Posts Tagged ‘bus’

I recently came across an old notebook I’d carried with me on my travels when I first arrived in Argentina and tucked inside the back cover were some tickets from bus journeys I had taken. Travelling by bus had been such a big part of my trip around South America that it was nice to be reminded of the distances and experiences that these tickets represented. A couple had the prices on them, so I decided to conduct a little experiment.

That Argentina has been experiencing heavy inflation these last few years is no secret. Whilst the government has gone out of their way to deny it, even fining agencies who dared publish figures which disagreed with their own, living here it’s impossible not to notice prices increasing on a monthly basis. So having the prices from the past in front of me, I thought I’d take a look at how they have changed.

In March 2009 I travelled from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires, a journey of 36 hours which cost me 500 pesos. The same journey today according to plataforma10.com would cost 810 pesos – an increase of 61% over 28 months. Given that unofficial estimates of inflation have been around the 25% mark for the last couple of years, that’s not too bad.

Other, shorter and probably more popular routes have however suffered much more heavily. Looking at the tickets from my parents trip last October, the cost of Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn has increased by 62% in just 10 months. In the 31 months since I travelled to Puerto Iguazu, the cost of a Cama class ticket has gone up a whopping 154% from 185 to 471 pesos.

The most heavily affected by this type of inflation (which applies to everything, not just travel) is the Argentinian population who will be able to buy less and less as rent, food and transport take up more and more of their salaries which are not increasing by the same proportion as prices. However I do see another side effect which will be to affect tourism. As exchange rates have varied very little in the last few years these type of price increases are making Argentina twice as expensive to visit as it was only 2 years ago.

Flights to Argentina from Europe and North America are not cheap and the relative inexpensive costs (lodging, transport & eating) once you are here compensated for that making a holiday here a realistic proposition. The more those prices increase the less viable Argentina will become as a destination, something which will hurt both the travel industry and the economy as a whole.

With the impending arrival of Mummy and Daddy Gringo, I’ve been planning a couple of excursions. Until now, my travelling around Argentina and South America has involved very little planning, but on this occasion I’m making an exception and booking stuff up in advance – I want these few days to be a trip to remember for the right reasons, rather than knocking on hotel doors at 9 in the evening.

I’m looking forward to these trips (one to Iguazu, the other to Puerto Madryn) for two reasons. Firstly my parents have never been to South America, and I really want them to see a little bit of what I’ve experienced over the last couple of years and secondly, it means getting back on the road, if only for a short while.

But it has also reminded me of what a bloody enormous country Argentina is, and how my attitude to travel has changed. Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn is 1442km (896 miles – just under the distance between London and Barcelona) and we’re going by coach. A couple of people have suggested I look at flights but to be honest I wouldn’t consider it. It may be cheaper (although unlikely) but I just don’t enjoy flying anymore. As soon as it stops being about the time, there really is no reason to fly. I could play the green card, according to this carbon footprint calculator, the bus journey accounts for 1/10th of the CO2 emissions the flight does. However, for me it’s more about the journey. There’s no more complicated reason than I enjoy it.

It sounds boring, sitting on a bus for 18 hours but I simply enjoy watching the world go by. Argentina is just full of scenery, and in Patagonia there is little else, miles and miles of nothing. It’s a great way to relax, switch off and let your mind go wherever little roads of its own it wants to go down. Now that I know I’m going to be doing it again, it makes realise how much I miss it.

The driving in Buenos Aires is not the worst in South America, but that’s not saying much. When I first came here from Europe travelling in a bus or taxi was one of the most terrifying (or exhilarating if you’ve had a bit to drink) experiences of my life. Traffic in London seems bad when you come from Dorset, then you drive in Paris and things back home seem tame. Go from Paris to Milan or Madrid and things start to get a bit more lively. Then you arrive in Buenos Aires and nothing you’ve seen or known before applies.

When I got back here from Colombia it actually seemed tame here compared to Bogota, but nonetheless things are hectic and I am constantly amazed that more serious accidents don’t occur. Simple things here have always puzzled me like why nobody takes the blindest bit of notice of the lanes. There may be 4 painted on the road but there will be 6 cars lined up as you cross. Indicators have no link to reality. Ever. In fact it is not uncommon to see cars or driving along indicating right for 2 blocks, then the indicator stops and the car goes left.

