If you're from North America, Europe, Asia -- Hell, if you're from anywhere except for Argentina, Chile or Brazil -- you've probably been conditioned into believing that long-distance bus travel sucks.
You'd be justified in your beliefs. Because, for the most part, bus travel does suck.
Except that Argentinians, Chileans and Brazilians have figured out how to do bus travel right. Why have these countries managed to do it when the rest of the world can't be bothered? I think it has to do with a few factors:
Brazil, Argentina and Chile are countries where there are large distances between major population centres and points of interest. These countries have a significant base of the population that is affluent enough to want to move between these major population centres and points of interest. But they're not affluent enough to necessarily fly everywhere. And there are few trains because the respective national governments figured they'd rather invest in roads than rail.
In all of these countries, the long-distance buses are, by and large, awesome. There are generally three classes of seat -- the names correspond, in Spanish or Portuguese, to conventional, semi-sleeper and sleeper. The cost of upgrading classes is nominal. For instance: a cama-class seat for the 18-hour, overnight ride between Buenos Aires and Puerto Madryn cost me ARS$255, vs. the ARS$230 it would have cost me for semi-cama seat. Both of those are up from the ARS$218 base price for a seat on a convencional-class bus. The difference between the lowest and highest is all of eleven bucks back home in Canada.
The two-foot-wide cama seats recline back to 160° (vs. 140° for semi-cama), with more than enough legroom for my six-foot frame. Using the provided blankets and pillows, I managed to get a better night's sleep on those buses than in some of the hostels I stayed in. In Chile and Argentina, they serve you meals on long-distance trips (Brazilian buses stop off at rest-stops where you can buy food). In Argentina, you get alcohol included with your meals -- I consistently received wine, but also got before-dinner aperitifs (my choice of a good pour of whiskey or cognac) on one bus company (Via Bariloche). All the buses play movies. One bus company (Andesmar) has one on-board game of bingo per journey, with the winning passenger receiving a bottle of wine.
If they provided a power-outlet for charging my laptop, and a mobile WiFi connection, I would have been happy to while away days on those buses.
In Argentina, there is one more reason to take the bus:
If you fly in Argentina, you have to deal with Aerolineas Argentinas.
You really don't want to do that.
Back in November, I wrote about how Aerolineas cancelled a flight on me, and couldn't get me onto a later flight for eleven days. Then, in December, I wrote about how they pushed back the departure time, for my already rescheduled flight, from 2:00am back to 9:15am, meaning I had to spend the night at on a hostel common-room couch.
What I hadn't written about, until now, was the shenanigans that occurred when I finally did get to the airport.
Waiting Around
After a sleepless night in Buenos Aires, I arrived at Ezeiza International Airport at 6:10 in the morning. My goal was to hit the check-in counters as soon as they opened -- which, according to the Aerolineas website, is three hours before departure. I headed straight for the large signs pointing towards the correct counters for the flight to Auckland and Sydney. There were barely any passengers in the terminal and I was feeling quite smug in the knowledge that a quick check-in would leave me with plenty of time to clear immigration and security, so that I could just get to the gate, sit down, and relax.
Except that the check-in counters were not open.
There was one Aerolineas staff member wandering around my section of the terminal, so I approached her and asked when the check-in would commence. She just shrugged her shoulders at me. Thinking that she might have had a problem understanding me, I loitered around waiting for a local to approach her and ask the same thing in fluent Spanish. He got the same response.
Still Waiting Around
The check-in area continued to fill up, and as time passed, it became clear that this problem was not isolated to my flight. Everybody along the rows of Aerolineas check-in counters was just standing around. Nobody was getting checked in; nobody was getting any answers. There was nothing to do but wait.
And occasionally burst into rhythmic clapping.
See, in Argentina, rhythmic clapping is a sign of impatient frustration. I first encountered this little custom whilst waiting for my ferry to Uruguay to depart. Our boat was defective and we were eventually transferred over to a boat that worked. Of course, the ferry company didn't tell the passengers anything until thirty minutes after our scheduled departure -- a thirty-minute period that was punctuated with muchos clapping. This previous experience helped me to manage expectations and allow me not get my hopes up, which wasn't totally out of the question given that I come from a culture where clapping is usually used to acknowledge good things. Instead, I knew otherwise. In fact, I found this airport clapping worrisome. While the sound of thousands of people clapping in unison was impressive, I was worried that the sheer primality of it all would eventually have people smashing their hands into other things. Like the check-in counters. Or the computers. Or signs. Or various other fixtures at the airport.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating this for comedic effect; it actually happened back in 2008.
Ruh-roh (Notice that only the Aerolineas passengers were getting screwed.)
9:15am came and went. We hadn't been told a damn thing. There were rumours running around the airport that we were in the middle of a strike action, but nobody at Aerolineas was confirming or denying anything. Terminal B was looking like a refugee camp. Which got the television cameras out.
That's how we got confirmation that we were caught up in a strike. That's also how I got on Argentine TV, when I walked behind a reporter recording a feed -- a feed that I saw broadcast ten minutes later.
Better Get Comfortable, Because This Could Take Awhile
At 10:00am, almost four hours after I'd arrived at the airport, I wasn't getting straight answers. Some people were getting straight answers, not necessarily from Aerolineas staff, but their situations were clear when the airline started cancelling domestic and short-haul South American international flights. However, it seemed that that Aerolineas wasn't quite yet willing to give those of us trying to get to New Zealand and Australia the courtesy of a, "Yeah, you're screwed. Here's a voucher for a crappy hotel room and a woefully inadequate meal at an airport eatery."
Instead, at 11:00am, we got a, "We're in negotiations with the unions right now and hoping to have a resolution in an hour. If we get one, we will start checking you in at 12:30pm, for a 2:30pm departure. By the way, there are crappy sandwiches upstairs in the lounge. Now please go back to waiting."
So we waited.
To be fair, the information, when we were finally given it, wasn't far off the mark. We started checking in at 1:00pm. We were eventually herded onto a plane at 3:00pm. At 3:30pm, we were wheels-up.
Yay!!! Oh, wait...
I should have been happy. The main thing was that I was finally on my way to New Zealand. Except that I was tired and cranky and unable to overlook the fact that I was sitting on a plane that looked like it hadn't been overhauled since the mid-1980s. Or the fact that the seats were so tight that the guy in front of me couldn't recline fully unless I stuck my legs out into the aisle. Or the fact that they ran out of food because they only brought aboard enough supplies for the original flight schedule, when the plane would have departed at 2:30am, meaning most of the passengers would have been asleep for most of the thirteen-hour flight.
Halfway through that ordeal of a flight, I remember remarking to my neighbour that, if somebody had paved a road across the Pacific, I would have willingly paid extra to sit on an Argentine bus for a five-day journey between Buenos Aires and Auckland.
I was being entirely serious.
Related Entries:
1. Aerolineas Argentinas Blows Goats
2. New Zealand Will Have to Wait
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