No Time to Hop Off.

A photo gallery.

The Gray Line Hop on Hop Off bus is a good way to get around this sprawling city with a 15 million metro population. The tour shows off this city of monuments, broad boulevards, green and leafy parks and plazas, along with varied architecture. And March is a good time to come. The two other times we were in Buenos Aires it was January or February. A touch of autumn really shows off the city, and the temperature is bearable.

The hop on hop off route is supposed to take three hours but with the traffic our loop took almost four and a half. We got a two day ticket so the first day we stayed on and rode the circuit. Given the time it took to walk to and from the bus, the half hour wait on the bus for the tour to start, and the need to wait for a shuttle to take us from the end of the loop back to the ship, that was pretty much a full day for two old bodies.

While the tour was excellent and the people we dealt with were kind and helpful, the information we got was not complete and doled out in drabs.

While telling us on their website that we could buy a ticket with a credit card, the sales agent told us we were told we could ONLY buy the ticket on line. I needed to pull out the cell phone and enter in the credit card info on their website. The ticket was electronic. If you did’t have a smartphone you don’t ride. I thought about leaving it behind because of all the warnings we got of cell phone theft. Lucky I didn’t.

The ticket agent told us the bus ran every 15 minutes. We waited a half hour before the bus started. While the tour started across the streets from the cruise terminal it did not end there. It ended at stop 11 where we had to wait for a shuttle bus to return us to the ship. This was not made clear when we bought the ticket.

The second day we boarded the bus with a plan to ride part way and then walk through sections of town and pick it up later. When we boarded the operator told us they had changed the procedure and the bus would stop at the cruise terminal between stops 11 and 12, no need for a shuttle. This turned out not to be true. We got out at stop 8 (which was not where it was shown on the map. “Oh yes we changed that but haven’t printed a new map”) and walked to stop 10 to get on the bus. They told us the bus would not stop at the cruise terminal after stop 11. We were back to the shuttle bus. The bus we wanted to get on takes more time to get from 10 to 11 than walking. If we took the bus we would miss the shuttle. We walked to stop 11 and missed the shuttle anyway. The next shuttle was in an hour. A growing number of angry people showed up at stop 11, also having been told that all the buses would stop at the cruise port. I felt sorry for the poor guy fielding the complaints. To make matters worse the bus office did not have a toilet, or at least not one they would let customers use. We had to boldly walk into the hotel a few doors down and pretend to be guests.

Suzi and I spent the hour in a shady park, General San Martin Square before heading back to the ship. Despite it all we enjoyed both days on the hop on hop off. Here is a photo gallery taken from the top of the bus, riding through different neighborhoods