How to take a long-distance bus in South America

When I first thought about doing this journey over land, I came across a blog post by an Irish woman, Sorcha O'Higgins, who had taken a bus from La Paz to Buenos Aires in 2014. She wrote:

"Once you spend two entire days of your life being lied to, blamed, bored, exhausted and confined, the return to normality will be like the awakening of spring after a long and arduous winter. The phrase “once in a lifetime experience” is applicable, but not in the positive way it’s usually meant."

And summarised:

"I will never, ever, take that fucking bus again."

Being a positive person by nature, I did not let her words to discourage me but simply skipped to the essential, i.e. the pieces of concrete advice. There were three:

"1. Reliable information is nigh impossible to find. It is likely you will be met with ignorant grunts, impatient attitudes and a headfuck of conflicting data.
2. They will tell you whatever the hell they want to sell you a ticket. Truth is no object.
3. Something will definitely go wrong at some stage, so you need to be fairly mellow and flexible about this whole experience. If you are a control freak, or an accountant, you’re probably better off flying."

By the time I got to La Paz (accounts here and here), I hadn't had any too bad experiences. I had come to the conclusion that while all bus companies had by now made it to the Internet era, it was probably best not to trust schedules and prices posted on their websites. That said, the buses had always left around the times that was printed on the ticket, and they had always, eventually, brought me to the city I had been promised to be brought to. As the La Paz bus station looked more modern and reasonable than the other ones I had been at so far, I thought things could only get better.

A day before I wanted to leave, I walked to the station to enquire about schedules. I had done some research, and it looked like to cross over to Argentina, I should take a bus to a little border town called Villazon. Villazon is about 18 hours from La Paz, but I had found that it might actually be possible to buy a ticket all the way to the city of Jujuy, which I estimated to be around 24 hours away.

The schedule hunt was always the tedious part - walking from a counter to another and asking the same questions over and over again. All over Peru and Bolivia, the system was the same: the bus stations were operated by different bus companies, often as many as 40 or 50 of them, and the only way to find out which companies had service between the cities you wanted to visit was to go and ask each one. They had, of course, names of destinations written on their windows, but you learned to assume that that was not the whole story.

Getting the information was tricky business. For some reason, no matter what time of the day it was, many of the booths seemed to be empty. If they did have someone inside, it was possible that they were on the phone and paid no attention to people outside their booth. If they were empty, one option was to stand outside and wait that someone would miraculously show up.

I waited in front of one for a while, but no one came. I moved on to wait in front of another, and after just a few minutes, a man came up puffing and almost running: he was small and badly-dressed and looked more like a cleaner than an office worker. When he asked what I wanted, it sounded like it was completely unheard-of that someone would come and enquire about bus schedules from a bus company, and first he got me so confused that I couldn't get a word out of my mouth. When he then understood my question, he said, "Oh, no, we don't go there. Try the company over there."

And this way I moved from a counter to another. When the next one gave me a "no" as well, I tried helplessly pointing to the sign above the woman's head that read "Villazon": "But it says here that you go there!" The woman just shook her head and told me to try another one.

I had luck at the next one I found with a person inside: he said that his company indeed had a service to Villazon. "Every day at 1, 3 and 5 pm", he said. That sounded good. But then I asked for the price, and he started looking around on his desk. He went through some papers, got up, walked to a chest, opened all three drawers and pulled some papers out, put them back in, walked to the other side of the small booth, found a key to more drawers and pulled out more messily organised papers. When he finally found a slip of paper with something hand-written on it and quoted the price, I didn't have much faith left.

The last counter was better in all ways. The polite young man told me that, for sure, they drive daily to Villazon, found all the information on his computer, gave me the price and even showed me photos of the kind of reclining seats the bus would have. The price was more expensive, so I told him I couldn't book it yet as I didn't have that much cash on me, but he said I could simply pay a reservation fee and pay the rest on the day. I considered the offer, but finally refused, as I still wanted to think it over.

I ended up staying in La Paz for two more days, and on the day of my departure, I walked briskly back to the bus station. It was going to be easy this time: I knew the company, I knew the schedule, I had the correct amount of cash all ready in my pocket.

I walked to the counter of my choice and said I would like to buy one ticket to Villazon, pretty please.

"We don't have a service to Villazon", the girl said apologetically. I stared at her. "No?" I then asked. I knew it was pointless to argue; trying to prove her wrong would not gain anything. Two days ago the company had had service to Villazon, every day at 3. In the present day, such a service had never existed. "No", she confirmed. "Try over there."

