Posts Tagged borders
Posted on December 16, 2011 by jason
Red Beard was running out of time in Chile. You get 90 days on your temporary vehicle import papers, and we had entered Chile on September 15. We figured we were fine until December 15th, but then we actually started counting the days.
There is an aduana office in Pucon and we asked if they could just extend the papers there. Nope – they said to go to the border, enter Argentina for 1 minute, then return to Chile and get new papers. Basically, the 90 day limit is just a forced inconvenience for anyone wanting to stay in Chile longer.
We were only 60 kilometers or so from the border, so we figured what the heck… let’s go to Argentina. We drove through the Villarrica Nacional Park, past volcanoes and monkey puzzle trees all the way to the lonely border station. We asked again if we really did have to leave the country and the boss-man insisted that we had to follow procedure (while the 4 other people in the office assured us it was ridiculous). We handed in our car papers and got our passports stamped out in just a few minutes. They told us it was only one more kilometer to the Argentina office. We told them we would be right back.
We walked into the Argentina office and explained that we just wanted to be stamped in and out and go back to Chile. One guy acted like we were lost and pointed us to Chile. His buddy knew what was up and told us to do the paperwork, drive off for a few minutes to take some pictures, then come back and exit the country. Fair enough.
Except for an exceptionally chatty official at the vehicle permisso desk, things went pretty smoothly*. We drove off and figured that since we just spent all the effort getting into the country (zero inspections on either side, by the way) that we may as well take a peek.
This side of the border is Parque Nacional Lanin. We were only on the road for a few minutes and decided to pull off next to a small wooden sign that said Lago Tromen.
Change of plans.
This is a little gem. First, a beautiful lake and valley open up below us. Then, a water-crossing to make things interesting. Finally we end up beach-side on a stellar lake.
If you see the little wooden sign… turn.
We took our bag full of produce that we assumed would be confiscated at the border and make the best damn one-pot campfire meal we’ve had in a while. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching falcons comb the shoreline and roost in the trees around us.
Life is good. No rush to get back to Chile.
*Note: This aduana office features a ping pong table. There’s not much traffic here.
Posted on September 21, 2011 by jason
After another simple border crossing, we were back in Chile.
This one took two hours for no particular reason. First, we waited in line and went to 5 different numbered windows for stamps of unknown significance. Then, we filled out agricultural papers and get our vehicle inspected. These guys are pretty thorough, but were mostly looking for fruits and vegetables. If you give them a few old avocados and act like you know the routine, they don’t linger too long.
One of the inspectors was a vintage VW fan and he showed us his license to prove it – ’68 bug. While we were waiting, another guy from Brazil introduced himself and said he had 4 combi’s back home. Some motorcycle guys came over and wished us luck and asked about our trip. A surprisingly social border.
Then, one more final check of the paperwork we were on our way.
Not more than two minutes away is the much-hyped ski resort of Portillo. We pulled in and had a quick look around. Nice place – and we were just in time for the half-day boleta.
Spring skiing in the Andes is a pretty good deal – far cheaper than the U.S. The only problem for us is that we didn’t bring our boards… Portillo charges a premium for rentals. But, it’s all top-quality gear – better than our old stuff – so we can only open the wallet and enjoy it.
Before we left on this trip, we had considered bringing our boards and boots and dreamed of spending an entire season riding the slopes in Chile. After considering the cost and the ridiculousness of carting our snow gear through Central America, we let it go. It was probably a good decision – the bus is already full anyway.
After a day of carving, we made the easy decision to stay and do it again. However, we committed a major boondocking foul: we told someone what we were doing.
Angela ended up talking to a manager. Then, his manager, and then ultimately someone who said the owner didn’t want us there. This is supposed to be a first-class resort after all – they don’t want any riff-raff sleeping in the parking lot.
We were told to split, but when the manager (nice guy) walked us out and saw our bus, he relented… “just keep a low profile and don’t tell anyone.”
Posted on September 20, 2011 by jason
We managed to drive around for a few hundred miles without any major disasters with the rebuilt engine, so we decided it was time to make a run for the border.
