The Infamous South American Bus Ride
Or, The Bus Ride(s) from Hell
05.14.2012

Although I rarely mention it, one of the most constant aspects of our trip is riding the bus. In the last 3 months, we have traveled thousands of miles, and spent countless hours on buses of all sorts in order to get from place to place inexpensively. But what you may not know is how many interesting things go down on these hours of bus time. Have no fear: I´m here to tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Although the buses in every country of South America are different, generally speaking buses are a comfortable, safe, and affordable way to get around. Bus companies are plentiful and competitive, which means the customer wins, and since bus travel is really the primary means of getting around a country or the continent (they´re a mainstay for backpackers here!), the buses are kept in good condition. In some countries, for example Argentina and Chile, bus travel can even be luxurious. Buses have spacious and comfortable seats, bathrooms, and offer blankets and pillows, just like on an airplane. For someone like me who has never had the money to fly first class, it´s a lot of fun to ride first class in the buses in Argentina: for our nearly 24-hour journey from Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina to Buenos Aires, we sprung for the nicest bus available, with fully reclining seats (called ¨cama¨, the Spanish word for ¨bed¨, as opposed to semi-cama, a comfortable seat that is a little less wide and doesn´t recline quite as much) and ¨full service¨, which not only included a hot chicken and potato dinner as well as breakfast, but a glass of champagne after dinner, and an optional shot of whiskey before bed. The attendant who served us actually wore a bow tie.
However, when we got into Bolivia and Peru, bus ride quality rapidly declined. We got a wake up call that we weren´t in the land of luxury bus rides anymore on our very first Bolivian bus ride, from Calama, Chile, to Uyuni, Bolivia.
Drew and I arrived at 5:30 in the morning as instructed to catch our bus into Bolivia. It was a very cold morning, but we weren´t bundled up because we were going to be on a bus all day. However, everyone else seemed to be wearing hats, coats, gloves, and more than half the people waiting to get on the bus had blankets with them, too! It wasn´t until after most of our warm clothes were stashed safely under the bus did we realize why: these people knew that there was no heat on this bus.
Wearing flip flops, jeans, and a light jacket, Drew and I nearly froze to death for the first 3 hours of our long journey while we waited for the sun to come up and heat the bus. Meanwhile, the Bolivian passengers sat warmly wearing their hats, gloves, and blankets. But even after the bus warmed up a little bit, we had other problems. The biggest was that there was no bathroom on the bus. We were scheduled to be on the bus for about 10 HOURS and we stopped two times to use the bathroom. But did we stop at a gas station? No. A rest stop? No. About 3 hours after departing, we made our first bathroom stop in the middle of the nowhere in a desert-like terrain. There weren´t even TREES to pee behind. All of us piled out. While the men peed just about anywhere, most of the women peed behind the small desert bushes with their blankets covering them. Grown women of all ages, peeing in front of a bus full of people. Things I would NEVER see in the US, lemme tell you. I tell you this, friends: in desperation and not knowing when the next opportunity would be, I myself, thanks to the nice Bolivian lady who let me use her blanket to cover up, peed in the middle of nowhere in southern Bolivia in broad daylight, without so much as a tree to duck behind.
By the time we left Bolivia, I didn´t think buses could get much worse: not only did they consider things like proper restrooms and climate control luxuries, but there are barely any paved roads in the whole country, which means that it is impossible to read or even fall asleep on the buses because they are so incredibly bumpy. You just had to sit there, being thrown around for much longer than any bus ride should be because the roads are so bad, you can´t drive more than 40 miles per hour. In addition, many buses in Bolivia allow for standing seats. Literally, people will stand for 10 and 12 hours and longer because it´s the only ticket they can afford. Most of the women whith children younger than 5 can´t afford seats for their kids, so they just keep their children on their lap the whole time. This was especially irritating to me, because not only does that make an already crowded bus even MORE crowded with people that should have their own seat, but can you imagine sitting next to this? Bolivian mothers, as well, have no problem changing their baby´s diapers on a bus full of people. You can´t even imagine the smell. But when I got to Peru, we had even bigger bus problems: we had to worry if we would make it out alive!
