Coach from hell – 16 April 2009

We woke up very early at 5:30am and got ready to go to the coach terminal. We had no other option of travel as the flights or private hire was just too expensive so we decided to go by coach up to Bucaramanga from Bogota to my gatita’s city for her sisters fifteenth birthday on the 18th. We try to book with the company Brazilia as it is apparently better but they are unavailable, the best firm aptly called Concorde is also unavailable so we book with Copetran instead. The tickets cost us around £15 each and considering it’s a 6 plus hour trip that’s quite cheap I thought.

Anyways we buy a few goodies and head for the coach, once inside its quickly apparent its not one of the newest buses but the seats are incredibly comfortable.

One interesting thing is that we received a ticket for the suitcase which I have never recalled getting one when on a coach in Spain. Which of course is a good thing as your suitcase is not handed over to a complete stranger during any stops or pickups along the way. Much the same as you get on a flight.

After watching a movie provided by the coach we suddenly make a stop and a soldier gets on the coach and calls out all the men out of the coach for a check. My gatita tells me this is quite normal so I don’t get worried and I step out with my hand luggage and get inspected. At first I had no clue what the soldier was on about as he kept using the word a “requisia” and I kept giving him my bag for inspection. I did catch on eventually so dropped the bag on the floor and I spread them jejejeje he checked me out and let me go back to the coach.

Back on track and after watching our second movie we had our official lunch stop.

After this was when things started to go wrong, some fella complained about the aircon and that it was too cold so they took it off. This was now close to 6 hours in and it was very apparent the trip was not 6 hours as they put on yet another movie so I thought well 7 ½ hours. Slightly longer, no probs. How wrong was I!!!

Fatigue set in and I felt really bad but started joking with my gatita that it was starting to look like the bus from hell including nuns, the annoying kid in front of us, the crazy old lady and mountains, mountains & more mountains like hilly billy’s. The only thing missing was the dodgy passenger and some goats or chickens in the coach jejeje.

For those interested in putting it into perspective think of Ronda in Spain and multiply it by 40 and that still is a short estimate of the number of turns we took left right left right left right. Colombia, because of its mountains has not been able to get any roads in a straight line in difference to the Romans.

Anyways we eventually got there after 10 hours (it was meant to be closer to six hours), what a nightmare, I am sure the coach drivers stopped at every single city along the way! As soon as we stepped out of the coach the climate change was apparent and the heat was much closer to a full blown summer day in Seville at 30 plus degrees (at least it seemed like that). Considering the last 15 days in Bogota with an average temperature of 10 to 17 degrees it was quite a shock.