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Published: March 12th 2007
After much searching for plane tickets and not finding anything cheaper than nearly $500 we had to admit defeat and turn to our favourite form of transport: the bus! After leaving southern ecuador we crossed the border to Peru and made our way to Lima, making a brief stop in a costal town along the way. From Lima we planned to do a pretty much non-stop trip down to southern Argentina, only about 3641 miles!
Leg 1 Lima, Peru to Arica, Chile (614 miles)
The first leg of our journey was actually done in two bits, a bus to the Peruvian border town of Tacna, where we had a short layover and then took a taxi across the frontier to Arica on the Chillean side. During our 17 1/2 hours on the bus we saw a lot of sand. Miles and miles and miles of flat rusty-orangy-yellow coloured sand, broken up by an ocasional sandy coloured town where there was just enough scrubby grass for a couple of scrawny animals or some sorry looking crops. Yep it really was that interesting; so varied in fact was the landscape that you could sleep for 5 or 6 hours, wake up
Into the mountains
yep we crossed those on the bus!and it felt like you hadn't gone anywhere!
When we finally arrived in Tacna we asked around about the possibility of getting an international bus across the border and on to Santiago, with the next departure being in a couple of days time we thought better of it and went to the "international" bus terminal (very big taxi rank) across the road. We did manage to book the rest of our tickets all the way to Santiago and the man in the ticket office very kindly let us leave our bags in his office and gave us a tourist map so we could go and explore the delights of Tacna. Tacna was slightly nicer than your average border town, pretty plaza but not much else.
After our whirlwind tour of Tacna we returned our map and hopped in a taxi across the border - more sandy flatness. We arrived on the other side with just enough time to enjoy our first (and only) meal in Chile before boarding our bus to Santiago. Despite only going from one bus station to another you could tell you were in a different country from the change in the people; the Chileans
we encountered were all rude and generally unhelpful in comparision to the very nice peruvians we had met earlier on the first leg of our trip.
And now for the ratings! As we used several bus companies we thought it might be helpful for any other crazy pople attempting to do the same thing as us to name-and-shame or praise appropriately the bus companies we travelled with and also rate other aspects of the trip. Points out of 5 were given for seating, food, staff, entertainment and scenery as well as descretionary bonus points / deductions if anything was extra good / totally sh*t.
Bus Company: Cruz Del Sur, Peru
Seating: 5 - lots of leg room and leg rests!
Food: 4
Staff: 5 - very friendly Peruvian lady
Scenery: 2 - not great unless you´re a fan of sand
Entertainment: 3 - showed films but no sound
Bonus points for:
Bus bingo! great fun for 10 minutes and a break from the silent films
Safety talk: it was just like being on a plane - except our emergency exit was through the roof
"Give us a clue" style mime translations: obviously we understood the spanish but
The long and winding road!
As you can see the route was anything but straight! it was great watching her miming how to smash the window in the event of the bus turning over!
Total: 22
Leg 2 Arica to Santiago(1039 miles)
With 29 hours to go to reach Sanitago we were hoping for a particularly nice bus but this appeared highly unlikely from the beginning. The bus station had its own customs search area for some unknown reason (it wasn´t like we were crossing any borders or anything) so we had to arrive an hour before our bus departure to get our bags checked. Being the poilte English people we are we got into the queue heading into the customs area but got increasingly irrate as various Chileans barged pass the queue without even an attempt at explaining why they should go first. The customs check itself was over in a second and pretty worthless anyway! We then waited by the departure doors for our bus to get packed ready for our departure. The bus crew seemed to be having a problem packing the bus as we ended up leaving nearly an hour late.
Having spent nearly an hour watching the bus crew attempt to pack the bus in a very Snow creeping in
In the winter this road is often closed due to extreme snow falls. disoragnised space wasting manner we were wondering how they had solved the problem, only to find out once on the road that the bus toilet was out of use as the toilet space had been used as emergency luggage space - no toilet for 29 hours yippee! As you can imagine there were many people quite upset by this news so stops at other terminals on route had to be lengthened to compensate for the whole bus to relieve themselves.
The first half of our journey was through the night so we obviously did not have much to see, but on awaking the next day we could have easily imagined we had got on the wrong bus back to Peru since the scenary was exactly the same coastal desert strip of sand as seen on our previous journey.
