The bus we booked from the small skinny man at the Iguazu bus station was cama all the way. Cama means fully reclining and we were also given dinner and breakfast!
On our first coach which was 5 hours, there was a little bus boy running around who always had a sweet in his mouth which made his cheek bulge. He sprung out of the drivers cabin with a bottle of orangeade and a stack of plastic cups and refreshed everyone and then came round again and gave everyone a sweet. We were sat right in front of a TV screen so got to watch some films with no sound, in Spanish. We were also sat by the toilet and so shared first hand the vomit fate of one of the upstairs passengers who kept jumping down the stairs to cough her stomach up (the upstairs sways a lot more than downstairs)
The bus driver liked to satisfy his need for speed and there were many beeps along the way from other drivers. Kerri opened the curtain and looked out at the oncoming traffic on her side but didnt really like what she saw so we just closed them again and banged some loud music on. The driver was enjoying songs including `The locomotion` and some of the passengers were belting it out. Sometimes the bus would stop at the side of the road and someone would jump on unnanounced. Luckily the bus boy with the cheek bulge was there in an instant to check their ticket.
A woman selling hot buttery pastry rings for 5 pesos got on the bus satisfying the hungry and curious amongst us, including me and Ken.
Then we got to Posadas and had to wait an hour and a half and change buses. We learnt ourselves a bit more Spanish from the ancient book my mum gave me which came with a CASSETTE once. Although that seems fairly appropriate here in SA. We have gone back in time at least 15 years. The computer I am currently on is gurgling right now. Proper windows `93 shit.
The second bus, the 18 hour one, came complete with a trolly dolly! She clip-clopped up and down the bus wearing strapless wedge heels and office wear and ordered everyone to get their clip-on tables out from under their seats when she wanted to feed us. We strapped our tables on and were given a blank white packet which revealed three packets of biscuits inside. All of them were fucking rank but it was hilarious. We thanked her and wondered when dinner would be. At ELEVEN they pulled up to the bus company`s terminal and the trolly dolly trotted out and collected a big cardboard box. She barked at us to strap our tables on again and then presented us with a plastic packet of assorted breads and biscuits. One was a plain bread roll, one was a square bread-cake, one was a pot of unknown yellow wet, one was a roll like a swiss roll and the other was a packet of toast. With this came a sachet of SALT and a sachet of mayonnaise. So we were thinking what the fuck? is the swiss roll thing, which may have tuna and olives in it, the main part and the rest are deserts or what? then she reappeared and banged out a hot box of chicken and rice each. We were so tired and perplexed we just laughed it all down. She redeemed herself massively by giving me a glass of red. At 8am she served breakfast which was three more packets of biscuits. Mega lols.
Salta is like a run down version of a European city...we visited a market selling atzec print bags, ponchos, rugs, hats etc and sampled the local beer. We were given some pesos by an English woman in Ihla Grande who told us to treat ourselves so we spent them here too on steak at a place called Jack`s - reccomended to us by Jack, the Aussie boy we met in Florianopolis. We like doing reccomendations. There isnt a lot to do here except go horseriding, sorry but fuck that, we are not horsey people in the slightest! So we are making the most of the down time, sleeping, chilling and using the wifi before we hit Bolivia as that`s when shit gets BASIC!
We had an adventure earlier trying to locate an English - South American adapter with our basic Spanish. We took an adapter with us as a prop and got sent in a thousand different directions by shop keepers, one man who had lost his voice whispered the way to us and others just kept shaking their heads but we eventually found one :)
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