“Flecha Bus es la posta” a.k.a “Travelling within Argentina”

Here’s a fun fact: Aerolineas Argentinas charges twice as much, and sometimes more, for tickets to travel within Argentina to non-residents. Having lived here my whole life, and being the proud owner of a DNI, I had never heard about that. I think it’s bullshit, like getting charged more on the ‘Tren de la costa’ because you have ‘cara de extranjero’, but anyways, I’m here to propose another method of getting around this huge country: omnibus!

    Back in the UK, travelling around there on a bus is a nasty business: the seats are uncomfortable and falling apart and sometimes you get old grannies sitting next to you who smell like old cabbage and cat piss. I’ve heard many horror stories involving the bus system in the UK, and it seems to be the same in the USA, according to my American coworkers, but fortunately the local, third-world version of the ‘omnibus’ is kind of great. Prices vary according to where you want to go and how you want to travel of course, but if you don’t mind paying a bit more and travelling pimp-style, go for first class, which is ‘servicio suite’, which comes with huge, fully reclinable seats, plasma screens, a mini bar and air-con. If you’re a student, or a just plain cheap, you can go for the less luxurious classes like ‘servicio cama’ and finally the ‘servicio semi cama’, which is the one the peasants take, but is really cheap. It wouldn’t be exactly comfortable, but at least you don’t get grannies with soiled diapers blabbing about their fat grandchildren to you, which I think is the stuff of nightmares as you might have guessed.
    The other day in ‘La Nación’ newspaper, as I was trolling about looking for a story to plagiarize, I found an interesting piece that is relevant to this subject: Aerolineas plane tickets have gone up by 15% due to a resolution by the Ministry of Tourism, since the cheapest tickets were starting to rival, in terms of cheapness, the prices of the ‘coche cama’. Don’t get your hopes up at the idea of cheap plane tickets though; remember this is only for those VIP enough to have a DNI Argentino. Ah, the sounds of dreams being crushed into dust, always music to my ears. But yeah, investment in the ‘omnibus’ department hasn’t been good the last two years, so the government is trying to get more people on the buses.
    One of my coworkers took the ‘semi cama’ to Mendoza this weekend, and she says that even though she froze her ass off because they turned off the heating at night, and that she almost starved (she’s a vegetarian, and in this country a vegetarian meal is a ham and cheese sandwich), she did get her money’s worth. And it wasn’t a lot of money, since she decided to slum it by going ‘semi cama’. So if you want cheap, but kind of uncomfortable, travel go ‘semi cama’. If you’re bourgeois go ‘servicio cama’, and if you’re awesome go ‘servicio suite’.
    To the ‘campesinos’ and ‘campesinas’
    El Pendejo Porteño
PS: for more information on prices and stuff go to www.omnilineas.com.ar
PS2: I have just found out that there’s a lower class to ‘semi-cama’ which is ‘com·n c/aire’, and even worse than that is ‘com·n’, which I’m guessing doesn’t even have air-con. Shudder.