I never like leaving Chile but this border crossing made us rue our departure more than usual.
We knew the pavement was going to run out and we were ready for that, no big deal and we joked about how Argentina and Chile are two countries that don’t get along very well so we figured that Chile was showing up Argentina by building a pristine two lane, perfectly smooth freeway to the border. And we enjoyed it dammit.
Look at this lovely rural lane, we bowled along at 30 miles an hour in no hurry to reach the border. The plan was to let all those hurrying off the ferry stand in line ahead of us as we enjoyed the afternoon.
The route is a bit complicated to explain but it looks like this, below; off the ferry, pass the border, spend the night, get to San Martin and then go south to Bariloche on paved Highway 40 before striking east to cross the steppes to the Atlantic coast. Good plan, poor execution.
The last Chilean Carabineros police station, and I can’t imagine how much work they have to do in this tiny community at this outpost of the country. In the distance the border, below:
They had a young woman usher who met us in line told us where to park and where to start the process to exit Chile. Easy peasy and organized of course.
You can see her chatting with the guy in the booth. The booth occupant takes the receipt the officials inside give you as you pass through the offices. The stamped receipt is proof you are free to go. He was checking vehicles coming into Chile and there is another booth on the other side for those of us exiting to Argentina.
This is Rusty’s all important sixty day permit to allow him to cross back and forth unimpeded. Oddly at this frontier the Agriculture guy came out to look at himself briefly; usually they just stamp the papers and go with no interest in the dog himself.
Below you see the guy who took our receipt on the way out. Low key and perfectly friendly. We were done in twenty minutes, most of that time spent standing in line.
And then we were in Argentina with their border post two miles down the road past their police station for the Gendarmeria, the National Police of Argentina. This dirt track was now Argentine Provincial Highway 48.
Just fabulous.
And there it was:
You do the sane thing here, park and walk into the building. I heard a motor humming and I said to Layne: “Amazing, they must have air conditioning here,” which was dumb because despite the airless heat they did not. It was the generator powering this lost outpost of government.
The Gendarmes were giving everyone a close inspection. Layne heard them arguing the value of a new appliance with an Argentine family which was trying to sneak it in from much cheaper Chile. I got a bad vibe about our fruit and vegetables.
In Patagonia no one on the Argentine side cared about our fresh foods but here…oh dear. First we were told to sit and wait. Then a gendarme showed up and we stood at his desk and he asked three times how many of us were traveling and where had we come from. Americans? At Hua Hum? Ridiculous! Finally we were allowed to present our passports to Migracion. No problem. Aduana - customs- devolved into a shit show.
It became very apparent very rapidly that he had never processed a car from outside the common market of South America called Mercosur. Mercosur allows free movement of people between the various countries and crossing a border is a five minute job between Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Americans? Not so much. He fumbled and hummed and hawed and got advice and for the first time in forever I got out our title as he struggled to figure out what to do. I even showed him an old border crossing receipt from Tierra Del Fuego (happy days!). Meanwhile the line behind us stretched across the room. I smiled in embarrassment at the Mercosur travelers standing and staring at us.
Like all good things he finally got it figured out though in his first go round Layne noticed he’d misspelled my name so he had to do some re-typing and re-printing. Then to everyone’s relief we went outside and got groped by agriculture. Rusty was no problem but our huge bowl of nectarines plums mandarins bananas apples and peaches was. He looked a bit stunned and he said with that much stuff you should get fined. Gulp. But then he went on, tut tutting over the meats in our fridge… Keep the meat he said though you shouldn’t he added, and keep the lettuce otherwise you’ll have nothing left to eat. I hauled off our huge bag of fruit to the bin and finally we could escape. What a caper! No more can we assume Argentina won’t confiscate our fruit. I guess down south they are more lax.
We then drove on down the gravel and turned off into a dirt track leading to a supposedly free camping area by a lake. We found a spot well before that in a grassy glade near the water. We pulled up, Rusty rolled in the grass and I put our border documents back in the safe along with our leftover Chilean currency.
Then the National Park rangers showed up in a pickup, four friendly young men who said, naturally, we couldn’t camp here and by the way no dogs. He has to stay at home. It seemed obvious to us that home is where GANNET2 is but as we packed up to leave he hoped we’d enjoy the national parks of Argentina. He enjoyed using his English. We smiled bravely as we packed up.
Back we went into the dust cloud. We had 20 miles of gravel to get to San Martin de Los Andes and to get there we had to drive through the Lanin National Park. It was going to be dark by nine and we couldn’t wild camp along the way now that we had been warned and Rusty meant we couldn’t use official campgrounds. Best of all even private campgrounds listed on iOverlander frequently say “No dogs.” Clearly this region of Argentina was not designed for tourists like us. Or for Rusty.
We pressed on with me trying to maintain 15 mph on some pretty terrible washboard and then the evening commute began and car after car from the border or farms or the park zipped past us each raising a fresh dust cloud. Below you can see a pocket of dust drifting up a valley to the left and though it looks like mist it’s actually dust created by passing cars. And the sun was starting to go down behind the mountains.
We got to town about a half hour before dark. Our planned campground just above San Martin had a sign saying “No dogs” so I brought the iOverlander entry up to date. We found an avenue next to a couple of soccer fields with a broad dusty parking area so we stopped under the trees.
Layne air fried some empanadas for dinner and we collapsed into a deep sleep. Not a great romantic campsite but it did the job.
It’s lovely having your home with you when you travel. No matter what’s going on outside inside it’s familiar. and with the roof fan whirring we fell asleep with it sucking cool night air into our home after a long hot dusty day.
