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“BLING BLING”, groan, “BLING BLING”, another groan from Leigh. Yes, a 4:00am alarm to be at the bus station at 5:00am. We taxied down the hill and on the way we passed the French family of four that had stayed in the cabins at the back of our B & B. They were walking in the rain with the girls in tow, five and two and a half years old. Hmmm ... I thought better them than me!!
Still very dark but we are underway. Eileen feels the call of nature but she comes scurrying back saying there is no light and when she went to step into the stall her foot landed in a small pond!! Thirty minutes later and still dark the call was sufficiently loud enough for her to venture back to the pond!! Ugh is all she could say. Ms snoozy is soon in the land of nod while I am enjoying remembering the uneventful fishing trip while watching rugged and varied landscape whizz by.
Just at daybreak the bus pulls into the bus station and so I make a dash for the banõs des caballeros (men’s room). Emerging from the banõs I was feeling
somewhat more relaxed until I was met by a very animated Eileen. She had woken from a deep sleep to be given instructions in Spanish about changing buses and I had vanished. Eventually we find the right bus and we are given some paperwork for the border crossing. We both smile as we board a much nicer, newer and, to our relief, a cleaner bus.
The journey continues with the landscape getting flatter and browner. The Argentine border crossing was a breeze and it took only 20 minutes for our bus passengers to be processed. We had read about long waits at border crossings but it is the shoulder season and so the buses are only half full.
What surprised me was how far it was to the Chilean border post; 30 minutes drive with large estancias (farms) between the two posts. I had always imagined that all border posts were like ‘checkpoint Charlie’ in an old spy movie i.e. 100 metres apart.
Chile has much stricter border rules regarding importing agricultural produce. The bus driver handed us a form outlining the controls so we ditched the remains of our lunch.
Again only a short wait
when we went through the Chilean border post and then a luggage scan before we reboarded the bus in the cold conditions.
Back on the bus a very voluminous German girl pulled out a salami and cheese roll that was a good half metre long! Hmmm ... so much for border control.
The ferry ride across the channel to the mainland was interesting with the swell and the wind whipping up huge salt spray which covered all the vehicles. The ferry ramps at both ends of the boat meant that the vehicles could drive straight on at one side and straight off at the other. Very efficient.
The streets and properties in Punta Arenas were covered in mud due to a flood a month before we arrived. They need some good kiwi civil defence to sort it. We found our way to the bus centre to arrange our bus to Puerto Natales only to find they would not take Argentine pesos or US dollars or credit cards! So leaving Eileen with the bags I tracked off through the mud and rain to look for a bank. I felt like someone from the Amazing Race as I walked
around town asking directions to a Banco (Spanish for bank). Half an hour later I had extracted funds from the money machine and I was back in the queue for bus tickets.
After a bit of a walk in the rain and cold through mud and overflowing gutters, we found our hostel for the night and then we visited the supermarket. After a lovely dinner whipped up by Eileen we drank a bottle of Chilean red wine while we listened to our fellow German hostellers tell stories of their six week climbing expedition at Cape Horn. I’m not sure if imagining the expedition made us tired or if it was the journey but we seemed to sleep very well.
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