Last week any puzzlement I may have had about why these basics are ignored was finally cleared up. Talking to some colleagues from Argentina and Holland, we were discussing the process in each country to get a driving licence. Myself and the Dutch guy talked about 15 hour long driving lessons, 30 minutes one-on-one driving tests, theory tests, the works. We then asked the Argentinian about the test here. “Test?” he answered,  “I turned up on my own in my car, he made me reverse into a parking space, showed me one road sign and asked me what it meant, gave me the psychological test and got me to draw a house, a person and a tree, checked my eyesight and that was it, handed me my licence and I drove off again in my car, which wasn’t even insured.”

So there you have it, nobody here drives like they know what they are doing, because in actual fact they don’t know what they are doing.

This is Matias. He’s a teddy bear. I sat next to him (and his owner Jenny) on a 10 hour bus ride in Bolivia from Sucre to Uyuni. When I first got on, he was actually sitting in my seat but he’s a very well brought up bear so he moved. When Jenny’s Dad died her Mum bought her a parrot to stop her being sad, but the parrot died, which didn’t really help Jenny’s sadness. So her Mum bought her Matias instead, and now she’s much happier. They made a nice couple. I liked them.

My latest guest post on how to survive long-distance bus travel in Colombia is now up on Medellin Living – you have my permission to go and read it there…

[singlepic id=26 w=320 h=240 float=center]

If there’s one way of impressing somebody who has never been to South America before, it’s by saying, “Oh I’m going to such and such tomorrow, it’s a 20 hour bus ride”. To someone who has been here before then all you’ll get is an unsympathetic nod and a change of subject, but to the uninitiated you will a short pause while their mind assimilates what you’ve just said and then a gasp of horror. “20 HOURS?!” they will squeak, while you nod with the unbearable smugness of the seasoned traveller.

So, this is for all you who have never had the pleasure of dealing with the terms Cama and Semi-Cama, to whom Andesmar and Crucero del Norte sound like beach resorts. Firstly, let’s be clear about this, if you’re travelling round Argentina (let alone other South American countries) on any sort of budget, you WILL encounter at least one 12+ hour bus trip. There are planes, but they’re expensive and  don’t always go where you want to go. Which leaves the bus. Forget trains, I’m aware of one train line that could be considered an inter-city line here in Argentina, and trust me they ain’t 2 cities you’d want to go to. Plus it’s slower than a bus,

So, you’re stuck with a bus. You bravely head to Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires to buy your ticket. This is where the problems start. There are intergalactic spaceship docking stations smaller than Retiro. This place can take over 100 double-decker buses at a time, is always full of people you’re convinced want to steal your bags (or your kidneys) and it’s bloody chaos. Upstairs is the ticket section, which is not a simple question of walking up to a desk and asking in your shabby Spanish for a ticket to El Culo del Mundo. You first have to figure out which company goes there and then ask each one if they have a bus on the day you want to go. Most of them don’t. Eventually you find one that does and then they ask you what class you want. Class? On a bus?

Well yes, there are 3, and within that varying levels of food and drink service. To keep it simple there is Semi-Cama (cama is spanish for bed) which is the cheapest and gives a fairly standard coach seat which reclines about halfway. Then there is cama, which despite the name is still a reclining seat, but reclines more and is wider (3 across the bus) and at the top of the tree there is Ejecutivo or First Class which is the same width as Cama, but the seat goes all the way down to make a flat bed. Pretty much all 3 classes feed you, although alcohol usually only comes with Cama and Ejecutivo.

I’ve tried all 3 and have come to the following conclusion. Even if it means waiting in El Culo del Mundo for another 3 days, I ain’t ever going Semi-Cama again. The recline is not bad, but of course the idiot in front of you reclines too which limits your personal space to a very small tube and sleeping just is not an option. Plus people reclining in front of me inspires sheer hatred in me. Not the picture of reasonableness I know, but in my mind, it’s one step away from child abuse. Cama is better and is an option, although the person reclining in front of you is still a problem. Which brings us to Ejecutivo which, in my humble opinion is the ONLY way to go. Each seat is cocooned in its own space (a suite is the marketing term) therefore nobody can impinge on your space. And you have a bed. A flat one. It’s wonderful.

