The wheels on the bus go round and round all the way to Puerto Iguazu

I thought the journey to Puerto Iguazu deserved a post of its own. Unlike in the UK, coach travel is the main mode of transport for long distance trips in Argentina as the country doesn't have a developed rail system and it is usually cheaper than flying.

Given that Argentina is the 8th largest country in the world and approximately the same size as India it isn't too surprising that a short coach journey here is considered to be anything under 12 hours. 

The 17 hour journey to Puerto Iguazu in the far North East of the country near the borders of Brazil and Paraguay is actually pretty good going. The main draw for people coming to this part of Argentina is the Iguazu Falls, more on them later.

Before leaving the UK I had booked a few of my tickets online via Voy en Bus. I also read quite a lot about the main Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires, not much of it was positive. In an attempt to be as prepared as possible the day before my first coach journey I went to try and make sense of it all.

The bus station is spread over three floors with luggage lockers on the lower ground floor, departures/arrivals on the first floor and ticket sales on the upper floor. With 75 stands for the various coaches I could tell it was going to get complicated.

Some of the departures appear on a screen telling you which stand to go to, however not all coaches are shown adding another layer of confusion. There is an information booth, so I decided that I would make that my first point of call when I came to use the bus station for real. 

The evening before my scheduled departure I got chatting to a fellow Brit at the hostel and it turned out he was also leaving for Puerto Iguazu at the same time the following day. We decided to share a taxi to the bus station and agreed to leave just after 2pm to give us time before our coaches left at 3pm.

On the day of departure we left the hostel at 2.15pm, in hindsight we probably should have left at 2pm, due to heavy traffic it took us just over 30mins to get to the bus station giving us less than 10 minutes to find our respective coaches (lots of companies run the same routes and confusingly depart at the same times too).

The taxi driver dropped us off but not at the main entrance. With only a few minutes to spare and no idea which way the info booth was we checked the screens, my fellow travelling companion's bus was on the screen so he headed to the stand.

I was travelling with El Rapido Argentino and it wasn't listed but I could see a coach bearing the name of the company outside the window. Taking a punt and by this time pretty stressed I ran outside and asked the driver if it was going to Puerto Iguazu - thankfully it was and I loaded my backpack. The moral of this part of the story is to always leave plenty of time. If it hadn't have been the coach I needed I probably would have missed it.

Having now experienced an Argentinian coach I can safely say that it was definitely much comfier than any I've been on in the UK and outside of it for that matter. The seats are wide and almost armchair like. I had booked a semi-cama seat, which means the chair reclines 140 degrees and attached to the back of the seat in front is a leg rest, which folds down making it bed-like.

I had a window seat and the views were pretty incredible just vast expanses of green fields, farmland and forests for as far as the eye could see and no signs of civilisation for many miles. The towns we did pass reminded me of the sort you get in old western films with just a few buildings and a lot of dirt roads. Massive contrast to Buenos Aires.

At the 7 hour mark (10pm) we were given a meal a bit like you get on a plane except you don't have a choice. On the tray was a pastry, the flattest bread roll I have ever seen, bread sticks, a slice of ham quiche and a weird gelatinous thing, which I think was supposed to be pudding.

In addition to this, we had a hot dish, which consisted of some sort of carrot/potato mash and a breaded cutlet of generic grey meat. Needless to say I mostly ate the mash.

I must admit I slept fairly well, although the air con was cranked up so high it was freezing. Anticipating this I had packed a large sheet and wrapped myself up in it.

I woke up at about 8am and braved the on board toilet for the first time. Needless to say as with toilets on most forms of public transport it wasn't particularly pleasant!

The view out of the window had changed and was much more tropical with lush green palm trees and banana trees providing much of the scenery. This was definitely the South America I had imagined.

We were delayed slightly by a protest/strike going on across one of the main roads - a common occurrence in this part of the world I'm told. I'm not sure what it was about but there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of police and army dotted around in case things kicked off.

I arrived in Puerto Iguazu an hour later than scheduled and was blown away by how hot it was - well seeing as I'm pretty much in rainforest country I shouldn't have been too surprised by this.