Desperate times call for desperate measures!


Okay, so when I got to the bus station in Salta, it was midnight and I found out the next buses departed at six a.m. I`m pinching pennies like crazy… I`m nearly out of travel cash, and I cringed at the thought of paying for a night at a hostel when I wouldn`t even be in the building for longer than five hours. Then it  occurred  to me that I could just stay at the bus station! So I did. It was an interesting night spend among all of the people who can`t afford a place to sleep. Definitely eye opening. I`d do it again, even though I had to fight to stay awake (and not miss my bus!) towards the end.

I was about to board a 27 hour bus to Puerto Iguazu on the NE tip of Argentina. The trip was divided into two tickets, but the man at the ticket counter assured me it would be the same bus the whole time. When the bus rolled in, I was NOT happy about that last detail. I was travelling with a nice and fairly expensive company… the only one that sold tickets all the way to Iguazu… but the bus must have been the first one they ever purchased. It`s not so much the lack of frills, but just that I had consoled myself when handing over the absurd fare by thinking about all the little extras I was paying for. Now it was clear I wasn`t going to get them either! Ack.

I got on the bus and FINALLY went to sleep. Next time we stopped, my eyelids were so heavy I couldn`t open them if it killed me. When we stopped for our hour layover, I hung out where a bunch of teenagers were plugging quarters into the television (they have them like payphones. It`s really weird. Put in a quarter to make it go, and drop in your pennies, dimes, and nickels to keep it running. You can even channel surf, but it`s just sitting outside). To my absolute glee, when the bus pulled back into our platform after fueling, it had transformed into the Andesmar standards I was accustomed to. I breathed a sigh of relief and scurried on board for the next 23 hours.



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