This has been on my mind a lot recently as yesterday I took my first 20 hour trip (from Buenos Aires to Bariloche in Patagonia), and I stumped up the extra 50 pesos (£10) to go flat. Now, 20 hours on a bus is still 20 hours regardless of the shape of your seat, but by God is it easier when you do it in comfort. For a start you spend the first hour playing with the recline button, thinking, this IS a comfy seat. So only 19 hours left. Then you have to get to grips with the lie flat mechanism and make your bed. Luckily they tell you how:

The result is something like this (although it does actually go flatter – this is just chillin’ mode)

Pretty good huh? However, even this little marvel of modern engineering cannot compensate for the sheer size of and boredom induced by crossing the Argentinian pampas. However, given that you have no choice in this, I know where I’d rather be…

Was watching the local news yesterday and was a little bit freaked out to see a brief item about a bus crash having killed 4 people here in Ecuador. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but what caught our attention was that the bus had come from the Peruvian border was travelling to Cuenca and belonged to the bus company CIFA. In other words the exact same bus we’d been on 5 days earlier.

I’ve already written about lively bus drivers and the ones in Peru and Ecuador are very much in the same mould as those in Colombia. In fact I didn´t particularly enjoy the ride from Mancora to Cuenca as the driver was notable in having 2 basic driving tactics. Either the accelerator was glued to the floor, or the brakes were being slammed on. He drove that bus HARD.

Now, I know that this post is going to produce a worried email from my mother, in fact most of what I do over here produces a worried email from my mother (my favourite so far is, make sure you don’t cuddle any monkeys when you’re in the jungle, not with your skin!). But, honestly what can you do about a lunatic bus driver (or your mother for that matter)?

I’ve seen a blog post written by a backpacker dealing with this issue as the bus he was on actually did crash and he has some advice in the light of this incident. I understand that the incident was highly traumatic and seriously unpleasant, however I do seriously question (and had a little chuckle trying to picture it!) the following advice

You could TELL the driver to SLOW DOWN (‘Despacio!’) if you feel they are driving too fast or if you feel uncomfortable with their driving in any way. If they do not slow down I would personally get off the bus at the next suitable stop (i.e. where I knew I would be safe and have somewhere to stay)

I can’t really see that one working, particularly if you shout it in English. And as for getting off at the next available opportunity, again worthy in its sentiments, just won’t work in the real world – how do you know where’s safe and has suitable places to stay? He does make a good point about choosing a decent (ie expensive) bus company and where possible I do make a point of that. I wasn’t actually surpised to discover halfway through the journey to Cuenca that CIFA is actually part of CIAL, but at that stage it was too late to do anything about it.

Realistically this is pretty rare stuff – I’ve travelled over 25,000 miles by bus in the last 16 months and have felt at risk maybe twice. Maybe it’s stupid fatalism but I really don’t see what you can do about it. Planes crash, cars crash, buses crash, trains crash, boats sink, but a traveller’s gotta travel, right?

After all this time in South America it’s easy to become a little complacent in your expectations and you take a lot things in your stride. For example yesterday I saw a man crouched next to to a very wide and busy road having a poo in broad daylight. Didn’t bat an eyelid.

However a few days ago something happened that shocked even me. We were on the bus from Pucallpa to Huánuco, driving through some very beautiful scenery, mountains, gorges and rushing rivers. We were sat in the front row of the bus and as with most buses here there is a partition seperating the passengers from the driver so you can’t actually see out the front.

So it was a but of a shock when the door opened and a man dressed in unmarked fatigues carrying a very large shotgun appeared. The gun was slung nonchantly by his side as he made his way up the bus, the barrel knocking against people’s legs as he went.

Once he got to the middle of the bus he launched into a well-rehearsed spiel about how dangerous the road was, with lots of cars being stopped and the owners robbed (day and night), and his group of happy mercenaries were working with the police to make it safer. Except they weren’t getting paid, so if we could spare some loose change he would greatly appreciate it! And I won’t shoot you! OK, do he didn’t say that last bit but I can’t have been the only to think it.

So he collected his money and got off the bus, leaving us to the mercy of the bandits I was now imaging lining the road lying in wait for us.

About 4 hours later, just when I’d forgotten about the risks posed by these bandits, another man got on, carrying a very similarly sized shotgun and gave us the same speech. I spent the rest of the journey very unhappily clutching my valuables.

An interesting sidenote is that Laura told me this is how the Paramilitary groups in Colombia got started in the 1950′s – locals arming themselves to protect the rural population against bandits. Then they progressed to protecting small landowners rights and then it kinda went downhill from there..

