Chilean Border
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
32
41
Trip End
Feb 28, 2009
Iquique,
Chile
Friday, January 9, 2009
As I make my way to the Peru / Chilean border I remind myself of the rules I posted much earlier in my blog. I enter Peru customs and get the first stamp. Wow that was easy and now I get the second stamp. I am officially allowed to leave the country. I go to Aduana to release the bike, the official has to get the form from a taxi driver outside because he doesn't have any. I fill out the form and he confirms the VIN number of the bike.... and stamp. Free to leave Peru in less than an hour. Just as we are leaving the Peruvian border a German motorcyclist pulls up. Gerald is riding a BMW GS100 and very overloaded. He meets us at the Chilean border while we are waiting in line. I am not surprised that once at the first window we get sent to another window, then another and yet another. Four forms later, 3 different people and several people in line frustrated with us because we donīt know the system we are ready for inspection. The inspectors are the most thorough yet and pull off both my panniers and inspect them. The instant we cross the border the clocks advance 2 hours instead of it being 9:30 it suddenly jumps to 11:30.
We travel with Gerald to the town of Arica where we stop for some lunch. He decides to carry on while Mike and I stay in Arica for the night..
There is still plenty of daylight at 8:30 and we are going to have to adjust our internal clocks to match the time change.
Thursday January 8th
We get a wake up call this morning for 7:00, (5:00 our time) my concern is we will sleep to our regular time of 7:00 (9:00 Chilean time) and therefore lose valuable daylight. After a continental breakfast we walk down to the ocean front and watch the crew on the docks refurbish old fishing vessels. We left for the town of Iquique. The ride was boring there was nothing in the desert but sand and I mean nothing but sand, brown sand, white sand, black sand, course sand, fine sand. No plants, no animals, not even a cloud in the sky.
Very Sterile.
We arrive in Iquique book ourselves into the hostel, cook supper, drink beverages and then research the stop locations of the Dakar Rally.
