1. Hallo Chile


Day 136

It is early morning Peruvian time I have a full day ahead of me as I want to cross to Chile today. The plan is to ride to town of Iquique on the coast of Chile, which is about 400 km from Tacna. I get up right in early and check the weather then I realized that Chile is two hours ahead of Peru so basically I am late already. No problem I have the whole day. 

Getting out of Tacna is easy and in 30 minutes I am at the border. the signs there are a little bit confusing, and I end up in the wrong place. The officer came out of his office and pointed me to right direction through bypass and 1 km later I was at to the proper border crossing. I've read on the website about procedures on this border crossing and by all accounts, it should be fairly easy but let me be the judge.

Because it is already midmorning in Chile there is a lot of people waiting to be processed so I am feeling the worst because lineups are pretty long. However, they have many windows open and all of them are staffed or both sides, Chile, and Peru and the lineups go very quickly. First, I need to get stamped out of Peru, which takes only a few minutes then I go to next window and get stamped into Chile. Very quick process so I'm legally in Chile now. The hard part always is to import my motorbike.  In the window next I get to cancel my import permit from Peru then after filing out the form for Chile, which takes only about 15 minutes I get new temporary import permit for Chile. All the paperwork is done. Only thing is get my bike and my gear checked out by the customs. They made me open my bags, and on the top of one of my bag is a banana which I was saving for snack on the road. Fruits and vegetables are not allowed across the borders pretty much anywhere, but I forgot about it. Officer looks at it like it was loaded gun and took it away. I asked him if I can eat at the border and he said no. OK no problem. Everything else was good so I close up my bags again, and when I was leaving, I looked behind me and the officer he checked my bags was eating my banana! OK whatever I hope it tasted good. When I was leaving the border crossing, the lineup north to Peru was several kilometres long and a lot of shouting there. People tried to cut in front of each other and the other people didn't like it so it was a lot of interesting situations over there. None of them applied to me, so I'm officially in Chile with my bike. I will be here for a while.

Only a few km after the border, there is an airport from nearby nearby town of Arica. I landed here on my way to Antarctica in 1995. I stopped and took a pictures from the highway. It's been a long time ago.

The first thing which is immediately noticeable in Chile, is that the roads are much better than in Peru. Also, the road signs are in proper places where it make sense, and the road markings are freshly painted and more than anything else is that Chilean drivers actually obey their road laws. Nobody passing anybody over double lines or in blind corners like everybody in Peru. This is a very nice observation. The roads are in good conditions, all uphill sections have bypass lane for trucks and down sections have run away exit lanes for trucks as well. I like that.

The scenery around is a full on desert. There is no vegetation to be seen, not even one blade of grass, no life whatsoever. The road is nice and wide and going up and down across huge valleys. 1,000 metres down into the valley only 1,000m to get up on the other side of the valley. It is getting hot, I mean in real desert hot. There's nothing to look at, there's no mountains no rivers no other features. It is very dangerous because you lose a sense of distance because your eyes need something to compare to so you have to be careful when you're passing other cars and there is another car coming into your direction. It is very difficult to judge the distance. Other than that it is easy riding, just drink a lot of water. I set my cruise control to 100 km/h and just chill on my bike. Traffic is very light, truckers and everybody else is following the law here. There are no towns no villages, no nothing. A few hours later I come to an intersection where I need to take a turn towards the coast which is about 60 km to Iquique where I have booked a room for tonight. The road turns into a freeway with four lanes. 30 km before the coast there is a tollbooth and unlike in other countries, motorcycles have to pay tolls in Chile. There is a tiny little problem. I have no local money. I have US dollars but no Chilean pesos. I get to the tollbooth and I tried to pay with US dollars and they have no idea what to do with it because they are not set up for it. the lady checks with another lady in another booth and at the end they just shrugs, give me back the money and let me go through. A few km later, I get the top of the plain and there's a town right below me a thousand metre descent to the sea level and it is a beautiful view from the top. Traffic is not bad for a big city and soon I find my place which is about hundred metres from the beach. Place is nothing special but it's clean and has a shower and that's all I need.

The first thing I need to do is to find an ATM and get some Chilean pesos. I asked people in hotel and I they have no idea where any ATMs in the neighbourhood are. I look it up on Google maps and off I go trying to get some money. Well, it turns out not to be so easy. Every ATM I tried I got a message saying that I'm using foreign issued card and gave me no money. I even went to a fancy foreign hotel, and I asked in reception where and how to get local cash. They were not too helpful either so basically I'm stuck here with the no money. I tried all my four cards with the same result. Well, we might have a problem Houston. let’s see if I can at least go to a restaurant and pay with my card. I did and I could, which was a relief because I can eat now hopefully I can pay with my card at the gas station and that's all I need for now. I will deal with borders when I get to it. It was getting late so I had a dinner and few drinks, walked around the beach, which was pretty crowded. That's a definition of hell for me seeing thousands of thousands of people sitting and roasting in the sun on the beach.

Anyway, it is late here and it has been a long day so it's time to hit the sack. And I will deal with the money problem tomorrow. Hopefully I can solve it quickly.

Note to add to today's blog. I am writing this using a transcribe feature on my laptop. As I hate typing, I can dictate this to my laptop and it transcribes everything to my blog. And it looks like  the transcript is very accurate. I'll have to go through it but this will save me a lot of time. OK that's it for tonight. See you tomorrow.

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2. Coastal Highway