So, from Bogota we spent a couple of days in lovely colonial Villa de Leyva, about 4 hours north. On the way I got my first taste of Colombian bus drivers. In the cold light of day it’s one thing to sit here typing away and say that they drive like lunatics. It’s quite another when you’re sliding around on your bus seat, anything that you’ve been stupid enough to leave on the floor is at the other end of the bus, knocking against the ankles of the nice little old lady in the front seat. I began to dread the downhill bits (of which there were a lot, Villa de Leyva is 700 metres lower than Bogota) because on cresting the hill, you would feel the bus surge forward and the driver would begin cackling demonically as the roadside shacks would begin to blur, parts of the bus started breaking off under the extreme strain with the wheel rims glowing red.

Ok, Ok so I’m exaggerating a little bit. However, if I thought it was bad on the way to Villa de Leyva, it was nothing compared to the road between Bogota and Medellin. We had to dog-leg back to the capital to get to Medellin, which meant a good 15 hour bus day, but they weren’t that uncomfortable so I wasn’t too bothered about it. We left Bogota and after 30 minutes or so began down a curvy mountain road. The scenery was beautiful, the road taking us through thick forest and mountains as far as the eye could see. And it went on for hours like this – literally. Down, then up, the down again, all the time with hairpin bends every 50 metres. This of course did nothing to stop our bus driver from overtaking lorries, sometimes 2 or 3 at a time. I’ve never seen so many lorries in all my life, and of course we had to overtake them all. On blind bends. I’ve also never seen so many vultures in my life, there were trees full of em, just sitting there, waiting… it wasn’t very reassuring.

I’ve already written about the fun and games that trying to figure out the cross-country bus system can entail. Now back in Buenos Aires I realise that this is nothing compared to the shenanigans you have to go through to work out the city bus system. Inasmuch as it is a system, which I am seriously not sure about. Yesterday I started voluntary work helping out at an after-hours school club for kids in the Barracas barrio in the southern part of Buenos Aires, more of which later. However, before I could start I obviously needed to get there. I had an address, I know where I live so that’s the A and B sorted, how hard could figuring out the middle bit be? I know where to start, I needed the trusty Guia “T”, the Buenos Aires version of the A to Z which also contains bus information, so I toddled down to the nearest Kiosco and scored myself one. Here it is:

Open it up and it has a nice plan of the city:

This is where it starts getting interesting. So, you’ve found where you live, Point A and you can find where you need to go, Point B. How to get there. The left hand page gives you the bus lines that pass through the corresponding square on the right hand page. In my case I have buses 12, 29, 39, 68, 92, 111, 128, 152, 188 & 194 going through the square that I live in. Somewhere in that square, containing 10 or so 100 metre square blocks. Those lines stop somewhere in there. not much help, but a start. So then you look at the square you want to go to, for where I need to be we have 10, 12, 17, 22, 24, 39, 46, 51, 60, 70, 74, 93, 98, 102, 129 & 168. So with a bit of cross-referencing I now know that lines 12 and 39 go from where I am to where I want to be. Easy.

But each square on the map is roughly 1 square kilometre. So where does the bus go from? To figure that out more investigation is needed.

Each bus line has an entry in the back which lists the streets it goes down on both the out and return legs. Out and return from where? That’s a good question one which I haven’t really figured out yet, particularly as the start and finish points are usually areas I have never heard of. So you have to scan the roads looking for one you recognise. Which can take a while, and I’ve  lived here 4 months, God knows what you would do if you were new to the place. So you have to check that the line goes down the right roads, otherwise you may end up having a 10 minute walk either side of the journey. And you’d better hope that the line you need doesn’t have different routes. The page on the left in the  picture above is for one bus line, the 60 which has something like 15 different routes, luckily I don’t have to catch that one as I do not have the degree in astrophysics and geometry that I would need to work that one out.

So, in the end I figured out that I could walk to Avenida Santa Fe and take the 12 there, but not back as it takes a different route, but the 102 would drop me outside my house (but doesn’t take me there). A worthwhile half hour spent.
However, that’s not all of course. Next you have to figure out exactly where the stop on Santa Fe is, and that’s simply a question of walking down the street till you see the  miniscule P12 sign hidden in a tree. And once you’ve done that, how much the trip will cost you is a different issue altogether. Not to mention actually having the right change (only coins accepted) to pay for it, which is harder than it sounds as shops jealously guard their stocks of coins and will avoid giving you them in your change at all costs.

And then of course, there’s the small matter of actually surviving the bus ride (to this day I have not worked out how one minute you’re 5 lanes from the pavement in solid traffic and 20 seconds later the bus stops at the pavement to let people off without seeming to change lanes) and figuring out exactly where you need to get off once you get there..