Chile

We were pretty tired when leaving Mendoza, we both had our sleeping bags on board the bus and slept the first part of the journey. These buses love to stop lots so we had lots of stops to stretch our legs, the closer we got to Chile the colder it got. We began driving through the mountains and were surrounded by snow, after what seemed a long time we arrived at the Argentina / Chile border, where it was snowing heavily, this is the part where they could have sent us back because of the weather and it wasn't looking good. We all had to leave the warmth of the bus and Que up at passport control. We knew this would be fun as we had had our passports stolen we didn't have the arrival stamp for Argentina. We had the police report we were hoping this would be enough. So we got in the very long Que and on arrival at the passport control we were there for about ten minutes whilst the staff all talked in Spanish and kept giving us strange looks, they didn't speak English and we didn't speak Spanish. Eventually they said OK but wouldn't return the police report which at that time was our only copy! So, through sign language we got that we had to get them a copy so off we went to a little office across the mountain to get a copy. We really were in the middle of no where surrounding by heavy snow, mountains and this passport control. We eventually found the man with the copier and had our report copied and returned where we were allowed straight to the front of the que to return the report to lots of sneers and tuts from others in the que! On handing over the copy we received our exit stamp. We had to then join the Chile que to get our Chile entry stamp, the snow outside was getting heavier and heavier, not a good sign! After receiving our stamps you would think that would be it and we would return to the coach and go but oh no not in a freezing cold country with out door bag searches. We had to que up in another long que to get our hand luggage and back packs checked and sniffed at by dogs. It was all very intimidating and not nice when you really can't understand a word that is being said. We'd had to dill out form on the coach and one question asked if we had photo equipment, ie cameras to which I ticked yes....bad move the right answer was no and i got picked out and searched. You weren't allowed fruit between countries and the guy we were with Andy had a small bit of orange peel in his bag which the sniffer dog picked up and wouldn't leave us alone. So out of the three English people two of us got picked out. After about half an hour of standing there and being sniffed at and searched it was time for the search of our back packs. Luckily we were all OK and were allowed to re board the bus. We moved out of the control area and in to a side stop where the snow was so heavy now we couldn't see much ahead, we had a long drive a head through the mountains and it wasn't looking good for us. After about a wait of an hour and a total time of three hours at passport control in the freezing cold we moved on and were heading for Chile..some one must have been watching us as no other coaches made it through that day and for the following three days so luckily we made it to Chile and our flight to NZ was safe!
We arrived at our hostel which was very different to a lot of the ones we had been at, there were lots of families there. we had a double room which was nice with our own shower. We dropped our bags in and I went straight out to find a phone to call home as it was my Mums birthday. The phone was answered promptly by a very merry Mummy who had been celebrating her birthday all day with champagne! I was passed around to speak to all and it was clear I was not going to be getting much sense out of any one except my sister! It was so nice to speak to all but so hard to be so far away from every one at the same time. I was so glad that our next stop was NZ where I'd have my family there to meet me.
Brett, Andy & I went out for dinner that night but were all pretty tired so it was nothing crazy, our meal came to 37,000 pesos and a bottle of wine was 5000pesos.
We spent our only day in Chile wandering around and seeing the sights. We were being taken to the airport at 7pm that night for our 13 hour flight to NZ. We were leaving Chile on the Thursday night and arriving in Auckland on the Saturday morning so this year we lost Friday 1st August which kept us amused for a bit.
At the airport we bumped in to Carley, Jonny, Danielle & Steven who we had met in Brazil and seen in Argentina so it was nice to see some more familiar faces on our flight.
When ever we leave places there is a bit of an ongoing joke about how there is never any one there to wave us off so as the three of us went through we selected a family who were saying bye to others on our flight and waved to them to say goodbye.
So we were finally aboard our plane and very ready to leave South America for our next stop New Zealand. We loved S America but with the nightmares of the last few stops it was going to be nice to be with family for a bit.
New Zealand here we come.....