to collapse, but like most drunkards, this one thinks she can still stand and keep drinking; she can even dance if you don't hold her.
This one is in front of Farmatodo. No seats either, even though it is located at the fanciest drugstore/mini-market in town.
Right across Farmatodo. No seats.
This bus stop is located in front of Ekonomart, a supermarket I stopped shopping at because they do not allow you to enter the premises with bags or backpacks, but they do not provide lockers where you can leave what you have either. So, go figure. I guess they asume all customers arrive in cars and can leave their burdens in them. It's Venezuela, come on! Most customers do not have cars!
This one also needs a bit of forensic photography to figure out its former location. People still wait for buses there, just a bit towards the tree shadow.
This bus stop is right in front of Cevenca (a now extinct technical institution). My wife used to teach there and I used to wait for her in the now extinct bus stop (sorry I di not provide the forensic photography) reading the now extinct newspapers (the kiosk is still there though, although it's pretty much going down extinction road).
With this extinct bus stop, we end our walk. And now a quick view on our way back of the other kind of seating accomodations we have everywhere in the city. The concrete benches.
Benches
Gran Mariscal Av. in front of the Stadium (or what remains of it).
Rotary
Andrés Eloy Blanco Square (minus the bust of the poet, stolen ages ago, never replaced).
In front of Luis Mariano Rivera Theater
Same area (not the best place to seat, by the way. Plenty of drunkards and prostitutes provide some uncouth shows a visitor should not be exposed to).
Here you have some equally sturdy options in front of the Cathedral. I wonder if the people attend confession here get one of the tree seats as penitence.
Parque Ayacucho. It used to be the most visited place in town. I must have last sat here some ten years ago.
People play dominoes in these benches. Sometimes very heated arguments ensue.
Lastly (I just realized the contest closed already)
What could have been the best seats in town, by the river...
...If only the area were not so dirty, smelly and visited by not exactly the best kind of people you want to meet when you are contemplating the beauty of the Manzanares River.
