Borderline Inappropriate

By now you all must be wondering whether or not Elise and I survived the 36 hours on the bus from Argentina to the north of Chile. Well we did, sort of. The perpetual monotony that we endured for a day and half probably took a couple of years off my life.

We woke up in Mendoza, Argentina before sunrise on the day of departure. We watched two sunsets and another sunrise from the bus window before we arrived in Arica, Chile the next night. Stage one: bus through the Andes and cross the border into Chile. We’ve crossed borders into 19 countries so far this trip with virtually no hassles. We’ve never claimed anything at customs and never had any problems. We’ve never been searched or interrogated or fined or anything.

Our daypacks were overflowing with food that we had packed for the forthcoming 36 hours of sitting on our asses; we had about five meals in the form of semi-perishable food. When we got to the Chilean border they had everybody get off the bus and file into a building where we were lined up in front of tables facing the border guards. Out of nowhere they started passing around a styrofoam tip cup. I still have no idea what we were expected to tip for but a few of the locals were dropping in coins anyway. Personally, I don’t tip unless I receive some sort of service, and the border guards had yet to WOW me with their thorough attentiveness to my border-crossing needs. Then they asked if anyone had anything to declare, emphasizing that fruits and vegetables must all be handed over to the officers. I’ve smuggled many-a-fruit over the border to the States before and I’ve always managed to elude customs, so I wasn’t about to hand over the 4 kg of apples and oranges I had stashed in my bag to the Chilean pan-handling customs officers. For some reason, Elise and I were singled out in front of everybody and asked directly if we had any fruit to declare (I guess we looked like suspicious gringos). That’s when Elise got the jitters and gave up our bag of apples. Those intimidation tactics won’t work on me, though! I didn’t want to part with our juicy oranges so I firmly stated that the apples were all we had. I figured they’d just move on since they should be more concerned with catching drug smugglers and illegal aliens than a couple of Canadian fruit connoisseurs! I thought we were in the clear but they directed everyone over to a baggage scanner. I still had hope that we could get away with the oranges, but as soon as my bag disappeared past the rubber flaps they stopped the conveyor. The jig was up. They searched my bag. They found the oranges. Apparently they take this kind of infraction very seriously in Chile since four officers converged on me and took my passport away. As an accomplice, they searched Elise’s bag and found our hard-boiled eggs that were reserved for our breakfast the next morning! Not cool. We were detained as the entire bus waited and the driver berated us for trying to smuggle fruit across the border. I kept hearing “you pay big penalty” in Spanish as some other officers did the spin test with our eggs to see if they were hard-boiled or not (…you know, if it spins it’s cooked, if not then it’s raw). The officers looked absolutely ridiculous doing this. But, apparently cooked eggs are ok so we got those back. After ten minutes of pleading ignorance and faking that I can’t speak Spanish they finally gave me back my passport and sent us on our way. Disaster averted… for now.

Road to Chile



A glimpse of Aconcagua, the tallest mountiang in the Americas



A seemingly warm welcome

Switch back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back..........

Stage two: Santiago to Arica, Chile. Things were going pretty good up until about the 22 hour mark of the bus ride. That’s when Elise’s body simply gave up. The break in the monotony came as Elise got violently ill from motion sickness and had to vomit in the already-disgusting bus lavatory. Gross. Even grosser was when the next dude to use the lavatory relieved himself of a week’s worth of constipation and clogged the toilet. The next vomit episode for Elise would be into a plastic grocery bag. As the bus twisted around the sand dunes of the Atacama Desert (the driest desert on Earth...the area where those miners were stranded) we soon ran out of grocery bags. So, as a grand finale Elise had to shamefully jump from the bus in the next town and give’er on the side of the road while the entire bus looked on. Things got a bit better after that, but with Elise out of commission I got so desperate for something to do that I almost watched the Nicolas Cage movie they were showing. Luckily, I came to my senses and unplugged my headphones after the opening credits. I think we'll fly next time.

-G

Hour 5. Looks pretty dry.

Hour 10

Hour 20

Hour 25. Yup, still dry.