How to get from Chalten to Bariloche: the 30 hour bus ride

In South America, it’s not really feasible to fly from place to place.  There isn’t enough demand for daily routes, and service is notoriously poor.  Instead, there is a well-developed system of buses.  But make no mistake – these buses aren’t greyhound.  Many are new, with comfy seats that recline like first class on an airplane, and LCD TVs showing (ripped) DVDs of late-run movies.  In fact, the main issue with traveling by bus through South America is choosing which company to use, and which route to choose.

This is the dilemma we faced when traveling from El Chaltén to Bariloche.  Bariloche is more or less directly North of Chaltén, and there is a road that runs along the Andes from one city to the other – the famous Ruta 40 (which traverses all of Argentina from South to North).  The problem with Ruta 40 is that it’s un-paved in rural areas, which is to say the majority of the trip from Chaltén to Bariloche.  Because of this, the going is slow, and the buses used to drive the route are generally of lower quality (‘semi-cama’ is all that’s available – like a glorified economy airline seat).  There is also no direct bus.  Instead, companies run ‘Ruta 40 Tours’, which means a 2-day excursion, 10-11 hours of driving per day (around 36 hours start to finish), with an overnight stay in a crappy hostel in a sleepy mid-way town.  This ‘excursion’ appeared to be marketed primarily to young backpackers as an adventure.  It sounded to us like bumpy, uncomfortable torture.

So instead we elected to take the circuitous route, which meant a transfer to El Calafate (3 hours on a nice bus), followed by a 28-hour ride to Bariloche that followed the main paved Argentine thoroughfares.  The route was pretty ridiculous – we headed East across the steppe (gorgeous horizon-to-horizon views of the sunset) to the Atlantic ocean, then up the coast a ways, and finally cutting back West through Esquel and El Bolson (which, by the way, appeared to be lovely cities) and back on to (now paved) Ruta 40 to Bariloche.

We booked cama-class seats with Taqsa, which included 3 served meals as well (which actually weren’t bad).  Kristen and I both got over 9 hours of decent sleep, and they showed good movies – like Gran Torino and Doubt.  Were we a little fatigued by the end of the ride?  Sure.  But in all, we were pleasantly surprised at how easy our trip was.