Except for one night when we had to take a cab, D. and I rode the bus or walked everywhere. In Buenos Aires, the bus is the "Colectivo", and riding it was...wow. Stressful. It would have been confusing enough in English, but I was already in culture shock, and thank goodness D. told me to stop worrying about things and just let him do all the worrying. :-)
How to Ride the Colectivo
Step 1 (not pictured): look up the street you're on and the street you're going to in the back of the booklet to see where they are on the main map. If you already know where you are and where you're going on the main map, find which page you need. In this case we will be taking a short trip inside Palermo from Page 9 to Page 8.
Step 2: Once you've found your departure page, go there and find out exactly where you are.
Step 3: Now go to the opposite page. In the matching square, you will find the bus numbers that go by your location. Keep your finger in this page! You will need it in a moment.
Step 4. Go to the page with your destination. Locate the square where you wish to arrive.
Step 5. Look on the opposite page to find the bus numbers that go by this location.
Step 6. Now flip back and forth between the two pages to see whether there are any buses that serve both locations. If there aren't, look around the squares near your destination square to see whether there's a bus that goes sort of close to where you want to go. Or check in the route descriptions in the back to see where the bus goes.
I'm not sure what you do if you need to make a transfer. Somehow there was always a bus that went between the 2 places we were going, though sometimes via a circuitous route. And sometimes we did a bunch of walking to get to a bus we could take.
Oh right, now, once you know the number of the bus (and the color, if you looked the bus up in the back of the book), you are ready to look for the stop.
Step 7: Walk to the street where the bus goes. Now walk down the street until you find your bus stop. After you pass several hundred bus stops that are not for your bus, you will finally find your stop, cleverly disguised as a street lamp with a small route number taped or zip-tied to it (not always the case, but I am not kidding).
Step 8: Watch closely for your bus. Fortunately, the numbers on the buses are pretty big, which is great, because those buses are cruising down the street and you better wave your hands or jump into the street to get that driver to stop. Ahoy, there!
Step 9: When getting on the bus, take a firm hold with both hands in case the driver starts to depart while you are halfway on the bus. Tell the driver how much your fare is (either 75 or 80 centavos, though D. said he didn't understand the zones). The driver will punch it into the ticket machine and once you have inserted your coins you will get your receipt.
Step 10: Figure out when you need to get off: good luck! When you've just missed your stop, pull the cord. Get ready, because those bus doors open when the bus is going "no more than 5 km/h" supposedly, but I think most drivers were pushing it. When it seems like you're going slowly enough to get off without killing yourself, leap out of the bus to the curb. Yeehaw!
Congratulations! You've just arrived pretty close to your destination! Now, to get back...