A night train going south

Constitución train station. The picture doesn't make justice to its extreme dodginess.

 The last day in Buenos Aires we got our stuff together and headed to the train station in Constitución (one of the dodgiests spots in the city and probably in the known universe).
 After loads of researching and reading online about the options, we had purchased a train ticket on tourist class, supposedly not too different from first. They were both cheap, but ours was way cheaper and we proudly thought we were doing such good business.
We were never more wrong.

"Drivers' room". Notice the drawing of a little train!

Train getting ready to leave, and some strange man's butt.

The 14 hour ride to the city of Bahia Blanca we were stuck on a 3 people seat next to a stranger, with no leg room or any kind of comfort, and a metal bar as a pillow. The people in the car were as shady as it gets, chattering and yelling at the top of their lungs and heading to the end of the car every now and then to share an abundance of assorted cheap alcoholic "cocktails" in plastic bottles cut in half.

Our train car, pure class.

The aforementioned end of the car, where the toilets were, was like something out of a horror movie. Open doors overlooking the nothingness of the countryside, dirty graphittied walls, the parfume of rarely cleaned toilets and the rattle of the ancient train. And from there, through a tiny window, we could see the first class passengers sitting happily on comfy seats, most of them sleeping.

A doorway to almost certain death.

Art on the walls of the car,

Did someone say "creepy toilet"?

All of this aside, the landscapes and the sunset and the random little towns we saw on the way, and the fireflies everywhere alongside the tracks looking like fairies were almost worth the fact that none of us got any sleep (including me, the almighty sleeper).

The countryside from the train.

A lovely sunset.

More of the lovely sunset.

With red eyes and zombie faces, we arrived in Bahia Blanca. There we carried our luggage from the train to the bus terminal where (thanks to a delayed bus) we had to wait... 14 hours.

The face of our train after the trip, in Bahia Blanca station.

We did get some sleep on the floor of the terminal after taking a thorough baby wipe shower and changing into fresh clothes. We also played countless rounds of "go fish", got bored, walked around, socialised with some locals, got mistreated by the waitress at the only cafe/restaurant available, and witnessed a dog pissing said restaurant's floor (which the mean waitress had to clean... some would bring up the word "karma", but of course not me).

Some homeless latina sleeping on the floor... oh, wait! That's me!

Extreme tiredness gets Chey to extremes.

Mercifully the bus finally arrived, and it was one of the famous "semi cama" (semi bed), where even Chey got almost a full night of much needed sleep.

The next morning we were finally in Patagonia to start the second step of our adventure; and we both agreed on one thing: it was good as an experience (as real as it got), but next time we're buying first.


Ah, and since I still consider there were not enough pictures of our train adventure, here's a video!!

Edit: Chey says the second "sunset" picture is actually a "sunrise" picture, which he could take because NO SLEEP.