This was my longest bus ride ever, and I was excited to do it just to see what these rides are like, because most Colombians travel mostly by bus. There are just about no trains other than a few local ones, and domestic air travel is expensive. It costs more to fly most places than just about any round trip you could imagine in the US, even coast to coast, and this is even worse when you consider that most flights within Colombia are an hour or two at most. The typical Colombian could never afford to get on an airplane.
Why 19 hours? Most of the populated sections of Colombia are in the Andes, which pretty much cover the entire Western part of the country. So, travelling from city to city, often you average only about 25 miles per hour.
For me to fly to Santa Marta, about 400 miles away, would have cost almost $200 one-way, and the bus ticket was the equivalent of about $50. The challenging part, though, is that it’s a 19 hour trip. Jose and I left Friday evening at 7:30 from the main terminal in Bogota, and the adventure started right away.
“Convincing” the Taxi Driver to Take Us to the Terminal
We just about couldn’t get a taxi to the terminal from my house because of the usual heavy traffic on a Friday night (it’s pretty near impossible to get a taxi between 5PM and 8PM on Friday nights, and the Friday before Semana Santa is even worse). Eventually I flagged one down, who stopped because he saw me with luggage and assumed he was getting a fare to the airport. He asked me where I was headed, and I pretended not to hear him until I had my bag in his trunk, because when he found out I wanted the bus terminal, he told me he didn’t want to go there. That’s when I started my dumb gringo act. I pretend not to understand his Spanish, and just keep repeating where I want to go (NOTE: the lack of logic here is that the fare to the bus terminal is almost the same as the fare as the airport, the bus terminal is actually closer, and the taxi will definitely pick up another fare immediately at the terminal, instead of having to wait in line at the airport). Then Jose came on the scene, and eventually we were on our way. Jose is a really friendly guy, so he engaged the driver in conversation the whole time, so that by the time we got to the terminal, the guy was glad to charge us only the going rate (he had stated before that he intended to try to charge us the airport rate).
A 19-hour Bus Ride
We left on a full bus, but had front seats and they were pretty comfortable. I had also brought tons of food and water. We were only half an hour late leaving (not bad), and I just slept and ate till we finally stopped at about 1:00AM. Then we drove overnight, and I slept pretty comfortably the whole way, so when I woke up at about 9:00 we only had an hour or so to go till the next stop. The bus driver said we lost an hour overnight due to rain, but I think that was just to make us feel better about having a 19-hour trip instead of the advertized 17-hour one. But we were in Santa Marta by 3:00 and in a taxi to Taganga 5 minutes later. All in all, not a bad trip, and quite a bit cheaper than flying on the Friday before Semana Santa.
I’m not crazy about typical Colombian food, especially the kind served in small restaurants in the country, so as long as I have enough sustenance to last me, a bus trip is a fine way to travel for me. And, buses go everywhere all the time, so it’s also pretty convenient.
A Horrible Accident
After arriving home on Friday, however, we heard that a full bus had blown a tire, crashed, and exploded on Friday morning near Santa Marta, right where we had been just that morning. The news reports emphasize that lots of the buses are unsafe because they don’t really follow safety precautions (equipment might not be in good shape), have no problems overloading, and the drivers are pretty reckless on the windy mountain roads. Twenty-seven people were killed this time, mostly being burned alive because they were trapped inside the bus.
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