The next morning we heard there was a strike of the civil servants in Chile, not what you want to hear on the day you plan to cross the border to Chile. We drove the 20 km to the border area.
First you arrive at the Peru immigration building and pull in and park in the lot.
At the front of the building there is a small door to the right into the migration office, but first go to the door just to the left. There is a desk there where the guard will have you fill in your information in a ledger and then give you a triplicate form to fill in for cancelling your permit. You take this, your passport, and the tourist paper you got when you entered the country to the officers inside the first door (past the x-ray machine). Here they will stamp your passport and the triplicate form.
Go back out and move the bike (not sure why) past the booths and park on the road at the side of the building.
Enter the door marked CIT and get your permit cancelled. They want your permit, passport, drivers’ license and the triplicate form. They will enter this in the computer and hand you one of the forms.
We met this cool German Girl Anni who is living in Peru, but is on a 3- month ride to Ushuaia.
Now drive to the Chile side.
Pass the booth to the left and park to the right.
This is where our 320 km day starts to go south. First we arrived at the border at 845, but in Chile its 1045! The first thing is easy you go to the migration window to get an entry stamp. They also give you a declaration to sign saying you have no food or fruit or large sums of cash, but no one ever looked at ours. Next there was a massive line for the Aduana for luggage check. All luggage is x-rayed. This took 2 hours. During this time they told us to move the bikes to the back of the car line which really made no sense, since we are standing in the Aduana line. They finally agreed to let us park them at the front.
When we got to the front of the line they let us move the bikes there and we were told we had to unload everything. This is a joke really, because when they asked what was in the bag I had forgotten in the bottom of my pannier and I said bike parts they said OK and didn’t even look.
Finally they lifted the gate and we moved to the aduana for vehicles. This is a very quick procedure. You fill out all your own info on a carbon form and they stamp it and give you a copy. Now proceed to the exit gate and show your form. 4 hours total!
Finally headed south in Chile.
There was you guessed it more sand and some wind, but there was a couple of cool canyons.
We unfortunately had 2 30 min road closures on the Highway and so we were racing the sunset at 8 pm Chile time to get to Pozo Almonte. The last 50 km with the sun setting and the wind howling the temperature dropped to a nippy 9 degrees. We arrived just at dark with some gas left still, but no Pesos and very empty stomachs. At the gas bar there was an ATM that luckily worked with our card. The attendant suggested the Hostal near by where for 50$ you get a small simple dorm room with a bathroom. The best was the secure parking lot.
