Bus travel in South America

A Cruz Del Sur bus (from their site)

We felt we should add a post purely about bus travel in South America and share some of our experiences. Generally it is very safe and the companies are great. This goes for all countries except Bolivia, where many companies are dodgy (generally) and the buses are not of a very good standard. We had a theory that Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile sell their old buses to Bolivia when they are run down and looking pretty tired.

In Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile the buses are like being in business class on a flight. They have Semi-Cama (almost flat seats, with a leg-rest) and Cama (fully –reclining beds, totally horizontal – amazing).

We had great buses in Brazil, we also used a couple of private transfer companies (listed in the links on the left), but also used Catarinense & 1001. Both fine.

In Argentina we used a small company (sorry can't remember their name) where our bus was severely delayed but the company bought a ticket with an affiliated company for us and we were fine. It was lucky we spoke some Spanish as all announcements of the cancellation (a bloke walking along the platform, shouting) were in Spanish.

Peru was probably the best for buses in the countries we went to. We mostly used Cruz del Sur. They are more expensive but very good, efficient and great staff (apart from the surly woman we came across in Paracus). There is a watch out in Puno; we did some research and found the best company to book from Puno to Lima was a company called TourPeru, so we went to their ticket office at the bus terminal in Puno and booked 2 tickets for the next day, they told us their system was down and issued us a receipt for the tickets and asked us to come back the next morning an hour before our bus and collect the tickets – basically the bloke who sold us the tickets was moonlighting for another company and gave us tickets for this other, cheaper bus company (to be fair it was to the correct destination). It was all very dodgy and we were not impressed with the company he put us on. So always check this.

Bolivia was by far the worst country for buses. As a rule they do not have functioning toilets and even on 10-12 hour journeys they do not stop for the toilet. We saw men peeing in plastic bottles and dirty nappies being thrown out the window. Pretty much the only thing missing from Bolivian buses was livestock. We learnt to dehydrate ourselves for several hours (longer on longer journeys) so we did not need the toilet.  

In Bolivia you can only purchase bus tickets on the day of travel, not in advance like you can in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. None of the buses we travelled on in Bolivia were clean or comfortable, but if you are prepared for this you will be fine.

Chile is like Peru with regards to it’s buses. They are very efficient and clean and comfortable. We used  Tur-Bus and Pullman, both were great.

Full Cama

Semi Cama

  

The amazing Foz do Iguassu

Iguassu Falls

After a long 12 hour bus journey (which was late) from Curitiba, we arrived at our brilliant hostel in Foz do Iguassu, called Green House Hostel. It's a converted house in the suburbs of the town, about 20 minutes by bus to the falls. It's clean, comfortable and the people are lovely.
We got up early this morning and walked to the bus stop to get the bus to the national park. It was pretty simple, once we knew which direction we had to go in.
It's fairly expensive on the Brazilian side (we are off to the Argentinian side tomorrow) but very well organised; regular buses once in the nation park and loads of things to do, which of course are additional costs, we did the speed boat which literally took us under a waterfall, we were drenched but it was brilliant fun.
The falls a huge, massive, they make Niagara falls look like a drain pipe burst. Kilometres of waterfall, just breathtaking. We took about 200 photos. Won't bore you with them all...yet.

Anyone for Guinness?

After the boat ride, once we were really drenched, we sat in the sun and dried out. Then walked to the bird sanctuary which was very impressive and well worth the visit, loads of Toucans! Also loads of other breath-taking birds, including 2 massive Harpy Eagles. Massive! There were several aviary's you could walk through, including Toucans and Macaws - the latter was funny because it was late in the day and the birds were getting quite active and swooping - one scared Ellen as it swooped right past her face, they really are big birds.
Back at the hostel we cooked pasta for dinner, waaaay over budget today!

Curitiba, sorry we couldn't stay long

View of Curitiba at 6.30am

This first part of our adventure has been a but rushed, well, more like we have very large area to cover in less time. This means long bus journeys and a few afternoons in cities, rather than spending full days looking around. Curitiba is a victim of this. It looks lovely, pretty cobbled streets, beautiful old buildings and quite easy to navigate around. This is really just a pit stop on our way to Iguassu Falls, which we are off to today on a 11 hour coach trip. The coaches here are brilliant, you can be almost horizontal on standard coaches. Very comfortable. 

