Day 48 December 27th 2006, Red Hot Chili Peppers, El Calafate Argentina to Puerto Natales Chile

The Journey so far

My standard response to any question posed to me in Spanish is "Si" whether or not I really understand the question, so far this has stood me in good stead. Today however I adopted a different approach say nothing. The reason, the Argentine border control. Crossing by bus into Chile we had to first pass through Argentine border control.

After queuing for quite some time, the bus we were on was searched by the narcotics police and their dog, before random questioning by a police officer on the bus. Changing between Spanish and English I could make out he was asking if anyone had any drugs.

After leaving Argentina we queued again at Chile immigration before finally arriving in Puerto Natales, a small but very friendly port town. It may have been my imagination by Chile immediatley had a much warmer and welcoming feel than Argentina, perhaps due to the absence of any football or territory disputes in the past. The currency here is also Pesos but with an exchange rate of 1,000 to the pound. This has thrown my accounting into chaos, after staring the day in Argie Pesos which are about 5 to the pound. Why I am not using the pound symbol, for some unknown reason it doesn´t seem to be on any of the keyboards in South America.

As I predicted in my second post I would indeed be going hungry in Chile as Shelley dragged me kicking and screaming into a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. In defiance I had a can of coke.

After meeting with out tour guide for the next few days we managed to find a pizza place, that served meat and finally decent beer called Austral. Making a dash back to the hotel we passed an all night Internet cafe complete with Techno dj. I was not allowed to pay a visit as apparently it was full of geeks, what´s wrong with geeks.

Highlights: Arriving in Chile