Adios BsAs y buses buses buses

Sunday was actually our last day in BsAs. Got up in time for check out then went back to the market to buy the beautiful dress we'd reserved the previous day, had to wait awhile but saw some people shooting a cheesy as commercial in the meantime! Then it was off in a bid to start our mammoth trek to peru in as little time as possible. Caught the real train to retiro so think we covered all forms of public transportation in BA - train's even cheaper than the subway (70 centavos), less destinations tho and pretty minimalistic. Saw the slum area for the first time from the train, crazy. Next challenge was to find a bus to Santiago or Arica out of over 200 different cashier desks (good thing we went to the info desk first!) Managed to get one leaving that afternoon (4pm sunday) to Santiago after 2 no goes then battled to get out some cash to pay for it - atm's suck. Hung around til departure time, went thru the pretty hard out customs type thing just to get on the bus then we were off! For the next 5 hours the view was flat flat flat with the occasional little farm house and truck stop type things. I was sat right down the back next to Gustavo's "office", jon was a couple of seats ahead of me. Gustavo was the lovely young chilean guy running the show - making everyone sweet tea and coffee, handing out the little bags of goodies, pillows, blankets, chivalry and comedy (if you understood it). He spoke only a few words of english and decided he was gonna teach me spanish, but for the most part he spoke way too fast so i didn't learn that much! Was fun trying tho. Him and the older guy working had fun teasing jon and i i think, saying that jon couldn't be without me and watch out gustavo is gonna steal me away or some such! Stopped at a little cafeteria in the middle of nowhere for chicken and chips with crackers and some delicious green mayo dip, best part (included in the bus fare). Jon got to come sit in the "office" seat overnight, slept ok, and woke up to find ourselves in the Andes! beautiful. Then an intense Chilean border crossing (especially compared with getting into argentina at the airport) and another few hours of spectacular scenery until we arrived in Santiago about 1pm monday. Then some stress trying to figure out which bus we'd take to Arica, took the one leaving in just a couple of hours then went and found some lunch from the most gigantic supermarket i've ever been in, then more stress trying to find where our bus departed from! We were in the right place as it turned out, bus was 20 mins late (conveniently their clock said it was 4 when we left) so we were pretty worried (read: panicked!). Took our places on the second level of the double decker, this time across the aisle from each other. No paper bag of treats this time unfortunately but a guy jumped on selling dulce de leche pastries so inadvertently spent our coins on a selection of those which was just as well cos that turned out to be dinner (no quaint cafeteria this time). We were able to sit in the free seats in front of us until about 11 that night. Watched as the landscape change from green rolling hills with andes in the background to total desert, bizarre and unexpected. Caught a glimpse of the pacific ocean from the other side. Caught some zzzz's. Watched a few movies (quiet english, english subtitles or dubbed spanish trying to guess the storyline) and marvelled at the crazy scenery, inscriptions on the hills and few uninhabitable looking desert towns til we rolled into arica (along roads much worse looking than the one up to Dobson mum!) at around 8.30pm on tuesday, very happy to get off the bus and to find a real bed and real food that wasn't just sugar! (for breakfast and lunch we were given sponge cake, sweet juice, a lolly and peanuts pretty much). Made our way to Sunny Days = heaven! Tune in next time for "ARICA" (if you survived this post. i'd recommend skimming if you didn't already, or in summary: loooong time on buses, 2797km as the crow flies)