Public Transportation II - Bus

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Only after 3 months my colleague told me that there is a bus conveniently leaving from the office corner, to where I live. Since it starts is route only a few blocks further down, it is a unique chance to hop on a bus and get a seat. For the next 5km and 30 minutes, thats as long as it takes here to get through the rush hour of 9 de Julio.

But who thinks that riding a bus is an easy thing and the same everywhere, is wrong. First, you have to wave rather heavily for the bus to stop (there are 2 bus lines having the same stop) once you see your bus from the distance. Even then, sometimes they ignore you. First time I stood about 5m next to the pole with the "59" number, raised my arm, but the driver wouldnt pay attention at all. I was not standing AT the stop. Sigh. Busses here run frequently during that time, so the next one came a minute later.

They are often so close one to the next, that they keep overtaking each other constantly. In this case you have to be careful to get the one with all the empty seats. Last week I got in second and the women in front of me got the last seat. Stand in a shaking bus for the next 30 minutes, that makes heavily moving stops every 100m? No. I got off.

With regards to buying your ticket, they cannot put the ticket machines on the streets, because they would be robbed. So they have the machine next to the driver. Not with the driver, because he would be too exhausted (or whatever). Now he just presses the computer after you tell him "ochenta" (80 Centavos, 20 Euro-cent) and you put in your money. Since there are sometimes 10 people getting in on a station, the line goes out on the boardwalk and it takes quite some time until the bus can leave, when everyone has bought their cash ticket. Abonnements are not existing, no idea, why.

Buses here are not from one company. No, they are about from a hundred different companies or even more. Every line has different colours, buses are sometimes beautifully painted from the outside (Hospital de Ninos!) and inside they have this kind of carved glass decoration all around the drivers stand, that is amazing. I tried to get some photos but they do not turn out well.

You may wonder how to find a bus that takes you from A to Z in this big city. I did too. Well, there is a booklet, its also a city map, each page is split in different fields and on the other side you can look up, which bus line crosses which field of streets. I did not figure out yet, how you can match that together and find the connnections.

So, once you know a bus crosses through that little area on the map, you have to look up in the back of the booklet, in which street it stops. And mind you, since it is all one way streets, you have to look at the return trip too, because that´s another street.

So far, I am only using bus 59 from work home. The other direction is out of question, because where it passes by my place (Las Heras), it is already crowded and would mean the above mentioned half hour of being shaken. Although I am just thinking that it would be a good arm muscle training...

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