Greyhound to Corpus

I took the Greyhound from Austin to Corpus via San Antonio, the Austin Greyhound Station has a nice mural, it is a "a celebration of celebrations, with music and dancing, a piñata, Joseph and Mary from la Pastorela, and a couple from Día de los Muertos." (Austin Chronicle). The Greyhound Station in Austin puzzlingly, is nowhere near downtown or a major transit center, it's actually fairly hidden and is near a mall parking lot.

I had never taken a Greyhound before, my intercity bus travel was limited to the Chinatown Bus which links Philadelphia and New York... just buy a ticket at the bus and get on... I bought my ticket online and checked in at their desk. They printed me a boarding pass and also had tags for my luggage, but when I got to San Antonio I had to move my luggage myself, so it seemed somewhat pointless. The bus to San Antonio was fairly crowded, looking for a pair of seats for myself I eventually found myself sitting in the seat next to the bathroom and next to someone. I gathered that most of the young men in the back of the bus knew each other from prison, I think. Someone kept on playing annoying music on their cell phone.

I had a one hour layover in San Antonio, unlike Airport layovers, I was able to walk around downtown and had a Latte and Panini while I waited.

The River Walk.


The bus from San Antonio to Corpus was much less crowded. Note the cowboy in front of the line. I was able to get some sleep and read some of the book I'm currently reading, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. An older man comically kept on trying to get off the bus at each little stop to smoke a cigarette only to be stopped by the bus driver who insisted that we would not be stopping long enough to smoke a cigarette. The man stuck up a conversation with me, he said he lived in a tent on Corpus's beach for nearly a year a few decades ago and then he went on and talked about a whole litany of other things, like how he cut himself above his lip shaving. There were a number of little stations in between all three cities. The Texas countryside was flat but scenic, with many ranches and small towns.