Despite the warning I had read in the Lonely Planet guide to Peru that Peruvian bus rides were ¨notoriously dangerous¨, the bus ride from Cuzco to Ica started out ok. Roads were much better in Peru than in Bolivia, because tourism in Peru has been booming for many years. There were all paved roads and even guard rails. We had departed at 8 in the morning and had a clear beautiful day to travel. However, by nightfall and with 7 hours to go, things started to get pretty scary: we had been driving on steep switchbacks with tight turns very high in the mountains all day, but now it was getting dark, and the turns because more and more dangerous. Our double decker bus didn´t exactly turn on a dime, and progress was slow and tedious. As night fell, we traveled higher and higher in the mountains, with tighter and tighter turns to make, and with less light to do it all in. Drew and I usually sit in the first two seats in the front on the top level, right above where the driver sits and with full view of the road. However, this day, we were regreting this choice, because we could see EVERYTHING. We could even see that, every few turns, there was a cluster of wooden crosses where people had lost their lives off the steep cliff in the past. Late in the night, however, things only got worse: we were so high, that we were in the ¨cloud zone¨: and when we looked out the window to the front of the bus, we could see no road, no guard rails. only what looked like a thick, thick fog. Presumably our driver could see NOTHING but white.
I was utterly terrified.
I started to think about the last time I had talked to my parents, and wondered if I would ever talk to them again. I kept imagining what it would be like if our front right wheel didn´t clear the cliff: I imagined what it would feel like and sound like when we started going off the cliff. I wondered too why our driver wasn´t going any slower. I wondered about the other people on our bus: they have families and loved ones, too! They have lives that I´m sure they want to keep! Would we make it out of the cloud zone??
Well, since I´m writing this, it´s no surprise that we survived. But not without me sobbing audibly on a bus full of people (most of whom, by the way, didn´t look all that concerned. Peruvians must be used to this). Fortunately the trip is one-way, if I had to go back that way again, I´d take a plane.
One last experience is more humorous than life threatening, although the scared-y cat in me admittedly takes it kind of seriously. You might have experienced on a plane flight the option to watch a movie. This usually involved a headphone jack: if you want to hear the movie, you put your headphones in. If you don´t, you don´t put your headphones in, and you hear no sound. Very simple. Not in South America. In every country (except Brazil where no movies played at all), a movie in constantly playing for the majority of the bus journey, and the sound in not optional. it comes out of the speakers above your seats, and it´s usually very LOUD. No headphone jack, and no option to turn it off, as it is playing on a TV abovehead, not on the back of your seat.
This is bad enough, of course, but this isn´t even the problem I´m addressing. The problem with these non-optional movies is the movie choice. People of all ages ride these buses, including many children, and yet the most disgusting, terrifying, and offensive movies are considered appropriate to play in a bus where people have no choice but to see and hear whatever is playing. Although this has happened many times, one particularly memorable movie from Mendoza, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, was ¨Machete¨, an American movie that I don´t believe I as a mature adult was even able to sit through without being thoroughly offended.

If you haven´t seen it, which I hope you haven´t, the movie involves a man killing people left and right with a machete, sleeping with multiple girls at one time, and includes countless incidents of nudity, exposure, and graphic bloodshed. Had I seen this movie as I child, I would have been scarred for life. But no one in South America ever really seems to mind.
Just today we watched the movie ¨Blood Diamond.¨ The movie centers around the rebels and government in Africa, and I saw countless murders and even limbs chopped off. You know, perfectly appropriate for children of all ages.
Perhaps despite these three anecdotes, you still find yourself confused about the nature of the great South American bus ride. Perhaps you are unfortunate enough never to have taken a long-distance bus in South America (notice the sarcasm in this statement). To help you understand better, I present to you my top 7 least favorite things on a bus.