I did still get to leave that day, with the company that had found the ticket price on a piece of paper. When the time of departure came, though, I was stuffed to a bus of a third operator and just had to hope that my ticket was valid for them. The next morning, waking up in Villazon, I was told to cross the border on foot and then find another bus station two kilometres away, where a bus of yet another company would leave from - seven hours later.

At this point I did make a fuss, as I had been assured, many times over, that the change would be an hour or two and that the journey would be a total of only 23 hours. Of course, arguing was just as pointless this time. After standing in the border queue for two hours, then crossing the border and walking to the next town, all I could do was wait for three hours in the scorching heat in a place where everything was closed for the afternoon siesta.

What came after it made it all worth, though: the most beautiful bus trip of the whole journey.

Playa de los Hippies

The family has promised to take me to the town of Jujuy, but to our dismay the car won't start, and after trying for a while to get the engine going by pushing, I have to give up and start a three-kilometre run to catch the bus that only runs once every day.

After an hour and a half of standing in an old rackety bus that anyone would have considered full already before the last twenty people got in, I'm finally at the bus station in Jujuy. It's almost 8 pm, and I find there is a night bus to Cordoba, 900 kilometres away, leaving in an hour. I decide to take that instead of making my way straight to Buenos Aires; I can still spend a day or two in Cordoba before reaching my final destination.

Cordoba is a university town, full of colonial and Jesuit history. I walk around the streets and visit a museum on the "disappeared" people in Argentina in the 1970s, but I'm mostly enthusiastic about the prospect of going to one of the riverside beaches outside Cordoba.

On my second day, I catch a bus that takes me one and a half hours outside the town - but I'm late. It's already early evening when I get there, and I also don't have precise directions. I ask a girl in the bus, and luckily she and the three guys she's with are going to the same beach I'm looking for: La Playa de los Hippies.

Although it's embarrassing how hard it is for me to understand their Argentinian accent, I'm still happy to be with them, since it turns out the route is not that straightforward. After getting out of the bus in the middle of nowhere, you first have to walk, then call a kind of a taxi, and after the taxi trip either pay for a canoe ride or walk over a hill for twenty minutes. As I haven't been aware of all these extra expenses, I haven't brought enough money with me, and have no chance but to hope I will find the right path over the hill. I say goodbye to the girl and her friends, who sit down to wait for the canoe.

But the Playa itself is lovely. Indeed, it is a Hippie Beach, with tents and more permanent makeshift living constructions all around the shore, but it's all very peaceful. I'm almost the only person in the water. I float in the  river and let the mild current carry me while the sun sets behind the hills.

When I begin my long walk back to where the bus left us, the moon has already risen to guide my path.

Why I don't visit churches

I don't do cathedrals. 

For sure, they can be full of fantastic art and give us meaningful insight into the beliefs and ways of life of the past. That's all great. I might peek in one if I happen to stumble upon one and feel like some solemnity might be in order. But seriously, when you enter your fifth cathedral, do you still remember the first? When you've read the plate about the painter of the frescos, taken a picture of the altar and stepped back out into the sunshine, has any of it stuck with you?

I'm wary of museums, too. If I live in a place for a year, then, of course: I'll probably visit most of them. I'm profoundly interested in history, politics, art, design – all that stuff that museums are usually good at. But a museum run in the sense of a pub crawl is beyond the point. On this trip, as I've been constantly moving from place to place, I still haven't been inside one single museum.

You know, there are these guide books, "Lonely Planet" they are called, and they are awfully popular. You'll find them in the backpacks of almost every traveller in almost any hostel. At the tables of the hostel bar, the backpackers compare notes with each other and discuss which Lonely Planet recommended experience they have or haven't done yet.

One series of books the Lonely Planet Corporation has is called X on a Shoestring. It's for people for whom seeing a country or two isn't enough; they want to travel at least half a continent. Europe on a Shoestring. Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. The World on a Shoestring (coming up). The word shoestring is supposed to refer to cheap travel, but in my mind, it evokes an image of someone drawing a line from the main attraction to another onto a map with the help of a string and then sticking to it.

I used to own one of those books too, years back, and I know what great writers they have. All you have to do is to open one of them, any of them, and you'll feel like you're missing out on some great fun somewhere in the world. "Be sure not to miss the amazing experience of...", they'll write. "Ideally, you'll get to X the night before, do Y and Z, and then get up early the next morning to..."