Our hotel here is great, only £30 but very comfortable and quiet.  The best night sleep so far.

São Paulo. Nightmare hostel and amazing city.

We made the first mistake of the trip; Trusting hostelworld.com reviews.
We are staying in a shit-hole. Sorry, but it is. It's pretty much some blokes house and he is renting out every square inch to gullible backpackers. We are in a glass room, like a fishbowl. Yes you read that right. But it's less than £30 a night, and it's our own glass room, and it is frosted glass you should know.

Paraty

Anyway, after a night in a very noisy hostel in Paraty with slamming doors through the night, and breakfast with local monkeys - who knew what time breakfast was - we caught a 6 hour bus to São Paulo. The trip was great, very comfortable seats, semi-cama. The bus stopped a couple of times for breaks. No drama.

Got into São Paulo and immediately booked our tickets to Curitiba for Wednesday. Another 6 hour coach ride, but for now we are going to enjoy São Paulo.

After checking into the before mentioned 'hostel' we went to the supermarket and bought stuff to cook and stay in to plan our day and book a hotel in Curitiba, oh and do some washing, it's the first place we have found with a washing machine. It's one of the 2 good qualities of the place. The other is the very informative manager.

We got up early ate our breakfast and headed out to the big city. São Paulo has 16.5 million people, that's double London! We walked down to Batman alley to see the great graffiti, then walked up and over several hills to the Metro and caught a train to Luz. Here we saw the Luz gardens, walked and walked the streets of the Centro and made it to the Municipal Market just in time for lunch, how convenient. Naturally we had to partake of the traditional sandwiches, which put the New York delis to shame. One word, HUGE. Quite salty, but the food here is either very sweet or very salty, for example they add sugar to their fresh fruit juices! 

Batman Alley

Municipal Market

After about 4 hours of walking we got back on the metro to Vila Madalena, the area of our 'hostel' (sorry, really have to use quote marks when I write hostel, and it is not really hostel, not really.) we walked around again for a couple of hours until we found this little bar, called Piraja, we've had several small beers. Our feet don't hurt as much now...just waiting for Braz to open, it's one of the best pizza restaurants in SP, according to Lonely planet.

...and it was brilliant. Here is Angel about to tuck in.

Braz

Braz was amazing. Probably the best pizza we have ever had.

Also at Piraja we learnt that in Brazil if you want them to stop serving you beer, put a coaster over your glass, otherwise they keep bringing them. We got a little tipsy, and it cost us about half our daily budget to pay for the many beers.

After 2 nights at the hostel we left Sao Paulo. To be fair the bloke who ran the hostel was amazing, top bloke who told us loads of stuff about all the places we were headed. 

Island Paradise - Ilha Grande

Hotel in Ilha Grande

After the hectic bustle of Rio we booked a transfer to the island of Ilha Grande, 150km south of Rio. It was a 2 hour bus transfer then just a little over an hour on a boat to the island. There are no cars, no banks, just sandy streets winding their way around the small village of Abraao.
We had booked our hotel online (booking.com) the day before and got off the boat at dusk and walked the streets (to be fair, there are only about 5 streets) looking for the place - Riacho dos Camsouras. It was right at the back of the village, down a sandy path, as the village meets the jungle. Wooden rooms, just 8 of them, with hammocks just outside each of them. Very tranquil.
We woke to the sound of a bird tweeting, which was nice..for a while, lucky we booked the ear-plugs. C'mon, it was 6am! The breakfast was amazing, Angel commented that Ewan should have been there to help him eat all the cake, yes cake, for breakfast! Amazing.

Lopes Mendes

We had decided that we would do the 2.5 hour each way hike to Lopes Mendes, a beach only accessible by foot. It was a pretty strenuous hike - well, we thought so, though people were doing it in flip flops (thongs to the Aussies), we had our hiking shoes on and to be honest it was pretty hard going, through jungle and in the heat. This is Angel - dripping with sweat. Ellen muttered under her breath several times 'this beach had better be amazing!).

Hot hot hot!