A few notes on the engine break-in:
Compression after 50 miles: 85, 120, 110, 110 psi
Compression after 150 miles: 95, 110, 110, 105 psi
Compression after 250 miles: 105, 110, 110, 105 psi
#1 magically came up to something not terrible, while #2 dropped noticeably. I’ll assume it’s officially ‘broken-in.’ We’ll do all this fun again when we eventually replace the piston/cylinders with a new set.
My past problem of #1 and #3 always running rich, that I had observed since Mexico went away. At first, I assumed it had to do with the re-worked heads. Maybe it was the valves. However, after 250 miles, it has now returned. I searched for vacuum leaks over the past year, and have done it again, but still have no clue. The #1 and #3 plugs are getting blacker and blacker, but #2 and #4 are fine.
Anyway, we’re on the road and climbing the Andes once again. It feels good to have our independence and freedom back. We were starting to get in a rut in Mendoza and feeling a little stuck. Once we got on the road for good, our moods definitely improved.
We stopped at the little cross-roads town of Uspallata for the night. This was the location for the filming of 7 Years in Tibet. We’ll have to assume that it looks like Tibet. Apparently, they shipped bison (yaks?) here from Montana just for the film – but we didn’t see any. All I know is that they sell actual Duff beer.
Climbing up the Andes was a non-event. This particular route is an easy gradual ascent that follows a river all the way up. This has got to be the least-challenging pass we’ve driven in quite some time. It peaked at only around 3000 meters.
Once we got up to the snow, of course we had to hit the slopes. They’ve got a short season here, and it was clear from the conditions at Los Penitentes that it isn’t going to last much longer. It looked so bad that we moved on to a little bunny hill down the road where Bode and Angela could get warmed up and take some turns. Their first in over two years.
Posted on August 3, 2011 by angela
Now in Argentina, we continued on with our long day. But, now that we had passed the hard part, the bus began acting funny. It skipped, it lurched, even the funny noise we thought was the muffler returned. We continued to chug along thinking once we go down in altitude things should get better.
Our next stop was Susques, a small puebla with the redeeming qualities of an ATM and gas station. We filled up at both and headed back out to the paved highway.
We continued to descend and came upon another salt flat. We saw that there were a few vehicles on it so we immediately drove in. We had missed our chance in Salar de Uyuni to take those crazy photos, so we grabbed a couple of toys and set to it. We didn’t want to spend too much time here since we still had a long drive, and as we were heading out Jason discovered we had an oil leak. White salt flat. Black oil. Pretty obvious.
Back out of the highway, we continued to putter. We kept thinking we would be going down soon, but one look ahead and we saw we had another climb. We thought about stopping for a while and going through the engine, but we were anxious to get to the next town and call it a day. Jason looked seriously worried, but Red Beard made it…barely.
We finally descended but the bus wasn’t doing much better. We had intended to go a bit farther, but decided to stop in Puramarca, a small village turned tourist town in Northern Argentina. It was beautiful, and we had information on 3 campsites in the town. The first was super expensive, so we tried the second. It was a small motel type place with BBQ pits and camping spaces around the parking lot. The owner wasn’t there, but the 2 guests at the hotel said he’d be back soon so we parked the van and hit the showers. We didn’t set up camp since we didn’t know the price, so when the owner came back and told us there was no camping we were able to high-tail it out of there before he discovered we had used his showers. Not totally cool, but it was a long day. Unfortunately, we forgot that Jason had left a glass on the spare, so that went down with a crash as we sped off. Nothing like calling attention to ourselves when we’re trying to sneak away!
We were happy to pay at the 3rd campsite, and even happier to discover (once we had internet) that the exchange rate was about 4:1 instead of 3:1 like we had thought. The town seemed expensive, but now 25% less expensive.
Posted on August 2, 2011 by angela
My watch has been broken for a couple weeks (though I am still wearing it) and the alarm on Jason’s doesn’t work. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well at the immigration office parking lot, worried that we wouldn’t wake up on time. Of course, at 5 am the truckers started revving up their diesels, and there would be no way we could have slept through it. Bode did.
Jason went to the aduana window where they were holding his passport. Only 80 vehicles were allowed to pass, so there was a crowd of truckers and a few motorists at the window. The official was yelling names and getting 100 truck drivers yelling back “He’s not here, he’s sleeping!” Quite a system Jason finally made his way up to the window just as the guy was looking confused at a U.S. passport – unable to pronounce his name. Jason yelled ‘gringo! aqui!‘ and the aduana guy smiled at him with relief. We were free to head to the front of the line of vehicles.
