Borderline Experiences
When you are traveling in Europe it may happen that you change from one country to another without even noticing it. Most of the time you just cross the border without stopping. Outside of the EU it is a different story. So let me report about our “borderline experiences” so far :-)
When we entered Chile for the first time we came by plane and we landed in Santiago on a big international airport, so everything as usual. We got our luggage, were asked how many Dollars we are bringing with us and after a couple of checks and some waiting, we received our stamp in the passport and were able to enter. Nothing special.
The next time we crossed the border was a different thing though. We started the day in the National Park Laguna del Laja where we stayed before. Of course it took us way longer than estimated to have breakfast, clean the dishes and pack the tent, so we left not before 11:30 to go east heading for the Paso de Pichachen which is a gravel road in nowhere land. Very beautiful, but exhausting to ride.
After some hours we reached the Chilean border. The border control and customs guys were quite relaxed. We received some compliments regarding our good spanish, handed them the chilean papers for our motorcycles, they got us the stamp for leaving Chile and then we left to go to Argentina. Quite easy (30-40min).
What came then surprised me. I was suspecting the Immigration Office of Argentina a couple of hundred meters later, or maybe some kilometers... But then we drove for about 1 hour through nowhere land on a quite challenging off-road track until we saw the next sign of humanity.
Next to a very beautiful building of the police, the bureau of migration was located in a shabby container. So we parked our motorcycles next to the container and went in being in a good mood after the seamless experience in Chile.
As always we started with immigration and they asked us for the Chilean documents for the bikes. We explained to them that we only had the certificate of ownership from Germany and that we gave the Chilean document to the Chilean customs and they kept it. So the Argentinean border officers replied to us that this was obviously a mistake of the Chilean officers and that they should have given us back the document. Without it only we could enter Argentina, but we would not be able to take the bikes with us.
So we were a in a little shock. It was already 17:00 and going back to Chilean office and forth to the Argentinean one to then continue would have been really exhausting, especially considering that we had some kilometers to ride left in Argentina to go to El Cholar, the first possibility to spend the night.
After quite some discussions the guys from immigration talked to the responsible officer for customs, and luckily he explained them, that only for Chilean cars, a document from Chile is required. He confirmed that with our document from Germany our German bikes may enter (puhhhhh, what a relief) and that he will issue a new document valid for Argentina, which will be kept as well in Argentina once we leave. Same procedure as with the Chilean document.
After this experience we were not too convinced of their profound knowledge of all rules and regulations that apply, so their statement that there is no need for a stamp in the passport was not too convincing. They told us we will just get an email once we are in a region with signal or Wifi confirming the immigration and that is sufficient. But they were in charge so at the end we left without a stamp but with our bikes.
As it showed later they were right. We received an email confirming the immigration in Argentina and also when leaving Argentina some time later there were no complaints about anything missing.
Next time crossing the border was from Argentina back to Chile in Icalma. We started the day in Villa Pehuenia. We were heading to the National Park of Conguillío for camping so we went shopping for groceries to be able to cook the next days at the camp site. And packing all food for the next days and a smooth and short ride we reached the border at around one a clock.
Already knowing the process we were quite certain everything would go seamlessly.
Well.. It did not.
As we learned at that day you are not allowed to import raw fruits or vegetables, uncooked eggs, raw meat, certain spices or seeds and whatnot from Argentina to Chile. So while importing everything of this in the other direction is totally fine, no one was interested in looking into our luggage, the border control officer in Chile explained to us that unfortunately 3/4 of the food we just bought has to be destroyed. We listened to him nodding and excusing for not declaring the illegal goods properly while eating our bananas from Ecuador we had bought in Argentina to avoid at least their destruction. We had to open all our luggage, and fortunately our panniers could stay with the bikes, but our duffel bags needed to pass the x-ray machine.
At the end we have not informed ourselves properly so, no one else to blame.
But needless to say that I was quite pissed when we had to equip ourselves again on the rest of the trip to the camping site. There was no village anymore on the way, but only some very small mini-markets selling vegetables that seemed to have been waiting for a costumer for quite some time already.
Side note: No one had to starve and the dinner was actually quite good at the end.
The last time we crossed the border so far (back to Argentina) was at Paso Hua Hum and the only difficulty was that it was raining. Seems effortless but try keeping all your documents dry if they ask you to stop in front of the roofed part and all your clothes, helmet and gloves are dripping wet…
Emigrating and immigrating went without any issues this time. Being happy about this, at the Argentinean part of the boarder I was heading back to my bike when I realized that one of my fog lights must have lost both of its screws that connected it to the bike frame and was just dangling only being hold by the cable.. But this is another story and has nothing to do with customs or border control ;-)
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