April 25, 2010
Salta – Tucuman – Mendoza – Buenos Aires
Almirante Brown Cama/Flecha Bus Suite Premium/CATA Royal Suite
3:00pm – 7:00am+2
I don’t have to report back to work until May 10th, so I could easily spend another week down here in Argentina. At the same time, I’ve been on the road since March 1st and I’d like to have a week down in the Desert Southwest before returning to Alaska. So – it’s back to the good ol’ USA for me but first I’ve got to get down to Buenos Aires.
Now I could just hop a direct bus from Salta but, just as I like to fly upon different airlines to experience and appreciate the differences in product and service on each one, the same holds true with Argentina’s bus companies. Is Flecha Bus better than CATA or PlusMar or Andesmar? And what about Via Bariloche’s Tutto Letto Classe? These are the questions that keep me occupied in the planning stages of a trip like this, and of course there’s only one way to answer them.
There are a lot of bus companies I haven’t yet ridden that offer the 150° recline and service of Coche Cama, but for the long overnight segments I want the best product available – the full 180° recline and complete meal and beverage service of a Suite bus. Because I wanted to travel via Mendoza, that limited my choices a bit. Still, a little research yielded the following itinerary:
Salta to Tucuman: Almirante Brown
Coche Cama 3:00pm – 7:00pm
Tucuman to Mendoza: Flecha Bus
Suite Premium 9:00pm – 10:10am
Mendoza to Buenos Aires: CATA Internacional
Royal Suite 5:15pm – 7:00am
Andesmar operated a 3:00pm suite bus from Salta direct to Mendoza but it was sold out so I was forced to route via Tucuman where Flecha Bus had a suite departure at 9:00pm. This was no big deal since even the Andesmar bus would have to go through Tucuman anyway. Everything up in this part of Argentina goes through Tucuman eventually.
I added one new company by utilizing Almirante Brown’s 3:00pm Coche Cama service to Tucuman. Unfortunately, the timing of the short four hour ride was such that all I got to experience was the wide spacious seat and a snack consisting of the ever popular pastry and cookies.
Tucuman is a fairly large city and its bus terminal is more like an enclosed shopping mall than a bus depot. Modern, well lit stores and restaurants surround the centerpiece attraction – a casino. C’mon honey – let’s go down to the bus station for a little dinner and a good time tonight! Only in Tucuman.
A nice looking restaurant offered a complete chicken or steak dinner for only about $7.00 USD but I limited myself to a liter of beer in anticipation of the bus meal – how many other reporters would pass up a juicy Argentinian steak just to bring you a firsthand account of their bus meal?
When my big, beautiful Flecha Bus adorned with the colorful Suite Premium livery pulled up, I quickly checked my pack, headed upstairs to the upper level and settled back into the soft, cool leather of my single suite. We had a full load down to Mendoza this evening and the driver wasted no time in pulling out right at 9:00pm on the dot.
Flecha Bus Suite Premium Livery
For some reason the dinner we were served out of Tucuman was nowhere near as extravagant as the meal I received traveling from BA up to Jujuy. Just as airlines will often serve a nicer meal on longer flights, perhaps the shorter distance between Tucuman and Mendoza resulted in a smaller meal. It was still pretty good though and definitely better than anything you’d receive on a domestic airline serving this route. To wit, we were first presented with a tray bearing a lot of bread in the form of a slice of pizza, a package of Melba Toast and a dinner roll. Also included was a container of flan – the official dessert of Argentina’s bus companies, if not Argentina. To those of you unfamiliar with flan, it is essentially the Spanish version of custard. The main course was a very tasty dish of roast beef and mushrooms with potatoes au gratin. A glass of red wine accompanied the meal after which I limited myself to just a sip of the sickly sweet “Champagne”.
Roast beef and Mushrooms Dinner – TUC-MDZ
I got a kick out of our bus attendant. Like a lot of bus attendants in Argentina, he was a young guy just working a job. That is to say that he definitely did not display any of the skills you’d expect from a waiter in even a mediocre restaurant. But hey – it’s a bus, not a restaurant. Yeah, but still… I mean, the service went kind of like this:
“You want dinner?”
“Sure”
“Put your tray out.”
“Okay”
“What do you want to drink?”
“Uh… some wine I guess”
Pours a glass of red wine (It’s all he brought) but what the heck – wine is wine, no?
The after dinner movie was some US high school based comedy so I got through a hundred pages or so of my latest cheesy paperback thriller before drifting off to sleep. These bus suites sure are nice when fully reclined. Though not as nice as a First Class suite with mattress on Cathay Pacific, they’re unquestionably better than any lie flat Business Class seat I’ve ever attempted to sleep in.
I always sleep surprisingly well in these bus suites, evidenced this morning by my sleeping in until 8:00am. I skipped the usual sugary breakfast offering, preferring instead to take my chances in the Mendoza bus terminal. After checking my pack in the baggage storage facility, I decided to skip breakfast in favor of a cup of coffee and some Internet time before catching a taxi into the central business district.
Mendoza sure is a pretty city, especially for all the trees that are planted along the city streets. I took my laptop to a computer repair place I’d looked up and got a couple of screws replaced just before they closed for the day – er – I mean lunch. Well, it sure seemed like the day because they closed at 12:30pm and wouldn’t reopen until 4:30pm. For a country trying to emerge from a severe economic crisis, I’m pretty sure that 4 hour lunches will not contribute towards hastening the recovery.
I managed to get through lunch in just under an hour before returning to the bus terminal to await my 5:15pm departure with an ice cold liter bottle of Andes Beer. I fired off six postcards, then reclaimed my pack and headed out to platform 56 to check out the big black Mercedes powered Starbus that would take us across Argentina to Buenos Aires.
I picked CATA International for the 14 hour trip into Buenos Aires because its Royal Suite looked to offer the most amenities of any of the four bus lines offering suite service. The bus certainly looked attractive, especially the Royal Suite printed in stylized letters below the lower cabin windows.
CATA Internacional Mercedes Bus
CATA offers six Royal Suites arranged in two rows of 1-2 seating in the downstairs cabin. Upstairs were 24 Cama Ejecutivo seats. Upon entering the bus, I was immediately impressed by the stylish red and black seats, the tartan blankets and the wooden walls of the Royal Suite cabin. Drop down individually controlled TV screens were mounted above each seat while large headphones hung on hooks behind each seat. Red curtains adorned the windows as well as a large red curtain across the entryway that afforded us some privacy from the prying eyes of jealous Cama Ejecutivo passengers who’d come downstairs to use the lavatory.
Royal Suite Cabin of my CATA Internacional Bus
Royal Suite Cabin of my CATA Internacional Bus
Service started about an hour into the trip with a glass of wine followed by dinner. CATA definitely gets my vote for the best bus dinner served on this entire trip. It was way better than most airlines meals, even those served in the old days. It started with a tray bearing a serving of prosciutto and cheese on thinly sliced bread, a potato and veggie salad, a beet salad, a tortilla filled with something I never could figure out but ate anyway, a dinner roll and a packet of bread sticks. The main course was a full chicken breast and wing served with roasted potatoes and peas. Dessert was – surprise! Tapioca.
CATA Internacional Appetizer
CATA Internacional Main Course
Whiskey and a movie followed dinner but I passed on the movie in favor of chatting with a Scottish couple on delayed honeymoon from their marriage back in January. Like me they appreciated the finer things in life such as First Class bus travel in South America. Unfortunately their 12 hour flight back to London the next day was booked in steerage.