We passed 50 or so trucks waiting along the road (the others were in the lot where we had camped) and headed to the front behind about 7 other cars. It was still dark and cold and we weren’t really sure what was going on. It was supposed to be a caravan, and we were a bit worried about having cars and trucks stuck behind us if we had a problem.
Turns out it was no issue. The leader car started us early (about 6:15 and soon there was plenty of space behind us). Throughout the day, the trucks behind us would overtake us on the uphills and we would pass them on the downhill sections. A few more cars passed us, but other than that we didn’t see any other cars. This allowed us to stop a few times; to put up the bed when Bode finally woke up and to stretch our legs once.
It was a long road, but most of the time it was 2 lanes. There were actually some higher passes (one was 4850 meters) before the only one listed on the map: “Pasa de Jama”, the Argentinian border at 4200 meters. At the top, the route took us in and out of the dirt in some places. This was sort of strange, as there wasn’t much snow NOT on the paved roads in these places. But, this was an unusual storm, leaving up to 3 meters of nieve. There’s no equipment up here, so the pass had been closed for over 3 weeks.
The bus was running great, and after about 4 hours we reached the Argentina border, where the whole process was easy and quick. We didn’t even have to fill out any forms. They typed in our passport and vehicle title info and handed us our papers to sign. 90 days. Easy.
We sat in the parking lot eating all the fruit, sandwich meat and cheese we could before they did a cursory search. We offered up what we couldn’t finish and they pointed us to the trash can. They never looked at our food or fridge, so we probably could have gotten by with keeping it.
And so, we took off into Argentina…country #15!
Posted on July 31, 2011 by jason
We finally got our chance. The stars aligned, the snow melted, and the aduana tells us we can leave the country in the morning – a 6 AM caravan.
We haven’t explored Chile too much – yet – but we can definitely say that we like it. We’ll zig-zag back over later.
San Pedro was a cool place and we met some good people. When we first drove in, we were greeted with peace signs and a few thumbs-up. We haven’t seen that kind of response in a while and it was a good indicator of what type of place it is.
The food here is stellar. Most of the restaurants have a huge outdoor fire pit and they definitely know how to grill. I think I ate melt-in-your-mouth grilled pork chops 4 nights in a row.
We met some other bus travelers here too. Two girls – an Aussie and a Brit – bought a ’88 Brazilian bus (I could swear it’s 5% smaller than it’s German cousin) in Santiago and are headed north. They broke down and have been here a few weeks just waiting around for someone to help. At a party the other night, they found out about us and came over to see if we had any experience working on VWs. Um, a little.
They plan on traveling for a while, and wanted to learn as much as possible. We spent the better part of the afternoon going over the finer points of valve adjustment and the like. Stories were told. Wisdom was dispensed.
They had killed the battery, the valves were too tight, the carb was too lean and the belt was loose. That was it. Now, they’re good to go and might be able to do some of their own troubleshooting next time. After getting their bus all tuned up and going for a test drive, they offered us a sixer of the local brew. There is no fairer trade in the world.
Now, we’ve officially checked out of Chile and handed in our vehicle paperwork, but are camped right behind the immigration office with all the truckers. This is the best place in town to watch the sunset and the stars here are amazing too- the outer arm of the Milky Way is a bright band across the sky. Tomorrow’s wake up call will probably be the sound of diesel engines firing up before sunrise.
Posted on July 18, 2011 by angela
We had checked into 1 of 2 hostelrias in town, where we were pleasantly surprised by electricity for most of the day, along with cable TV. There were 2 French tourists there as well – they had been dropped off at the Ollague border when their tour operator couldn’t make it back to San Pedro due to the weather. With the road closed, they were stuck too.
The girl, who we now refer to as Drama, had a flight to France in a few days and had to get to Santiago – still a 20 hour bus ride away from the next big town. They asked us for a ride when the road opened. She had already spoken to the police and even to town mayor and was intent on getting the road opened by will power. Sure thing.
