More bus journeys

We weren’t planning on writing about every bus journey, but each one is its own unique form of torture.  By starting in Buenos Aires we have started with the best and will slowly be making our way down (we hope not to get to buses as those found in Ethiopia, but you never know).  The first bus we basically had beds, were served a hot dinner complete with wine and snuggled under the provided blankets resting our weary heads on the pillow.  That is coche cama/total cama or a myriad of other names.  Next we took a cama class bus to Resistencia.  Gone was our ability to recline fully, but it still came close and the seats were again wide and comfortable.  We didn’t receive blankets or pillows but there again it was during the day not at night.  Meals were no longer hot, but still existed.  It was a fascinating journey though as the bus also acted as a local normal bus picking up passengers every few minutes.  In this way we got to see our first ‘gauchos’ cowboys – the clothes were amazing! If the situation had been different you would have assumed they were dressed up for tourists to take photos of them.  Hat, boots, belts, silver chains the whole full bit.  Anyway.  The next bus was semi cama class and we’re now back to something closer to a greyhound bus in Australia or Canada… ok, not quite that bad, but close!  Mostly upright seats, food that the airlines rejected 10 years ago, but worst of all no blankets.  We had stupidly assumed these would be provided and spent the entire night shivering away (occasionally sharing one seat for warmth, but that wasn’t exactly comfortable) whilst every joint in the bus seemed to blow in cold air.  Of course we are also reminded of how quickly your expectations can change.  In Africa if a bus came even close to the level of Greyhound we were ecstatic... more often it was a school bus with 6 people squished in each row.

Of course it’s not just the buses that have gone down in quality, we also seem to be staying in grottier and grottier accommodation.  This is the first place we’ve stayed in South America with a share bathroom (yes, I know we’ve been living the high life up until now).  That is fine with me.  The problem is that we have two choices for showers.  Option 1 is a full bathroom (shower, toilet, locked door) but only cold water.  Option 2 is a hot shower but only a curtain between you and the corridor.  And it’s cold enough that we are going for option 2!

 

We are now in Salta, but I suppose I should quickly mention Resistencia.  It was Sunday, so everything was shut which was stupid planning on our part.  We planned to spend the day sitting in the park, but then I got stung by a bee (it got inside my shoe somehow and then stung me when it couldn’t get out) so we spent the day avoiding bees, looking at statues and drinking gallons of liquid.