A baby or small child — in the Andes. A bus in the Caribbean.
In Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and highland Chile a guagua is a baby. In Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the Canary Islands a guagua is a bus. Two completely different words that happen to be spelled the same.
The Andean meaning comes from Quechua "wawa" (baby). The Caribbean meaning is unrelated and probably imitative of an old horn or from English "wagon."
This is the single best example of why "Spanish" is not one language. Say "voy en guagua" in La Paz and you have said you are traveling by baby.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Bolivian Spanish — it uses guagua the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Bolivian Spanish.
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