Bus to Bariloche

Air travel within Argentina and the rest of South America is prohibitively expensive, it's absolute lunacy that a 2 hour plane ride can cost $500 or more. For this reason a lot of people travel by bus which is infinitely less expensive, and since most bus companies have fleets of new luxury buses, it is in most cases a more comfortable form of travel. The one draw back is that it is illegal and dangerous for these double decker buses to travel faster than 90 kilometers an hour; thus, a long distance trip can take a seriously long time. I just took a bus from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, a distance of 1,571 kilometers, and it took a little under 20 hours to complete the journey. Here's a break down of how I handled it.

Hour 1: Just got going- the novelty of staring out the window hasn't worn off yet. So far so good. Graham is feeling a little hungover so he ate a bag of chips and shut his eyes for a nap. I want to listen to my iPod but I've got to conserve the battery, I wonder how long I can hold out for?

Hour 2: My butt is getting numb. There's a movie on right now that I've been wanting to see but it's dubbed in Castellano and subtitled in Spanish! What's the point of that? I took my iPod out to play Scrabble with Graham because the scenery got old quite quickly. The pampas are completely flat, sparsely populated and kind of uninteresting to look at for any length of time. But, if the scenery changes before nightfall I will gladly return to it.

Hour 4: Only 16 left! They've finally put on a movie that isn't dubbed but I've already seen it, typical.

Graham scolded me for talking to the bus attendant in English, however, I only asked for coffee or tea, which isn't that difficult to figure out considering the Spanish is cafe o te. He's clearly a bit dense and I'm not to blame.

*I wonder if bus attendants ever dream of becoming flight attendants?

Hour 7: Just finished with dinner- even on long bus journeys Argentines insist on eating late, now there's a line for the bathroom. I'm hoping to get another little bottle of wine to help me go to sleep but I'm not sure if they've got a one/customer policy going on here. I'll bribe that dense bus attendant if I have to, I need something to put me to bed so I can escape this misery- the dubbed version of Australia just came on and the only thing more annoying than Nicole Kidman's voice is her voice dubbed in Spanish.

Hour 13: Graham just woke me up because that's what he does when he can't sleep. He sees me sleeping peacefully and somehow it gets into his head that if he wakes me up he'll be able to go to sleep, as if sleep is a physical thing that he has to steal from me so he can get some. It's so hot in here, my arm is right next to the radiator and it's en fuego, and my mouth is dry, I'm so thirsty. I hate Graham for waking me up. I'll smother him later for this.

Hour 19: After a fitful night of sleep, being jolted awake by the swaying and stopping of the bus and bad dreams I actually feel quite well rested. We're pretty far south now and the sun is only just rising right now. We're definitely in Patagonia as we've reached some mountains and we're driving through a string of lakes. It's really beautiful scenery now, a pleasure to stare at, and it's somewhat ghostly. We must be at a high altitude because every now and then a wisp of cloud flies by my window. The fog is heavy in some places but it only sits on the water, you can see it so clearly defined that it looks like a glob of white, impenetrable, fluffy cotton, plopped down by some unseen hand.

And Graham doesn't remember ever waking me up, how nice.

I didn't bother to write down what I did at Hour 20 because it was more of the same, but my legs weren't as stiff as I thought they'd be and six hours later I'm still feeling good. But sleeping in a bed tonight will definitely be very nice.