BUTT OF THE JOKE On the bus to the bus terminal in Corrientes, I drilled my friend Chris to make sure he had the tickets, and then laughed about how I would probably have left them on the shelf at home still. My face then suddenly turned pale as I remembered my passport. I had left it behind. On the shelf. It was still at home, so I left Chris and quickly jumped off the bus and found the nearest taxi back home for my passport, glad that this time I had enough time to retrieve it. I did this another time when I was in New Zealand, over one hour from home, and had to call a friend at 5am in the morning to bring it down to me - I made the plane with only a few minutes to spare. It was not like that this time however. SHODDY BROTHERS BUS COMPANY Back at the bus station in time to meet up with Chris, we had a few minutes for our bus to arrive. But it didn't arrive. Over an hour later, we finally climb aboard our bus and head off north. The problem was that my seat was double allocated, so I ended up finding a seat for the journey right near the front. By the time we left the terminal, there was not even standing room left in the aisle. This probably would not have been a problem if I had not had a bursting bladder, aided in size by a big bottle of CocaCola and a whole lot of mate. One hour into the journey, I realised that it was totally unreasonable to ask my bladder to last the next two hours without relief. So I began my journey up the aisle. Being at the front of the bus, I had to push past dozens and dozens of people. Some of those still seated, eyed me off enviously. I was sure that they too had bursting bladders but the whole idea of doing what I was attempting kept them waiting for the next bus terminal. As I reached where Chris was seated, he gave me a wry look, as if to say, "you must be pretty desperate mate!" I was. Having made my way to the back and reached the smelly and dirty toilet, I discover that the intense pressure in my bladder was not actually intense pressure in my bladder at all, but rather some air in my intestines that was causing a similar pain. Slightly humbled by my unnecessary journey over peoples heads and through their cramped quarters, I turned around and pushed and shoved my way back to my seat. I would not attempt to do that ever again. Still one hour from our destination of Posadas, our bus pulls into a small town and tells us all to get off. What now? The driver points to a large double-decker bus next to us, and tells us all to get on board of this one. TRAVELLING IN STYLE It was a luxury bus compared to our previous one. Large luscious seats and plenty of space indicated that this would be a comfortable journey. Except there were far too many people for the bus and we arrived late. There were no more seats left. Rather than sit in the ailse, Chris and I decided that the stairway to the top level was more comfortable, but had hardly sat down when the driver invited us forward to the driving cabin. Here Chris sat down in a huge luxury chair, and I remained with the comfort of the stairs next to him. For the first time in my journey on buses in Argentina, I felt like I was part of the land that we were driving through, and not just a spectator. I guess being next to the driver helped me feel like this. The huge orange coloured driving cabin provided an equally huge windscreen through which we could see everything. During the whole journey, Chris and I engaged in animated conversations with our driver, whose tendency to look directly at us while we were driving left me feeling considerably uncomfortable. I consoled myself with the fact that a huge double-decker bus swerving over the road was probably going to be avoided at all costs by the other drivers. Besides, the road was not that busy, so a lot of the time we had it all to ourselves. We learned about the money trees, whose pulp makes the paper for the Argentine notes, and a huge hydro-electric dam that was considered the seventh wonder of the world (along with two other wonders of the same ranking that I affectionately refer to as seventh-b and seventh-c wonders). During this time, we took the opportunity to film a lot of our journey. Having discovered the joys of filming, Chris and I now want to try and create a video of our lives. The problem is that we are creating lots of video and no real pattern. Lots of video. Too much video. Tremendous amounts of video. But then that is another story. BUSES AND BREAKS Arriving in Posadas, we bought our tickets for Ober?here the YWAM team were staying, and headed over to the bus. There was a crowd of people around and the driver, guarding his door like a prison warden, was not letting anyone onboard. We were told that we would have to wait for another bus. Eventually some people were let onboard this bus, although the door was opened and shut guardedly for each person. I decided to ask the guy yet again if our ticket was valid for this bus. This time he said it was, and told me to get onboard. I raced over to tell Chris, but spun a turn to stop them closing up the baggage compartment of the bus. This turn just happened to be right on top of a big patch of wet oil in front of an empty bus bay. I went down like a sack of spuds, sticking my hand out to break my fall. Instead, my fall broke my hand. I did manage to stop them closing up the compartment however, and we both climbed aboard, happy to find some seats. What we expected to be a one hour journey, turned into multiple hours, as our bus stopped dozens and dozens of times to pick up and drop off local travellers. I was never so glad to arrive somewhere as I was when we finally made it to Ober?After leaving home at 6am that morning, we finally made it at 5pm that night. It was supposed to be only a five hour journey in total. Go figure. NOTE: My hand, after many days of great pain and a lot of prayer, now appears to be a severely sprained joint that is now healing well.