Public transport in Argentina and Chile

Some of you have asked me to write a little bit about the things in between the exciting travel adventures. Therefore, today’s blog is about the public transport we’ve experienced so far.

Getting on public transport anywhere can get interesting, in South America public transport doesn’t disappoint in terms of being eventful and reasonably reliable. Whether it is buses or trains, in most locations public transport comes very frequently. Usually transport arrives at least every 30 minutes, on some routes, as often as every three or four minutes.

Some interesting things I noticed about public transport in Argentina

Our first experience with public transport were the buses in Buenos Aires. Once we finally figured out how and where to get a travel card from, which is the only way to pay for the bus. We became quite quickly adapted to literally jumping on and off a bus, because stopping for long – let’s say that is a foreign concept. In the early days of our travels, my Mum wanted to get off, but the bus didn’t stop where we expected, so she stated loudly “Exito” hoping it would mean ‘exit’. Exito however means ‘success’ people on the bus must have been wondering what her success was all about!

On one of our rides the bus stopped unexpectedly as it had mechanical problems, and we had to figure out how to join another bus. Our Spanish teacher shrugged and said, well now you know how true Buenos Aires buses work…not all of the time.

In Buenos Aires you have people sell things on the train – they put the item they want to sell on your lap in the hope you’ll consider buying it. Then they loop around the whole train carriage placing items on all the other passengers’ laps too. If you don’t want to buy it, you sit still, and they pick it up again after they’ve done their loop, then they go to the next carriage.

Public transport in Chile

In Valparaiso, Chile, the trains are also very interesting. There are people selling goods: water, snacks, medicine or IT related products. These people are loud and basically tell you throughout the train carriage what they are selling “tres por mil” – ‘three items for a 1000 Chilean Pesos’! Besides these sellers, there are also people who are preforming songs, comedic sketches or a dance, in the hope you give them some money. The people who perform pick a time on the train that they can perform for 5 or 10 minutes without stops. They can sing with full soundtrack from the speakers or keyboard which they lug with them, some do elaborate comedic skits (in very fast Spanish) or my Mum’s favourite – a lady doing the handstand and rap dancing to “honkey bedonkey” blaring from the speakers.

This might sound exciting, but then there was the train ride after we spent the day with Megan at her school which tops them all. Once we got on that train, this guy that looked a little bit like a junky and was most likely on some drugs boarded the train. That’s not incredibly unusual for public transport in any country. What was funny about this particular train trip was that this guy started chanting really loudly – not great singing but he slowly developed a rhythm. Slowly at first the whole carriage (who had been trying to ignore him) started laughing one-by-one, until eventually everyone on the train was laughing with tears in their eyes because it was so funny. Of course, you couldn't contain yourself because as soon as you looked at someone else in the carriage you would start laughing again. There is no such thing as a quiet carriage in South America as far as I have seen.

In Chile, we learnt early on adapting to and getting on a ‘Microbus’ after receiving tuition from our friend, Freddy. These are small buses (similar in size to a Coaster) that are cash-only. They are driven at crazy speeds, stop even less time than the buses in Buenos Aires to get on or off, and the whole vibe is eclectic. Every bus driver can decorate their own microbus and they get paid on the amount of people they take onboard as well as their speed during the day (hence the crazy driving) The funniest microbus ride we have had was when we left Megan and Caro one day, the bus driver played loud Metallica, drove like a lunatic while playing on his phone. A friend of his was shouting out the window at every bus stop to try to get more passengers on the bus. Another dude was laying across the dashboard of the bus – if the bus would have stopped fast, he would have flown out through the windscreen. That was a bus ride in which, we nearly got travel sick on the 30-minute ride.

One thing that we definitely do not have in Australia is people who stand on the side of the road and keep track of all the buses writing down details in a small notebook. A “bus snitcher” as they are colloquially called in Valparaiso, this is a person who knows how many minutes there are between each bus, and they are the ones who know if a bus is running late. What is interesting is that this is not the bus company’s employee. These are people who invented this job for themselves. They get their money from the bus drivers whom they tell if they are on-time, late, or even too early and if they should skip a bus stop if possible, to make up for lost time – or to slow down because if they are too close to the bus in front of them, this reduces the chance of being able to pick up fare-paying passengers waiting for this next bus to arrive. The bus snitchers get paid by the drivers and also get a little bit of money from the people at the bus stop if they want to information on when the next bus is expected to arrive (they are a living / human timetable).

Another odd concept we noticed is that the bus drivers are friends with some of the street vendors and get them to give them food while on the job. They just beep there horn as they approach the vendor’s stand while driving down the street – the vendor will run over and pass them their food or snacks through the door as the driver makes an unscheduled stop.

In the last blog, I wrote about ‘colectivos’, which are a sort of alternative to organised Uber rideshares or taxis. Please look back at that blog for this alternate form of public transport.  

Something which is very unique to Valparaiso specific are the ‘accensors’, the best way to explain it is as ‘lift boxes, with windows’ that go up steep hills sides. Accensors (Spanish for lift or elevator) are really cool to go on in Valpo and cost the equivalent of 16 Australian cents per ride – cash-only . I have written about accessors in one of my previous blogs on Valparaiso, ‘a city of art, colour and lovely people’ if you are interested, feel free to click on the link. Accessors are very uncommon globally and are a symbol of Valparaiso. Lots of tourist merchandise for Valparaiso have the accessors or the trolly buses on it (I will tell you about trolly buses a little later). An interesting thing is that there are 30 ascensors in this city but only 16 of them remain operational. This is because they are very old and the people who maintain them are unable to find replacement parts because they aren’t being manufactured any more.

Valparaiso is also very famous for its trolly buses, although we did not get an opportunity to ride one, we definitely saw them zipping around town. They started operation in the city in 1952 and has been Chile's only operational trolley bus system. They are electrically powered buses that draw their power from electrical lines above them (a bit like a Melbourne tram), but the drivers must take care to stay directly under their power lines and not veer off course, or the result could be very untidy!

I hope you found this an interesting and entertaining blog on public transport.

Get excited for the next blog where we arrive in the Atacama Desert. I will do a whole little series on the Atacama and things that we did there. Coming soon…...