I found it hard to book Chilean buses on-line. There are booking sites in Spanish but even if you understand the language, the sites did not accept foreign credit cards or foreign credentials (i.e. passport no.) Because we were traveling from Santiago to Pucón, Chile on December 23rd, right before Christmas I wanted to buy tickets ahead to ensure we could travel on that day.
On Recorrido.cl I was able to book tickets as a foreigner and print the tickets out ahead. This booking site was partially in English and accepted my credit card and foreign passport number. However when we got to bus station, which was crazy busy on the Sunday night, two days before Christmas, there was a problem.
The bus driver took our ticket and we boarded a bus to Pucan at the correct time, unfortunately someone else also had a ticket for our seats numbers. It was determined by the bus authorities that we had purchased Salon Cama seats (3 seats across) and this bus was Semi Cama (4 seats across). We were told we had to board a different bus 1 1/2 hours later. After extensive maneuvering and sweating in the luggage compartment, the poor luggage guy found our bags buried under other bags and removed them from the bus. We were then given new tickets for the later bus.
I don’t know if it was the booking agency who sold tickets for the wrong bus or if the bus company changed the bus type for that departure time. When we finally got on our bus we still never got the actual seats I had booked on-line. We found out we had paid twice as much for our seats and they weren’t much different from the other bus we were on. They didn’t recline any further but we did get a pillow in addition to a blanket which was also provided on the first bus. But nothing else, not even a bottle of water which I have received in other countries.
As per my book, my advise is still the same at least for Chile — buy bus tickets for your departure day and time when you arrive in an area. Don’t worry about buying in advance on-line. I’ll be doing that the rest of this trip and I’ll let you know how it works out.
It certainly worked in our favour from the cruise port. There was a Pullman bus waiting just outside the port area where we collected our luggage. It was full when we got to it but we were able to buy tickets for the next bus that arrived 30 minutes later. The cost was 4500 pesos about $8.50 Canadian, a very reasonable price for the 1 1/2 to 2 hour trip to Santiago.
