Argentina's Buses....The Only Way to Fly

At first I was a little apprehensive about sitting on a bus for 18 hours from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls, but all you hear from anybody travelling down here is how great the buses are so I signed up for a supercama seat and gave it a shot.  As my bus experience is minimal I took the proper precautions and made sure I had all the essentials: plenty of water, gum, hand sanitizer, books, iPods fully charged, toilet paper, and enough food to sustain a band of separatist guerillas for a month.  Shortly after boarding I realized that everything they say is true. On my seat I found a nicely wrapped blanket and pillow and in front of it Bose headphones hanging on my personal TV screen.  All seemed good and I ate one of my sandwiches, then laid back in my 180 degree fully reclining seat and started watching the first movie "As Good As It Gets" (fitting, and in English).

 

Twenty minutes later with a belly full of sandwiches and apples I smelled what turned out to be a delicous dinner of beef, vegetables, and rice complete with wine, chapagne, and coffee.  Nothing like a good steak to wash down a few sandwiches.  I conked out for a bit and woke up in complete comfort.  It was only then that I realized how much better this was than flying.  Sure this bus ride was 18 hours and the flight would've been a mere 2, but the bus cost less than a third of the cost of a flight.  Aside from the money saved what was even more satisfying to me was all of the annoyances of flying that I avoided by taking the bus.  Below is a short list of reasons why bus > plane:

1) No arriving 2 hours early and sitting in the terminal so you can pay $4.50 for a bottle of water and $3.50 for 5 pieces of Trident.
2) It's ok to pack more than 1 day's worth of shampoo in your carry-on, hell, they even let you bring your scissors.
3) No sketchy security guard with a foot fetish telling you it's required that he x-ray your Havianas just so he can watch you walk barefoot across the gross floor.
4) Keep your iPod on, use your laptop, make calls, do whatever you like with whatever electronic devices you want, the entire trip.  Come to think of it, how reassuring is it that my compulsion to break my high score in Brickbreaker apparently has the potential to bring down a state of the art airliner?  You'd think the good people at Boeing could figure how to take care of that small detail.
5) No safety video (but no lifejacket either.  So, you win some you lose some).
6) And the best aspect of a bus ride in my mind is that the busdriver doesn't feel the need to update you on his every move.  He just puts the pedal down, shuts up, and drives.  No "This is Captain Travolta speaking.  We'd like to thank you for choosing to fly with Hubbard Airlines - your first choice Aeronautical Spiritual Engineering.  Tonight we'll reach a cruising altitude of about 30,000 feet.  In about an hour if you look out over our right wing (and have x-ray vision) you'll be able to make out the faces on  Mt. Rushmore.  Later, as we cross over Mackinaw Island you should be able to make out my lake house."  Look buddy, I don't fill you in on everything that's going on in my world "Well Captain, first I was thinking that I'd listen to every Radiohead album in chronological order. Then maybe, hit shuffle?  What do you think?" and later "This is John in 31A again.  Now I'm thinking about eating this entire family sized bag of extra spicy jalapeño Doritos.  I know I might pay for it later but I'm really bored." Do me a favor, unless you're about to put us down in a river (kudos to Sully on that one) leave the microphone on the hook and let me watch the movie.  Nobody cares how high we we're going or that we're crossing over Nova Scotia. We just want to know when we're gonna get there and how many free drinks we get. 

Now that I've got one longhaul bus ride under my belt I look forward to many more to come.  Tomorrow is 18 hours down south to Bariloche and I can't wait.

- Happy Trails