The third traverse of the Argentinian / Chilean border was a tense affair. You would think we would be getting good at this now but it is different every time. This was a coach trip from Bariloche to Puerto Varas. Having got to the bus station early we stood waiting outside what was surely the right bus then the driver got in and drove off empty. He later sneaked back into a different part of the station leaving half his customers standing in the wrong place. Mercifully someone noticed and we trundled our stuff to the right bay. Then we were asked if we had checked in. Never had to do that before and it seemed that no one else had either. Simply read the QR code with your phone, download the questionnaire and fill it out, all with 10 minutes to take off, a number of tricky questions (eg name of border post) and dodgy station WiFi. The blind leading the blind but we all got on just in time. The journey itself was magnificent if you were rating bus journeys from what you see out of the window but not so much if you were rating the efficiency of border control. On the outgoing Argentinian side there was mayhem as there was only one person checking the passports. This with traffic queuing miles down the road. There was rumour of a strike or maybe a work to rule. Also a number of people on the bus didn’t have the right papers which held things up no end. And then miraculously they did so off the bus went to the Chilean side. Here the passengers were shown into the passport checking room with zero people checking passports. Then a man with a gun came in and asked the whole room if they had any fruit, veg, meat or alcohol. This was asked in a darkly comic way (like you better not have any of that stuff you naughty people). And the passengers all shouted ’no’ like it was a game. The man with the gun disappeared and then a lady had her bag split under the weight of its contents and a load of lemons and oranges rolled across the floor. Then everyone laughed. Not sure what happened to her. When the man with the stamp turned up it was hard to tell if the Chileans were also on strike or not. When everyone was processed, our driver took the opportunity to wait for another bus to come through (a passenger swapped buses), thus adding further delays. We arrived in Puerto Varas 2 hours late but lucky for us we weren’t in a hurry.
