Chile South - Part 1

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Hi!
Where did we stop last time, yes right before we left Argentina. Well the boarder was right on the pass at 3000m! The station was a big hall with approximately 20 counters in the center, and at each counter there was either a Chilenean or Argentinean officer, but none of them spoke a single word English, and we no Spanish! All in all when you try to bring a foreign car over the boarder you have to traverse at least six of these counters in the right order. We immediately got the first three right and thought everything will run smoothly...yeah well not really! At the fourth a lady handed us a form for our car and sent us to some place we didn't understand. After lining up at each other counter, with the same result sending us back to the lady, we were lost! Basically we stood there half an hour just looking stupid and not doing anything, sometimes going to random people showing them our form, but then looking stupid again! After at least 30 minutes one guy felt sorry about us, took the form and we got a stamp on it. Equipped with that we returned to the lady, got another 3-4 stamps on the form and that was almost it. Food inspection went well and we left the place after approximately 2 hours!

First night in Chile we wanted to spend in Algarrobo, unfortunately there was no camping, hostel or even information around there. So we stopped at a gas station asked the guy there, and guess what had not a clue what he was telling us. He tried to communicate with us for at least 15 minutes, no way. Finally a truck came by and we understood that we should follow him! He brought us to a farm/little zoo where we could park for the night. They had lamas, turkeys, horses and lots of other animals, was quite funny there. We bought a sixpack and drank it with the family living there that evening; it was very nice except that we couldn't talk to them ;-)!

Following days we spent in Pichilemu, a famous surf town. Had some good days, just the surf was not very good (only one session), and when the weather also got worse we decided to leave and go to the South in the mountains. We stayed the last nights near Cunco at the hostel of a German guy. Every time we ask somebody for some streets of national parks we get the same answer: "mucho, mucho nieve!!!" You can look up what that means...;-) Still, we saw some great lakes and had a lot of fun driving snowy streets with the L300 (Heckantrieb-? rear drive?). On the way to the Conguillo National Park we got stuck in the snow in one corner, lucky we, there was a farmer just around the corner and helped us out ;-). All in all Landscape is really beautiful down here; however the season is not right! Next stop will be Pucon and the Villarica volcano before we return to the coast and try to find some surf…

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