I am going to be travelling tonight. I will be going 1422 km (884 miles), and I have decided to go by bus mostly for economic reasons. Buses are, even in today’s age of low cost air fare, the cheapest way to travel. But I think there might be a forgotten efficiency to traveling by bus that we might forget to take into consideration.
The bus ride will last 29 hours, which I recognize to be an absurdly long amount of time. But in that 29 hours I go from point A to point B, from city center to city center without any major hiccoughs. The bus leaves at midnight and arrives at 11 AM, no problems.
Air travel does not have these luxuries. There is not an international airport near the city I live, and thus I have to travel an hour and a half to the nearest airport to catch a flight 6 AM flight, the only time planes to my destination leave. I can show up to the bus station mere second before the thing takes off and I will still be fine, but at airports the airport regulations insists I show up at least an hour (though two is preferable) prior to the flight. This means that to catch my flight I need to leave my house at three AM to just barely make it. This means waking at 2 AM. As an alternative, I could go stay with some relatives who live 45 min from the airport, but that would mean going to their house the night before, and at that point the total travel would truly start to rival the bus route.
And then there is arriving at the other damn side of things. Once you touch down at your destination, the plane insists on taxing for 15 min before letting you off, followed by a 15 min taxi on a small bus to a place where you have to wait for your luggage. If all that goes smoothly (and likely, it won’t) you will get out of the airport and find yourself in some far outskirt of the city, with another hour or so commute to actually get to your damn destination.
Frankly, I wonder if a day and change on a bus is worth this trip (probably – my time isn’t worth so much these days). But even if not, it still beats travelling by air.
Oh well,
Adelantando.
The bus ride will last 29 hours, which I recognize to be an absurdly long amount of time. But in that 29 hours I go from point A to point B, from city center to city center without any major hiccoughs. The bus leaves at midnight and arrives at 11 AM, no problems.
Air travel does not have these luxuries. There is not an international airport near the city I live, and thus I have to travel an hour and a half to the nearest airport to catch a flight 6 AM flight, the only time planes to my destination leave. I can show up to the bus station mere second before the thing takes off and I will still be fine, but at airports the airport regulations insists I show up at least an hour (though two is preferable) prior to the flight. This means that to catch my flight I need to leave my house at three AM to just barely make it. This means waking at 2 AM. As an alternative, I could go stay with some relatives who live 45 min from the airport, but that would mean going to their house the night before, and at that point the total travel would truly start to rival the bus route.
And then there is arriving at the other damn side of things. Once you touch down at your destination, the plane insists on taxing for 15 min before letting you off, followed by a 15 min taxi on a small bus to a place where you have to wait for your luggage. If all that goes smoothly (and likely, it won’t) you will get out of the airport and find yourself in some far outskirt of the city, with another hour or so commute to actually get to your damn destination.
Frankly, I wonder if a day and change on a bus is worth this trip (probably – my time isn’t worth so much these days). But even if not, it still beats travelling by air.
Oh well,
Adelantando.
Locus Horribilis 