We have crossed the Argentinian/Chile border a number of times and it has been very straightforward. Fundamentally aĺl borders are the same - you do yourselves first, and then the customs temporary importation of the bike. All customs officials look in detail at the bike documentation, but we are never sure what they write down on the forms or whether it is correct or not. We have never seen anyone holding our documents upside down but suspect that it wouldn't make that much difference anyway. The important thing is that there is a piece of paper.
We were heading for the Chilean Lake District. Our last post was from the Argentinian one - physical geography doesn't recognise political borders so it is probably the same Lake District. But that is not to say that political, borders don't sometimes reflect the physical geography. Anyway, an easy border crossing and only 250km to do in the day.
We rode for about 70km and came across stationary traffic which, of course, being on a bike, we overtook - until we saw it was a queue for the border and we thought we better respect it. We had however overtaken at least two thirds of the queue and therefore never looked anyone in the face as they sat in their cars. Nothing was moving. It wasn't even the border. It was a uniformed official in a booth. We waited there for about 15 minutes and then the barrier lifted and things started moving. The official asked for our number plate, wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave the piece of paper to us. Two km further on we got to the border. Passport queue was not too long and we did that in probably less than 20 min. Then we had to queue for the customs.
This is normally very short but this time it went out of the building, beyond the canopy and about 100m up the hill. It was only the Argentinian border but the queue was a combined queue; Argentinians going to Chile and Chileans going to Argentina. For nearly two hours the only people coming out of Argentina were two people on bicycles. More about bicycles in another post because if we're mad...
The queue was diminishing but this was due to Chileans passing into Argentina. We talked to our queue neighbours and: it was a Bank Holiday Friday, it was the start of the summer holidays for some, it was good weather and it was also possible that the Argentinian side of the border hadn't opened on time. Might be due to the Customs Officials not agreeing with the new choice of Argentinian President and his plan to cut burocracy. Anyway we queued in the sun and all went well.
We then left for the Chilean side of the border crossing not knowing it was 50km away, over a twisty mountain pass with snow at the side of the road and riding through cloud with 20m visibility. It was also clear that there was some sort of issue over this zone as at about 25km there was a 'Welcome to Chile' sign and an immediate significant deterioration in the road surface which, with limited visibility, snow and a mountain pass made riding... slow. The cars behind us who had been held up at the border didn't really appreciate our slowness.
We stayed at Osorno. It was a Beatles 'nowhere town'. City even. Apologies citizens of Osorno.
But the following day we got to the northern part of the Chilean Lake District. If we had been more adventurous we would have tried to see more of it, but that would have involved quite a bit of off-road riding. Nonetheless we ended up staying at Pucon, having visited Villarrica on the way. Pucon is just below a live volcano with the town on an orange alert. Apparently this one pops every three to six years and the last time was 2020.
Yes, it is smoking in the photo and it didn't seem to worry the wildlife too much.
