Buses are the backbone oft he South American public transport system. You can practically reach every place, providing that you have time and do not require a certain comfort level.
When taking the bus or public transport in general you cannot be shy. Obviously they think that signs or other information are redundant, therefore the only way to find your way is to ask around. The helpfulness of the people does easily equalize the missing signs. When the person you ask does not know the answer, he or she starts to involve the crowd around you until they have the answer together. Good thing to practice your language skills.
So far we only rode in Brazil and Uruguay, where they have pretty good long-distance buses. The more adventures rides will come in Bolivia and maybe Peru, but the more adventures the more stories to tell…
Cuiaba to Foz de Iguaçu OR the loooong Ride
Since plane tickets were pretty expensive and we knew that the buses are good, we decided to start with a big ride; 26 hours for approximately 1500km.
When you reserve your ticket you always get a seat assigned, so you never have to worry about standing for 20 hours. The seats of the Brazilian long distance buses are like business class seats. So it is really easy to chill for quite a while. Also there is a board toilet and a fridge with free water. The whole thing is amazingly organized and safe, you have to bring your luggage and they put a number sticker on it, you get the other half so that only you can get your luggage at your destination.
Half an hour after entering the bus, which was coming from a city 1000km north of Cuiaba, the small girl next to us started to puke in the gangway. Seems she was motion sick and the parents fed her in between the regular puking with chips and soda, yeahhh. Soon after that we got into a traffic jam and were stuck for about 3 hours, but the bus was cool and our iPhone fully charged.
For the meals the bus stopped at restaurants, so that everybody could eat and got to the toilet. According to Michi the board toilet (which people used as if the whole bus had prostate issues) was a 7 out of 10 at the ugliness rating. I decided not to use the board toilet and tried to time the drinking with the food stops, needless to say that I nearly dehydrated myself with this clever strategy.
On our way we checked our ticket, which Joel from the Pousada bought for us, and discovered that our destination was not Foz de Iguaçu but Cascavel, 150km away. Well bad luck, looking at the 1500km trip, 150km away is nearly there.
After 29 hours we arrived in Cascavel and a steward asked everybody disembarking where he needs to go. After a look at us, obviously tourists, and his list he said: “Michael and Sonam, Foz de Iguaçu?”. Miracles of the Brazilian system, they had us on the list and we only had to wait more 2 hours before we got new tickets and could enter the next bus!
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