And the readers do! They dash from rafting to horseback riding, from canopy tour to hot springs, from mountain biking to temple ruins, from bird-watching to swimming with the dolphins. And inside cities, from cathedrals to museums. Tick-tick-tick, they tick off to-do lists in their guidebooks, click-click-click, they snap the selfies with the temple ruin or the friendly dolphin, tap-tap-tap they post them for the world to see. At the end, they'll feel like they've seen everything there was in the country to see.

What I like to do is watch. I watch people, how they go about their life, what kind of work they do, where they go. I listen to the people on the streets and buses, see how they talk to their friends, partners, or strangers. I observe how mothers and fathers behave with their children, what children are allowed to do and what not, how the children play and how they talk to their parents. I look at what people eat and what they buy, what happens in situations of buying and selling, what kind of shops there are. 

I look at how people have decorated their houses or their yards. I watch celebrations of birthdays or other parties in the streets or in parks. I try to find places where I can hear people sing or see them dance. I go to places where local people go: bus stations, cinemas, educational institutions, vegetable markets. I visit parks and squares and observe how people spend their free time, and what kind of people seem to have free time. I look at how people laugh.

Whenever I get the chance, I talk with the locals and ask them questions, but I rarely approach complete strangers – as an intruding outsider, I feel I don't have the right. I like to remind myself that whenever I set my foot in some city, I'm stepping into other people's home, and none of that was made just so that I could have a great experience.

Before I arrive, or during the first days, I try to read or hear and understand as much of the local history as possible. After that, I just breathe in the way of life. There's so much of it, you don't have to worry about it running out anytime soon.

Montaña Vieja

Wake-up at four; it's still dark. The narrow streets of the little town have a curious atmosphere: it's mostly silent and sleepy, but I pass several groups of other people, walking as briskly as I am in the still-cool air. The surrounding mountains have disappeared in the fog.

A half-hour walk to the starting point of the trail. And then: up, up, up the stone steps that have been laid in an ancient manner on the side of the mountain. These steps give no mercy to anyone, and when I pass people sitting down on some stones, most of them have the same look of astonishment and agony on their face: how much more?

There's always more. After every corner: still more. I don't know where I am – the trail is surrounded by trees, and even when there is a small open area, the fog around us makes everything in the distance invisible. It's as if walking in a tunnel.

But at the end of the tunnel, hidden by soaring mountains from all sides, hidden from everyone's view but the birds', is this.

22 horas a Cusco, la otra perspectiva

Imagine yourself in a bus for 22 hours going up and down mountain roads.

(The blue one is me.)

Imagine a screen right in front of you, showing these cinematographic masterpieces non-stop with the speakers on top of your head on full blast.

Imagine there being a blissful silence for some eight hours in the middle of the night but you being unable to sleep due to the bumpy travel and the onset of some tremendous altitude sickness.

 *)

Imagine finally arriving at your destination perfectly nauseated in all possible ways.

**)

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*)Unfortunately I could only find a trailer in English. For the Latin Spanish version, just picture everything being shouted in an even more exaggerated manner.

**)This is Spanish from Spain - again no South American version available.

Transporte público

Taking buses, apart from long aimless walks, have been my favourite pastime in Lima.

The buses are big vans fitted with small, cushy and mostly torn seats. On the side of the van are written some names of places where the bus is going to, in some areas even a route number, but  most importantly, there is a person standing in the open doorway and shouting on top of his or her lungs the bus's route to potential passengers.

Taking a bus, or a combi as it's called, is not particularly difficult, as they stop practically everywhere. I later realised there are actual bus stops as well, but mostly the buses stop at traffic lights or where ever the door stander's radar detects a passenger wanting to get on. The traffic police on the side of the road might try to get the combis to move on by shouting at them while the angry drivers behind the bus attempt the same by honking their horns – but both seems to have suffered somewhat of an inflation.

If you can't get to a forest, get a forest onto your balcony...?

Once in the bus, the door stander collects your money, sometimes right away, sometimes later and other times only when you get off. A trip for about 30 minutes costs 1 sol, which is under €0.30. Sometimes there is a printed price list on the window, but so far that hasn't seemed to correspond to anything.

Then you just sit back and enjoy the trip! And, well, hope that the bus is going to where you want to go. And that you know where to get off.