Lucky Escape

Trip Start Dec 05, 2004
1
24
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Trip End May 04, 2005


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Flag of Argentina  ,
Wednesday, February 9, 2005

We weren't looking forward to the 22 hour bus ride from Bariloche to Buenos Aires...had we known what was to happen we would definitely have elected to fly! We set off at 10 am on our marathon journey... the day passed with everyone trying to occupy their time to make the journey pass as quickly as possible! After many stops and a surprisingly good dinner on board ($45 goes a long way here!) we settled down to sleep.... I took some pain killers to try to induce sleep which gave me a fantastic high for an hour or so before nodding off! As usual though, waking and sleeping on the bus blur into one and I awoke at around midnight to an amazing storm- the sky was as bright as day with sheet lightening.... then around 2.30am I was half awake gazing through the front windscreen (we had the best seats in the house at the top of the coach over the driver) a van swerved in front of our coach from nowhere and appeared to come to a standstill.... the coach immediately slammed on the brakes but it was too late- we ploughed into the side of the van with a huge sickening crash amid screaming from the dozing passengers 1 Driver´s lucky day....
1 Driver´s lucky day....
 !
Everyone immediately got off the coach to survey the damage... The van was a white Mrecedes sprinter (number plate DIE 872!) the driver was evidently badly hurt but still alive. The road was completely blocked so a petrol tanker driver decided to try and get past by driving around us off the road- not such a good idea as he got stuck alongside then decided to get out (dressed only in his underwear!) and decided to have a smoke! When the emergency service finally arrived about an hour later it would appear that they had never attended an incident like this before! Nobody seemed to be in charge and they also thought it was a good idea to light up and decide what to do!! There were people milling around everywhere and even when the services of a truck were called in to separate the two vehicles, the fire and police services did not seem to be concerned that there were still passengers on the coach! As luck would have it, the van was loaded with porn and the boys wasted no time in filling their rucksacks!!!
We waited by the roadside till around 8am when a replacement coach from Buenos Aires finally arrived to rescue us.... to add insult to injury, we stopped in a town called Blue an hour or so later where we had breakfast in a cafe (still 300 km from BA!) and the driver decided he wasn't going anywhere till he was ready and kept us waiting there for a further hour and a half!! We eventually got into BA at around 4pm- total journey time 30 hours!! At least nobody on our coach was badly injured- hate to think what the outcome would have been if our coach had turned over!
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