It was a pretty awesome walk, 4 mountains (hills?) and past 3 beaches before we hit Lopes Mendes. Which when we got there at 11am was quite deserted, and by the time we left at 2, sunburnt, there were quite a lot of people. We decided to walk the 2.5 hours back again. Felt longer than on the way, but we did it.
We then ate a huge pizza. We deserved it. Plus the island had a black out and we had to find a restaurant with a generator, which the pizza place had. Power finally came on at 10.30.

Today we caught a boat back to the mainland then a bus to Paraty. Where we are tonight. In a hostel. With young folk literally running down the corridors. We feel old. Sao Paulo tomorrow, bus tickets booked for 8.30am.

A little sunshine in Rio

Just chillin' with Jesus

So it finally stopped raining.

We had already bought our tickets to Christ the Redeemerfor 10.30 today in hope. 

We tried to catch the bus there, but firstly could not find the bus stop, then when we did find one the bus would not stop, so we hailed a taxi. 

Bonuses of the weather - there wasn't 2 hour (as expected) wait to get on the train to the statue. Just about 15 of us. Brilliant. So it wasn't crowded at the top and we took some photos, would have even better with sunshine.

We then decided we'd take the bus to the main bus station to buy tickets to Ilha Grande tomorrow. Got stuck on the bus for over an hour in Rio's finest traffic, the driver and money taker (2 bus people on busses here) were great, had translation problems but we managed just fine, people are ally friendly here. We finally got to the bus depot, which by the way is right a beside a favela, is a building site and one of the most confusing places we have ever been. After spending 30 mins here and not finding a bus to where we need to go tomorrow, we jumped on a bus back to Ipanema only to again get stuck in traffic for 2 hours. And during this time the sun came out. (A note here; travel during the World Cup and olympics is going to be horrible if you are coming! They said London was not ready!!!!)

Finally getting back to the hotel we booked a transfer to Ilha Grande with reception, R90 each (50% more than the bus would have cost...if we found it, but this takes us to and onto the ferry and saves us cab fare back to the station. So justified..)

Ipanema Beach

We then dumped our day stuff and just took money and our camera to Ipanema beach to watch the sunset, but clouds came over again. It was still lovely, we sat watching the kids play football and volleyball on the beach, surfers doing their thing and just general people watching. On the way to the beach we stopped at Mil Fruitas, our guidebook told us it was the best ice cream in all of Brazil. It was tasty but at R18 (£5) for 2 scoops it had want to be! 

Walked the 2 blocks back to the hotel after eating some local food for dinner - fried cheese thing (pastal) and bought some snacks for the bus tomorrow. 

Tomorrow looks to be very sunny and hot. 

Raining in Rio

Escardia de Selaron

We arrived into Rio under dark, rainy skies.  According to Angel, the flight was scary and he was quite panicked (a note here: Angel hates flying, he says it's a necessary evil). Immigration was quite slow, but we made it into the country just fine.

We'd asked the hostel to book us a taxi so there was a bloke waiting for us with a sign, probably the best thing we have done so far.

The city is huge, the driver told us there are 6 million people in Rio, he pointed out Christ the Redeemer  to us as we drove towards Copacabana and through the tunnel under the statues mountain. His English was not great, but as our Portuguese is pretty much non-existent we spoke in broken sentences, nice bloke. 

This is pretty much the most expensive place we will stay in on our journey, it's £72 a night and very basic, but has air conditioning and private bathroom. It's called Bonita Ipanema, and we're just 2 blocks from Ipanema beach.

Our first day we woke up to grey rainy skies again, a bit disappointed but we did not let that stop us.  We walked from our hotel to the beach then walked along the beach and around to Copacabana beach and along it to the metro. (Unfortunately the metro station 2 mins from our hotel is closed, so it is about an hours walk to the next one). 

We then caught a bus to Santa Teresa and wandered in the rain along the cobbled streets to find the top of the Escardia de Selaron, and walked down the beautifully tiled steps (the pic here is us on them) unfortunately it was pissing it with rain and they were slippery, Ellen fell down them, twice. To be fair it would not be a holiday without Ellen hurting herself on the first day! 

Pizza and toasted sandwiches for lunch at Ernesto's near Lapa, and headed back to Copacabana beach to walk back to Ipanema. Loads of walking today. 

Booked tickets to go up the 'cog train' to Cristo Redentor at 10.20 tomorrow.

Now, to plan which city we head to next....