FRUSTRATION!

Frustration/Anger/Disappoint 3/08/07

Today was one of those days that I will remember for a long time. Prior to coming down to Argentina I performed countless hours of research on Argentina and purchasing a car. With all the information on the internet, I figured once we bought the car and were out of Argentina everything would be fine. First, I should say that I’ve read about other people’s experiences crossing the borders with purchased cars or rentals and experiences have varied greatly. It seems to depend on the border crossing or the person at the counter. After reading the aforementioned paragraph you could only guess that we experienced problems at the Argentina/Chile border outside of Rio Turbio.

We left Puerto San Julian knowing it was going to be a very long driving day, but we also knew that it was going to be well worth the travel once we got to Puerto Natales, Chile. Nearly 6 hrs after we left Puerto San Julian we were at a “Y” in the road, 25km east to Rio Gallegos and 200+ km west to Rio Turbio. Unfortunately, there are not enough gas stations in southern Patagonia for detours not to occur. We had to drive east to Rio Gallegos, which was out of our way, in order to get gas and food. The other option was to take a gamble and drive west towards Rio Turbio in hopes of finding a gas station in the next 100 km with diesel on hand.

In retrospect, we were glad for the detour into Rio Gallegos. We found a Chinese buffet restaurant called Chan’s. Let me just say that in the states, this Chinese restaurant would not be in business for long, however, with everyone hungry and wanting something different, we thought the food was great. Payton liked the restaurant the best, it had a Parrilla and Chinese and she ate five 8 inch sausage dogs. I don’t know where she puts it.

Arriving in Rio Turbio, the last town before the Chile border was a sight for sore eyes. Rio Turbio is an old coal mining community that is trying to find new ways to beautify the area and generate money. The city went as far as to have the houses within the city limits painted bright colorful colors to help beautify the town. Trust me, it doesn’t help much. We didn’t care, because we were leaving Argentina! We drove through Rio Turbio and had to drive a couple of miles to the border crossing. The drive was beautiful. The closer we got to the Chile border the more green things became with evergreen trees and rock croppings. We stopped at the Argentina border crossing for our departure stamps on the passports. Everything seemed simple enough. We went to the border-crossing soldier who stamped all of our passports and then she directed me to the AFIP (Aduana) Customs agent. We waited in long line for approximately 10 minutes and during this time I got this unsettling feeling in my gut. We arrived at the window and after showing them all of our paperwork for the car; ie. registration, insurance, international driver’s licenses and our CDI, the man behind the window stated we couldn’t cross the border. WHAT!!!!! With our limited Spanish and the soldier’s very limited English we were able to recruit another tourist to help translate the issue at hand. It became apparent quickly that we were not crossing the border. Basically, it comes down to this… WE ARE NOT ARGENTIAN CITIZENS AND TOURISTS ARE NOT ABLE TO CROSS ANY BORDER WITH A CAR PURCHASED WITHIN ARGENTINA! We could only cross with a DNI. Well in order to get a DNI you need to reside within Argentina for 2-3 years and complete more paperwork…I attempted to argue with the man behind the counter, but that was useless. In Argentina, once someone says “no” it’s law. I requested to see the law in writing, unfortunately, it was on a laptop that was maybe older than I was and it wasn’t going to do any good. With Jen crying in the background, and Payton not knowing what just happened, I felt this overwhelming hopelessness. The closest town to rent a car was 2.5 hrs away in El Calafate. In addition, it was getting late, almost 2000, and we had to get a place to stay the night, but the closest town, which met our minimal habitation standards, was in El Calafate. With all of this disappointment, I once again had to get back in another line to re-enter Argentina and get our passports stamped again. If you remember, we were given approval to leave the country by the Border Patrol, but not by customs! Therefore, border patrol has to stamp our passports to enter the country. This required translations and help from superiors as well.

Referencias del mapa

Map references

Wthis map shows how close we were to the Chile border. The black dotted line is the Argentinean border. So Close!

Got into El Calafate that night at 2200. Long day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What will we do now?