A philosopher once wrote "It's not the destination that matters,
it the journey." Bullshit. He obviously never spent much time
traveling South America by bus.

The theory of simply sitting on a bus for (usually) between 8 and
15 hours is bad enough. The real life implementation is much much
worse.

Forrest Gump's famous line -- "Life is like a box of chocolates;
you never know what you're gonna get."

My take: "Traveling by bus in South America is like a flaming
paper bag appearing on your doorstep; you never know what you're
gonna get, but you can be damned sure that you ain't gonna like
it."

The first step of the process involves the bus terminal lottery.
Most towns have a central terminal for all bus traffic. These
places are best described as a modern day Bedlam (an old insane
asylum from which our modern day word 'bedlam' describing chaos
is descended). Kids screaming, pickpockets picking, beggars
begging, large groups of listless apathetic people, and just
plain general confusion.

The traveler must fight his (or her) way through the madness,
from ticket counter to ticket counter, trying to find a company
that goes to the destination of choice. This part usually isn't
so bad, but once you've bought your ticket (and before you board
the bus), you must hand over your bag(s) and hope that they don't
get stolen before the bus leaves.

This, of course, assumes that you are at the terminal at a time
somewhat close to when your bus leaves. The worst is when you
have to check out your hotel early in the morning (to avoid
paying for another day) and spend all day in town, killing time
while you wait for your night bus (we'll get to those later).
This is especially bad when you are only in a certain town
for one particular sight and you've already seen it.

Anyhow, assuming you have actually boarded the bus and that your
luggage hasn't been stolen, the only thing left to do is to
settle in for the next 8to 15 hours and enjoy the ride.

Ha! Hahahahahahahhahahahaha! Excuse me while I wipe the tears
away (dual tears from amusement that one could be so naive as to
believe such a statement, and from depression of reality).

First off, the buses are designed for maximum capacity. I doubt
the Bolivians even have a word for "comfort". I'm about the
height of an average Bolivian (read: short) and even my knees are
jammed up constantly against the next seat.

Also, the picture of the bus at the ticket counter that you were
shown usually has no bearing on reality. Invariably, the picture
shows extremely modern looking cush-mobiles. In real life, the
bus is from the 1970s, with ratty old seats that don't go back
far enough to be comfortable, but far back enough to extremely
bother the person in back of you.

The lack of padding is a terrible liability as paved roads are a
decadent luxury reserved for capitalist North American pigs. Not
only are the bumps and potholes tooth-jarring, but the dust that
gets kicked up and drifts inside is enough to give you miner's
lungs.

If you have a bus that travels during the day (and not many do),
then all you have to worry about are the aforementioned
chronically uncomfortable seats, the terrible smells of
non-hygienic peasants (and their strange moving dripping chirping
squeaking burlap bags they call luggage), and the overcrowding.
Often, after a bus has started on its way to the destination, it
will stop many times and pick up extra (unticketed) passengers to
try and make some extra money. Not only does this make the trip
much much slower, but the only space for the extra passengers is
in the aisle, where people stand, sit, lie down, and form small
civilizations.

Another fun thing to deal with is the shysters and charlatans who
board the bus and spend half an hour to 45 minutes giving a sales
pitch about some special health powder or skin ointment that will
cure bad breath, gout, dysentery, indigestion, cancer, and
excessive flatulence.

If the bus breaks (very common) and they can't fix it (not as
common), too bad. You're out of luck, and don't even think about
getting a refund.

At night, you get to deal with all of the above while you
ostensibly try and sleep. Of course, for the first couple hours,
sleep is impossible, as inevitably, a poorly dubbed (in Spanish)
Jackie Chan flick is blaring at full volume over the loudspeakers
with the actual movie playing on tiny screens miles away and
suffering from terrible tracking problems.

Hopefully, you've brought along your sleeping bag and some warm
clothes because there definitely is no heating system (other than
the rank fetid humid bodyheat of too many humans crammed into a
small space, breathing and sweating on each other).

One doesn't sleep on these night buses so much as one flits in
and out of unconsciousness.

Upon arrival at the destination, usually at 5 or 6 in the
morning, groggy and disoriented, you have to fend off a billion
cab drivers screaming at you to use their services and choose one
to take you to a new hotel. Luckily, they haven't heard of
checkin times yet in this continent, and so you can get a few
hours sleep before heading out into town without having to pay
for an extra night's stay.

After a day or two, the cycle begins all over again.

/Alex, writing this, bored out of his skull since he had to check
out of his hotel this morning at 10 and his bus doesn't leave
until 7 pm (and he's seen all that there is to see in the town of
Potosi, Bolivia)