Top 7 Most Annoying Things on a Bus
7. Crying kids. Actually, just children in general.
I don´t much like to be around kids as a general rule. Some of them, I like. But the ones I don´t know, I´d prefer not to be on my bus crying, pooping, chatting on and on. Although some adults (no matter what country they´re from, I might add) act like children, I just find it more pleasant when it´s just us adults riding the bus. Can´t you leave that kid with grandma or something?
6. When someone vomits, passes gas, craps themselves, or just plain smells bad.
One of the many advantages of traveling in a pair is that I never have to worry about who I might sit by. Like it or not, I´m always sitting by Drew.
There are times, however, when even people you aren´t sitting by cause problems for the whole bus. On our longest bus ride yet, 26 hours from Rio to Iguazu Falls in Brazil, someone in the back of the bus vomitted and stunk up the whole bus. There were no windows that could be opened. On our last bus from Cuzco to Ica, Peru, a 4-year-old boy crapped his pants, and the whole bus suffered as a result. The bus driver´s assistant ended up spraying an unidentified disinfecting/deodorizing substance all over the bus which just made it worse. And as you may know from, well, LIFE, some people just don´t smell that great.
5. A bumpy ride.
Although the bumpiness usually doesn´t make me sick, (although one exception, from Sucre to La Paz, had me hanging my face out the window in 50 degree weather at 2 in the morning) the irritation with bumpiness is in the fact that, as mentioned before, it prevents me from reading, my favorite bus activity to pass the time. Can´t fall asleep, either. You just have to sit there until your iPod dies listening to reruns of Radio Lab podcasts and wishing you would get there already. Oh yeah, there´s one more issue with them. The lack of a paved roads makes what should be an 8-hour trip turn into a 12-hour trip.
4. no climate control.
I don´t know what South America has against it, but if you ask me, when 40 or more people are stuck together in essentially in a large metal box for 8 hours or more, the temperature is bound to be uncomfortable if it isn´t regulated. If it really does use up that much energy or gasoline or whatever, there´s no way you could argue that it wouldn´t be energy well spent. Please use the heat and air conditioner. I shouldn´t need to wear my winter coat and gloves.
3. no bathroom.
Apart from what I consider just rediculous things (such as numbers 2 and 3), this is the number one problem I have on buses. I tend to drink a lot of water, and I hate depriving myself of water all day on a bus just so I won´t have to use the bathroom. Probably because my mother diagnoses every symptom of sickness with, ¨you´re probably just dehydrated!,¨ I firmly believe that not drinking enough water is very unhealthy and can weaken your immune system. Buses with no bathroom never stop enough, and I spend the whole bus ride uncomfortable.
2. People sitting in the isles.
Only in Bolivia is this allowed. Buses are claustrophobic enough without people crowding the isles. I guess I should be glad that I could afford to buy a seat, and that I don´t have to stand for the full 12 hour ride. But buses are not meant for people to sit in the isles. If they were, there would be seats there.
1. Mothers whose children sit on their laps.
This is my pet peeve. Although most common in Bolivia, this happens occasionally in every South American country. This once happened to me and my friends in a train compartment on an overnight train to Venice, Italy. It meant that where there were only supposed to be 6 bodies, there were 7. It takes away personal space from everyone in the compartment, not just the mother, space that each person paid for. Likewise, when women put their children (often much older than 2 or 3) on their laps on a bus, they may think that it is their decision, but it is one which effects everyone on the bus. If all the seats are full, that means there is another body on a bus that was meant for only so many bodies. It´s inconsiderate, and it shouldn´t be allowed.
I hope this rather long entry has helped you understand a little better the very unique experience of riding the infamous South American bus. I just have a few left, and you never know: perhaps I will miss them one day.
Or, maybe not.
Posted by aewickham 17:10 Comments (2)










