Buses in Colombia

While I'm sitting on this bus hurtling through the Colombian countryside, I felt inspired to write a post of observations about riding the buses here. The only rule is that there are no rules.
In no particular order:
1) Getting on a bus here is an extremely informal affair. You show up where the buses are all parked, and a bunch of random guys are yelling city names. Some come up and ask where you are going. Some of the guys are dressed in uniforms, and some are not. I'm not sure who they work for - I assume the bus companies - but once you tell them what city you are going to, they whisk you on board. Sometimes they take your bags and either put them under, in back, or on top of the bus.
2) Ticket prices are negotiable and there isn't much rhyme or reason to where you buy the tickets. Sometimes you buy them from a little stand inside the bus station from a specific bus company. Other times you just jump on board and a guy comes around to take the money and give you your ticket after you leave. The price can drop dramatically with a little haggling. We are traveling right now with an Argentinian and he negotiated our ticket price from 30,000 pesos (about $14USD) to 18,000 pesos (about $8USD) without much effort. Of course, with our amount of spanish, we are at a distinct disadvantage. We'll still try though!
3) The buses come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and degrees of quality. It is hard to believe these are owned by actual companies, since they are so eccentrically colored and decorated. The biggest buses are huge coaches with incredibly comfortable seats, a bathroom, flat panel TVs that play movies in spanish, and awesome air conditioning (sometimes a little too awesome, so we carry jackets). From there it goes downhill, to these bizarre midsize buses that look like they could double as watercraft, and tiny little vans like the ones the terrorists drove in Back to the Future.
4) If you've ever wanted to do your own stunts, look no further than a bus ride in Colombia. As we left the station today, this woman beside me crossed her heart Catholic-style, then did the same on her infant boy. This does not instill confidence in this bus ride for me. True to form, this driver has been making some extraordinary passing maneuvers on blind corners in the heavy rain, lightening, and thunder storm. It seems impossible that there aren't more accidents but from what I've read there are surprisingly few. A couple times I've thought we were surely about to crash as we slowly passed these big trucks going uphill, sometimes a few at a time, as the oncoming traffic came blasting towards us, barely missing us as we moved back into our lane in the nick of time. And those were the successful passes. The ones where we popped out from behind a big truck to pass, only to be greeted by a speeding oncoming bus 100 feet away, and swerved back behind the big truck within an inch of disaster, produce the same feeling as being on a scary roller coaster, only without the insurance of safety.
5) Hungry? No problem. Every once in a while, these people, often children, jump on the bus with baskets of funky snacks and drinks. I have no clue what most of the things are, but most look sweet and carb loaded. After they walk down the aisle pitching their product, they jump back off the bus and then wait for the next one coming the opposite direction. Must be a weird way to spend the day.