A philosopher once wrote “It’s not the destination that matters, it the journey.” Bullshit. He obviously never spent much time traveling South America by bus.
The theory of simply sitting on a bus for (usually) between 8 and 15 hours is bad enough. The real life implementation is much much worse.
Forrest Gump’s famous line — “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”
My take: “Traveling by bus in South America is like a flaming paper bag appearing on your doorstep; you never know what you’re gonna get, but you can be damned sure that you ain’t gonna like it.”
The first step of the process involves the bus terminal lottery. Most towns have a central terminal for all bus traffic. These places are best described as a modern day Bedlam (an old insane asylum from which our modern day word ‘bedlam’ describing chaos is descended). Kids screaming, pickpockets picking, beggars begging, large groups of listless apathetic people, and just plain general confusion.
The traveler must fight his (or her) way through the madness, from ticket counter to ticket counter, trying to find a company that goes to the destination of choice. This part usually isn’t so bad, but once you’ve bought your ticket (and before you board the bus), you must hand over your bag(s) and hope that they don’t get stolen before the bus leaves.
This, of course, assumes that you are at the terminal at a time somewhat close to when your bus leaves. The worst is when you have to check out your hotel early in the morning (to avoid paying for another day) and spend all day in town, killing time while you wait for your night bus (we’ll get to those later). This is especially bad when you are only in a certain town for one particular sight and you’ve already seen it.
Anyhow, assuming you have actually boarded the bus and that your luggage hasn’t been stolen, the only thing left to do is to settle in for the next 8 to 15 hours and enjoy the ride.
Ha! Hahahahahahahhahahahaha! Excuse me while I wipe the tears away (dual tears from amusement that one could be so naive as to believe such a statement, and from depression of reality).
First off, the buses are designed for maximum capacity. I doubt the Bolivians even have a word for “comfort”. I’m about the height of an average Bolivian (read: short) and even my knees are jammed up constantly against the next seat.
Also, the picture of the bus at the ticket counter that you were shown usually has no bearing on reality. Invariably, the picture shows extremely modern looking cush-mobiles. In real life, the bus is from the 1970s, with ratty old seats that don’t go back far enough to be comfortable, but far back enough to extremely bother the person in back of you.
The lack of padding is a terrible liability as paved roads are a decadent luxury reserved for capitalist North American pigs. Not only are the bumps and potholes tooth-jarring, but the dust that gets kicked up and drifts inside is enough to give you miner’s lungs.
If you have a bus that travels during the day (and not many do), then all you have to worry about are the aforementioned chronically uncomfortable seats, the terrible smells of non-hygienic peasants (and their strange moving dripping chirping squeaking burlap bags they call luggage), and the overcrowding. Often, after a bus has started on its way to the destination, it will stop many times and pick up extra (unticketed) passengers to try and make some extra money. Not only does this make the trip much much slower, but the only space for the extra passengers is in the aisle, where people stand, sit, lie down, and form small civilizations.
Another fun thing to deal with is the shysters and charlatans who board the bus and spend half an hour to 45 minutes giving a sales pitch about some special health powder or skin ointment that will cure bad breath, gout, dysentery, indigestion, cancer, and excessive flatulence.
If the bus breaks (very common) and they can’t fix it (not as common), too bad. You’re out of luck, and don’t even think about getting a refund.
At night, you get to deal with all of the above while you ostensibly try and sleep. Of course, for the first couple hours,
sleep is impossible, as inevitably, a poorly dubbed (in Spanish) Jackie Chan flick is blaring at full volume over the loudspeakers with the actual movie playing on tiny screens miles away and suffering from terrible tracking problems.
Hopefully, you’ve brought along your sleeping bag and some warm clothes because there definitely is no heating system (other than the rank fetid humid bodyheat of too many humans crammed into a small space, breathing and sweating on each other).
One doesn’t sleep on these night buses so much as one flits in and out of unconsciousness.
Upon arrival at the destination, usually at 5 or 6 in the morning, groggy and disoriented, you have to fend off a billion
cab drivers screaming at you to use their services and choose one to take you to a new hotel. Luckily, they haven’t heard of checkin times yet in this continent, and so you can get a few hours sleep before heading out into town without having to pay for an extra night’s stay.
After a day or two, the cycle begins all over again.
/Alex, writing this, bored out of his skull since he had to check out of his hotel this morning at 10 and his bus doesn’t leave until 7 pm (and he’s seen all that there is to see in the town of Potosi, Bolivia)