Today is a long bus day, as we are taking the 08:30 bus from
Mendoza to Cordoba. This is an 11 hour
journey, because it stops everywhere along the way. This is the price to pay for taking the
daytime journey, most of the time slots were night time express busses
(although still 9 hours, which actually is too short to sleep properly because
there will be a movie and some sort of meal in the way). The bus station in Mendoza is like a lot of
the Argentinian bus stations, bigger than the local airport, and provisioned
with more services. The terminal is like
a shopping centre, with pretty much everything you need for a trip, and loads
of stuff you don’t need, available in all the shops.
Once we get on the way it is the usual combination of sleeping, eating dulche de leche biscuits, and bad movies. The only difference today is that we are stopping everywhere, which can be a problem for sleeping and watching movies (with all the people getting on and off). It also means that the driver has a timetable to keep, which means that despite the fact we are on a very good motorway road, he isn’t doing top speed. It is a little frustrating, knowing you could be getting there faster.
The day actually passes fairly fast, we got one half decent movie, Cowboys vs. Aliens, which the nuns in front of us slept through, thereby proving for Father Ted fans that Argentinian nuns at least don’t like scifi. The countryside outside the window was as flat and featureless as ever, the only difference being that now we were in proper farmland, with arable land growing all sorts of crops, not just having cows roaming over scrubland.
When we got to Cordoba with its equally airport sized bus station, we walked to our hotel and dumped our bags. Not wanting to wander around too much in the dark we asked the reception for a restaurant recommendation nearby and went to an Italian restaurant two blocks away where we ordered food that was far too much for us (only two dishes and a salad, but they do eat big here). After dinner we went back to our room, and having TV for the first time in a while, watched a brand new subtitled Law and Order SVU before crashing out.
Once we get on the way it is the usual combination of sleeping, eating dulche de leche biscuits, and bad movies. The only difference today is that we are stopping everywhere, which can be a problem for sleeping and watching movies (with all the people getting on and off). It also means that the driver has a timetable to keep, which means that despite the fact we are on a very good motorway road, he isn’t doing top speed. It is a little frustrating, knowing you could be getting there faster.
The day actually passes fairly fast, we got one half decent movie, Cowboys vs. Aliens, which the nuns in front of us slept through, thereby proving for Father Ted fans that Argentinian nuns at least don’t like scifi. The countryside outside the window was as flat and featureless as ever, the only difference being that now we were in proper farmland, with arable land growing all sorts of crops, not just having cows roaming over scrubland.
When we got to Cordoba with its equally airport sized bus station, we walked to our hotel and dumped our bags. Not wanting to wander around too much in the dark we asked the reception for a restaurant recommendation nearby and went to an Italian restaurant two blocks away where we ordered food that was far too much for us (only two dishes and a salad, but they do eat big here). After dinner we went back to our room, and having TV for the first time in a while, watched a brand new subtitled Law and Order SVU before crashing out.
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