PowerCycle

09/21 I made it into Chile and I owe everything to a stuffed armadillo. After getting stamped out of Bolivia and paying Bs.15 I rode the couple miles over to the Chile side. Inside the immigration building I filled out the paperwork making sure to check “Yes” next to the question about carrying any fruit/vegetable/meat products (including dehydrated which I was along with some jam and an opened thing of lunch meat). Checking no and getting caught is a $200 fine.

The guy gave me the max of 90 days and mentioned that if I leave the country and come back in again I’ll get another 90 days. Good to know. With that done he pointed me over to the line for baggage inspection. I was behind a bunch of bus people so it took a while for my turn to come up. I was watching the one guy doing the inspection and he was very thorough. I thought for sure he’d make me throw out all the soups and canned goods I had. That’s when the armadillo saved me.

The lady right in front of me had a stuffed one in her bag along with some kind of jar of fruit or something (animal hide/fur is prohibited). The guy hauled her away and I never saw either one of them again. For the next 10 minutes I sat on the curb waiting for the guy to come back but he never did. Finally another guy came out of an office and asked if anyone had checked my bags. I told him no and pointed to the pannier with my food in it along with the big plastic bag I had all my soup in. He just told me to bring in my trunk bag (the biggest one) and the pannier with my food in it. The other 7 bags never got looked at. He opened both up and hardly spent 10 seconds going through each of them. Then he looked up and told me he was done. Sweet.

Chile is freaking expensive! The hostel cost me $10,000 CLP which is about $21 US. The same room in Peru or Bolivia would have cost about $7 US. The cheapest in town was $6,000 CLP but they were full. Lunch wasn’t as bad. Maybe a little more than the equivalent in Bolivia. The electrical plugs here are different than anywhere else I’ve been (EU style) but I have a universal plug adapter so I’m set. Supposedly the water in Chile is safe to drink from the tap. That’ll save me some money. The internet is free but the buildings are too far even for my mega-antenna so I’ll have to head outside later.

GPX track