Nov 16 – Day 23 – Travel
A mostly gray day, and that’s ok because we are pretty much traveling all day anyway. Our border crossing will take place at Paso Dorotea– not exactly how we intended to go but at the time it seemed like the right choice- we would have been a little better off had we gone back down to Cerro Castillo.
Just before the border we pass through the mining town of Rio Turbio, which reminded us a lot of the mining towns of eastern Kentucky, and decided to fill up with the much cheaper Argentinian fuel- about 50% cheaper than Chile. But when we first pulled into the station we went in the wrong way, which obviously pegged us as foreigners, and maybe senile, or at least not too bright, to the young lady who pumped our diesel. She was convinced there was no way we were smart enough to make it through the “very confusing” streets of the small town…so after 20 minutes of explanations, diagrams, Google map searches, a small essay written (by her) in Google Translate AND an offer to ride with us through town and then walk back to her job (not enough room in the truck) she finally let us go with what I’m sure was a small prayer to the saints to help these dottering old people through the mean streets of her town. Of course all we ended up doing was following the fairly obvious route through the town and made it just fine- but we were just so overcome with gratitude by all of her efforts to be helpful! We strongly believe that most people, everywhere, tend to be good and kind, but there just seems to be an abundance of goodness and kindness down here.
The border crossing went well- we knew a bit more of the routine by now, and we knew that going into Chile was more difficult because they are very strict about food coming in, to protect their agriculture. Fresh fruit and veggies are not going to make it across, nor will unprocessed meats. But we’d also heard of opened cheese packages, sandwiches and other things being confiscated, and occasionally fines being imposed. So on the part of the form where you are asked if you have any food it is better to answer “yes” and then let them decide if it qualifies- there is no fine for that. but if you answer “no” and they find something there is a (slight) possibility of a fine- payable in cash only. So we had tried to use up all of our food before crossing and gathered all our rest into our cooler – I think that the easier you make the crossing guards job, the less likely you are to be hassled. But ultimately it all went well and we crossed without issue.
We had dinner in a unremarkable restaurant with unremarkable food and spent the night in Puerto Natales- our last night in Ferdinand- parked along the lakeshore. The view was pretty but the traffic never really stopped all night long- in retrospect we should have traveled further out of town and found some wild camping out there.
Nov 17 – Day 24 – RV Return/Punta Arenas
After a noisy night we headed up the road to the gas station- we knew they had bathrooms and space there and we wanted to pack up and clean Ferdinand before we got to Punta Arenas. Once done we were on the road again, our only delay was having to stop for 10 minutes while a herd of sheep, being driven by dogs and wranglers, went all around us- it was a neat experience and we didn’t mind being stopped for it at all!
The drop off of Ferdinand at Campanda went without a hitch- we weren’t charged for the bumper damage from our car wreck back in TDP, so we were happy for that. We pointed out some of the very small problems we’d had with the camper- nothing big, and since we travel a lot by RV we are used to these things happening. RVs are like houses that constantly go through earthquakes while traveling anyway, even on the semi smooth roads of the States…some of the roads we drove on were incredibly rough, so the fact that Ferdinand survived at all is no small feat, and a testament to the durability of the camper and Nissan truck it was built on.
Campanda took us back to the Hostal Innata, our third single night there. It was nice to have a big bed, room to stretch out and hot showers at our disposal! We had an amazing dinner and delicious wine at La Luna– great atmosphere and service. And the folks at Innata are wonderful and at this point treat us like family!
