Throughout the world, people in impoverished countries bring a sense of humor to their automotive travails. Whether it be Africa, Asia, the Caribbean or South America, if you take local public transportation, you'll find yourself crammed in a rickety bus, often with animals, vegetables, and mattresses riding alongside you. It's a matatu in Uganda, a tap-tap in Haiti, a chicken bus in Guatemala, or a chiva ("goat" in Spanish) in Colombia or Ecuador.

Crossroads Trade is pleased to present whimsical folk vehicles from many lands, bearing striking resemblances to their real counterparts. From Colombia, we offer chivas. The original chivas are elaborately painted, wooden-side buses. Our chivas are brightly painted ceramic renditions of the original, and variations on the theme as well -- Noah's Arks buses, Nativity buses and all manner of other vehicles. The Peruvian ceramic cars and trucks on our website have their own signature style of painting.

Our Haitian tap-taps are rendered as housewares - home goods, key chains, magnets and ornaments, fashioned from steel-drum-scrap. Our Guatemalan chicken buses are ornaments -- to hang from your tree or your rear-view mirror.

Not everybody takes the bus. In Bolivia, people and animals pile into the backs of large open-air panel trucks, and ours, in wood and cloth, features men, women, alpacas, baskets, sandals, and tools. Our Zapatista truck from Mexico, also wood and cloth, carries masked freedom fighters in the back.

There is some private transport in these countries, and we have some great examples. South Africans make cars and motorcycles from old cans, with wheels made from soda and beer bottle caps. Colombian artisans produce soda-can motorcycles using the ends as wheels. From India we have elaborate wire motorcycles, made only using a pair of pliers. Our little metal cars from Madagascar are painted with passengers' heads and Bollywood faces. And from any number of countries, we have sturdy wire cars, motorcycles and front-end loaders.

These vehicles always lift the spirits, uniting the adventure of travel, the ingenuity of recycling, and the self-expression of the artisan.