The next morning, it was still snowing. The other drivers stuck in town came to our hotel for breakfast and said it would be another 2 days. Most of them had already been here 2 days. I mentioned it to Drama and she cursed and stomped off to cry. We pulled out some things from Red Beard and figured we’d be snowed in a few days. Every sock and shoe we owned was soaked and salty, so we took advantage of the now working electricity and laid everything out in front of a space heater. Possibly the first heater of any kind we have seen since we’ve been in the Andes – we’re going to like Chile.
About 11am, the woman running the hostel knocked and said the police had opened the road for now, but it may be closed in the afternoon. The police were at the end of the street, and we should follow them.
We threw our stuff back in the bus, told the French couple we were leaving and then asked where we could get gasoline. The hotel sold it, so we bought 10 liters (about 2.5 gallons) from them for the equivalent of $30 USD. That and the hotel cleaned us out of the Chilean pesos we had with us, and there was no ATM in town. Oh well, if the road is open there was money in Calama…200 km away.
Once we were all stuffed into the bus, we found that the police had already left, but there were tracks for us to follow. We only got about 15 minutes down the road when Red Beard began acting funny. No power.
We deduced it must be the gas – it was running fine until we put in the hotel gas. The snow was deep and there wasn’t an easy way to turn around. We thought maybe we could catch up with the police, but didn’t see them at all. There wasn’t much we could do back in Ollague, they maybe had bad gas, we didn’t have any money and we could get stuck there for a while. The town on the Bolivian side was so small that I didn’t even see it, and I’m not sure there was a town.
We chugged and chugged along slowly, Jason flooring the gas just to keep in motion, until we got to an incline we couldn’t get up. As luck would have it, that is when the guys from breakfast pulled up behind us…5 guys in their car. We told them the problem, they nodded and told us we could make the next town. Only a couple inclines before it was all downhill to Calama. They pushed us up (a few times) and then another car came along with more help to get us up the biggest peak. We asked about turning around, but they were very encouraging.
Eventually we got to the small ‘town’ we were headed to. We pulled over and the 2 cars blew by us…happy for us to be out of their way.
With Jason flooring the gas and the high altitude, we burned through most of the tank.
It wasn’t a town, it was just a couple buildings for a borax mining company, with about 5 guys working there. They were super nice and even fed us, but they had no gas. The next “town” was a police station at the top of the pass and maybe they’d have some. Regardless, we couldn’t make it any higher. Their boss was headed up to get them in an hour or so, and maybe he would have some gas.
Jason drained out the remaining ‘bad’ gas, and put in the 2-3 gallons of good gas we had in the tank and then did a full tune up. We still had 165 km to Calama.
One of the workers came over and put some of the siphoned gas in the cap of our can and swirled it around like a sommolier, sniffed it, and declared it 93 octane. He then did the logical thing and looked at it – and pointed out the little water bubbles floating around in it. His buddies came over and all agreed that of course we got bad gas – what else would we have expected from a hotel?
Meanwhile, the French girl used their phone to call a tour agency. With enough whining, she eventually got them to agree to come pick her up at the police station at the top of the pass – it would take them 4 hours. We waited in the cold for 3 hours for the boss to show up and then the crew magically found 4 liters of gas to give us.
The truck driver was going to leave in 1 hour and would pull us if needed. Since it was late in the day, we went ahead and headed off with our 4 liters of gas, to the police station which was only supposed to be 30 minutes away. Still, we ran out of gas. We added the bad gas back in and chugged up.
We pulled into the police checkpoint (with 3 of us getting out and walking so Jason could make it up the last bit) only to find them shrug and say ‘we don’t have gas’. It was dark, it was really cold. They let us in for tea, and as luck would have it, 20 minutes later the tour agency guys showed up. They didn’t bring gas and acted like they knew nothing about it – even though Drama insisted she had made it part of the deal. It was obvious she was lying.
With no options, we grabbed a bag and jumped in with them for the 125 km ride to Calama and left the bus at the top of the pass. We had no money, I had forgotten our passports in the bus and we didn’t know how we could get back to the bus. During the drive, we made a plan. They were dropping off the French couple at the bus station–there were ATMs there. We would catch a cab from there, get a hotel, and a friend of the driver would pick us up the next morning and take us to get gas and back to the bus for about $120 USD. Not a great way to enter Chile, but good enough.
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