Posts Tagged ‘howto’

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]

Three weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend some time in the Parque Natural Nacional de Tayrona on Colombia’s Carribbean coast. I first heard of it when it was featured in a Top 10 Beaches list in the Guardian a few years back, and within hours of arriving in Colombia, fellow travellers began talking about it as one of the places to see whilst here.

La Piscina, Tayrona

And, of course, they were dead right – it’s a wonderful place; wild, beautiful, unspoilt, unique and utterly charming. If you are in Colombia it should definitely be on your list and to help you here are some tips based on our experiences there to help you get the most from your visit:

• a bus from Santa Marta to the park entrance costs 5000COP – if you are staying at the wonderful Dreamer Hostel, you can pick the bus up from the main road a couple of blocks away
• entrance to the park costs 34000COP for non-Colombians, 12000COP for the locals
• from the entrance a minibus to the start of the trail costs 2000COP
• there are 3 official places to stay – Canaveral, El Paraiso (Arrecifes) and Cabo San Juan plus a private campsite about 10 minutes walk from Arrecifes
• only Arrecifes and Cabo San Juan are actually on a beach, and it’s only safe to swim at Cabo San Juan (a sign at Arrecifes reminds you of this by telling you over 200 people have drowned there!)
• Arrecifes is roughly an hour from the start of the trail, Cabo San Juan another 45 mins from there – both trails are rough and involves a fair bit of scrambling and clambering
• prices for Cabo San Juan are 15000COP with your own tent or hammock, 20000COP to rent a tent or hammock, 25000COP to rent a hammock in the outlook, 50000COP in a room in the outlook (all per person, per night)

The Outlook, Cabo San Juan

• having spoken to 3 people who slept in the outlook it can get very windy and cold at night, take a sleeping bag if you can or just try it for one night and see how you get on!
• food is available at both Arrecifes and Cabo San Juan, but is expensive – 8000COP for a breakfast, 20000-30000COP for a lunch or dinner
• the best swimming is at La Piscina between Arrecifes and Cabo San Juan
• the sun is STRONG – wear sunblock at all times – especially when swimming / snorkelling (this is from painful personal experience!!)
• keep an eye out for the blue landcrabs in the last 200 metres before getting to Cabo San Juan
• bring a torch / flashlight and mosquito repellent
• there is a boat to Taganga which leaves at 2pm and costs 40000COP, otherwise you have to walk back and get either a taxi or the bus back to Santa Marta

I think that’s about it – the most important thing is plenty of money – it was more expensive than we were expecting (and we’d been told it was not cheap) and we had to leave a day earlier than planned because of this. These tips are all personal opinions and the prices are correct as of March 2010 when we visited. I really cannot recommend Tayrona enough, it is absolutely amazing and unspoilt place and a highlight of any trip to Colombia!

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:

How to make a bed

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

Chilling

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…

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:

Guia T

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

Map Pages

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.

Bus Pages

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..