Bus Company: Pullman Bus
Seating: 1 - sh*t
- very uncomfortable and cramped and made worse by the rude Chilean woman in front insiting on trying to put her seat in a horizontal position for her two obnoxious kids.
Food: 2
Staff: 3
Scenery: 2 - more and more sand
Entertainment: 3
Deductions for:
Bathroom out of use due to inability to pack luggage efficiently
Stupid customs search
Leaving an hour late
After our previous expert safety talk we noticed there were no safety hammers to ´break glass in an emergency´
Total: a very disappointing 7
Leg 3 Santiago to Buenos Aires, Argentina (702 Miles)
Hoping for an improvement on the first Chilean bus experience and looking forward to leaving Chile and the Chileans behind us we boarded our 3rd bus. We were heading away from the seemingly endless Atacama Desert so there was definitely going to be an up turn in the scenery and as we started our 3rd leg early in the morning we had a whole day to enjoy the desert giving way to the Andean mountains. Our 3rd leg took us in near enough a straight line from Santiago east to Mendoza and then on to Buenos Aires.
The Santiago - Mendoza portion was anything but straight as the road wound its way up through the mountains climbing as it went. We must have gained a fair bit of altitude by the time we had reached the Chile/Argentina border post as we could see ski lifts going up the mountainside (no snow
yet though). From the border it was all downhill (literally) until the mountain landscape flattened out into lush green vinyards as we approached Mendoza.
As well as an upturn in the scenery there was also a definitely improvement in the quality of the bus! Needless to say Cata Internacional are an Argentine company!
Seating: 5
Food: 4
Staff: 4 - good but no safety talk complete with miming!
Scenery: 5
Entertainment: 3 - showed films with no sound but somehow managed to play annoying music videos with sound?!?
Bonus points for:
Squishy leather headrests!
Deductions for:
The longest most drawn out border crossing possible when both sides of the frontier are in the same building!
Total: 21
Bus break (and much needed shower): Buenos Aires
Four days continuous on a bus make you pretty stinky so we opted for a couple of nights in Buenos Aires to enjoy a shower and stretch out fully before getting on to our last bus. This was our second time in Buenos Aires so everything was familiar which was nice and we were also looking foward to some tasty meat again. One night we had the best steak I think I have ever had in my life. The waiter didn´t ask how we wanted the steaks cooked which was initially a little worrying but they were cooked to perfection. The following night our meat feasting turned to the traditional argentine parrillada (mixed grill) - the restaurant seemed to have a really good offer but it turned out that this was probably due to the fact that most of the ´meat´on the mixed grill was organ meat - gross!
We also did a little bit of sight seeing, visiting the colourful neighbourhood called the Boca at the mouth of the river. La Boca is famous for its colourful buildings and being the home of the tango and the home team of Deigo Maradona. We also were on a mission to see if we could buy tickets to see a football game at the local stadium as the Boca fans have a reputation for being very passionate and vocal supporters, but unfortunately there was not a game, but we did see a very convincing Maradona look a like in the market who was quite amusing.
Leg 4 Buenos Aires to El Chalten (1286 miles)
Despite already passing through
two countries this leg had the longest individual bus trip; a whopping 36 hours in one bus non-stop. The most reliable north/south road goes down the Atlantic coast although unfortunately not close enough to see the coastline itself. It is possible to go south following the Andes down the picturesque ruta 40 if you can afford to tag on a few extra days to allow for the more basic gravel road.
The landscape improved as we got closer to El Chalten; huge open plains with mountains in the distance and a range of dusty autumn colours. As we got closer to El Chalten the mountains closed in until we finally arrived in the little town and we were completely surrounded on all sides by mountains.
Our bus company of choice for this trip was Via Tac (and then a small local bus for the last bit)
Seating: 4
Food: 5 - full 3 course meals!!
Staff: 4
Scenery: 4
Entertainment: 4
Bonus points for:
The steward gave up his seat so we could move.
Deductions for:
The steward needed to give up his seat so we could move out from under the dripping air conditioning
unit!
Total: 21
Congratulations Cruz Del Sur for winning the best bus award!!!
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Mark
non-member comment
Friggin Hell
That sounds like a journey and a half! I think I would have been very tempted by the flight for $500!