My trip to Antofagasta to try to sell the van again didn't have the most auspicious of starts...I somehow managed to set my alarm for the same time as the airport transfer was booked, rather than giving myself the hour to wake up and get ready I had originally planned. So I was pretty confused when I was woken at 3:30am with a phone call from the taxi driver, in Spansh, that my brain totally failed to decipher. In my drowsy state I almost hung up and went back to sleep thinking it was a wrong number but luckily Christine was more on the ball and figured out what was happening. Cue a sudden mad rush to get ready and get to the airport.
Once in Antofagasta, I got a rather uncomfortable ride squashed into a crowded collectivo taxi to Hugo and Elizabeth's house and from there Hugo drove us all into town. Our first stop was the registro civil office but I was pretty sure that this wasn't the correct place to be as the registration of the van in my name was still going to take 3 weeks to process. I decided that rather than wait the hour or so for our ticket number to come up, I would try to persuade Hugo we should be at the notary instead....this was no mean feat considering my pathetic Spanish abilities. Miraculously I managed to make myself understood and so off to the notary we went (I know this isn't really adding much to the story but I'm just quite chuffed I managed to have a real, useful conversation in Spanish on my own!)
As it turned out we didn't even need to go to the notary....the documents we had got in Santiago were sufficient for Hugo to register the van without me being present once the ownership change had been processed...the only thing left to do was get paid.
At the bank my eyes nearly popped out of my head when the cashier produced a block of notes the size of a breeze block...I mean it was a ridiculous slab of money. She then proceeded to count out 7.5 million pesos using a noisy note-counting machine inexplicably mounted high up in her booth so it was blatantly visible to all the customers behind us (and there were a lot). My paranoia was kicking in even more as an impromptu relay was created with the cashier passing the money, 1 million pesos at a time, to Hugo who would pass it to me so I could stuff it in the top of my rucksack. It was hard to not break into a sprint on the way back to the car!
My original flight was booked for 7:40pm just in case we needed lots of time to resolve any problems but as it was we were done by 10:30am. I decided to try to get an earlier flight and after taking a quick picture of the new owners, I gave the van a quick hug, picked up the last suitcase of our things and headed off to the airport.
Unfortunately I just missed that flight and so instead I spent the rest of the day unpacking and repacking my bags to try to get down to my allowed check-in baggage limit and trying to get some sleep whilst still protecting the overly-valuable contents of my bags...basically tying them all together and sleeping on top of them.
By the time I got back to Santiago I was really looking forward to the dinner party Christine was laying on for our friends for our last night but, as we should expect from this trip, things weren't that simple. Once the baggage reclaim belt came to a halt and I looked around at the empty room I realised there may be an issue. It turned out I had stupidly put an aerosol can in the suitcase which I didn't even consider might be a problem. The suitcase had been held at Antofagasta and I needed to send an email with permission for them to open it and remove the aerosol. The airline were pretty efficient at dealing with the problem though and promised to have the bag delivered to our apartment the following morning.
So finally I was able to head home where we could take silly photos of our wads of cash like the multi-millionaires we had always wanted to be....
Once in Antofagasta, I got a rather uncomfortable ride squashed into a crowded collectivo taxi to Hugo and Elizabeth's house and from there Hugo drove us all into town. Our first stop was the registro civil office but I was pretty sure that this wasn't the correct place to be as the registration of the van in my name was still going to take 3 weeks to process. I decided that rather than wait the hour or so for our ticket number to come up, I would try to persuade Hugo we should be at the notary instead....this was no mean feat considering my pathetic Spanish abilities. Miraculously I managed to make myself understood and so off to the notary we went (I know this isn't really adding much to the story but I'm just quite chuffed I managed to have a real, useful conversation in Spanish on my own!)
As it turned out we didn't even need to go to the notary....the documents we had got in Santiago were sufficient for Hugo to register the van without me being present once the ownership change had been processed...the only thing left to do was get paid.
At the bank my eyes nearly popped out of my head when the cashier produced a block of notes the size of a breeze block...I mean it was a ridiculous slab of money. She then proceeded to count out 7.5 million pesos using a noisy note-counting machine inexplicably mounted high up in her booth so it was blatantly visible to all the customers behind us (and there were a lot). My paranoia was kicking in even more as an impromptu relay was created with the cashier passing the money, 1 million pesos at a time, to Hugo who would pass it to me so I could stuff it in the top of my rucksack. It was hard to not break into a sprint on the way back to the car!
My original flight was booked for 7:40pm just in case we needed lots of time to resolve any problems but as it was we were done by 10:30am. I decided to try to get an earlier flight and after taking a quick picture of the new owners, I gave the van a quick hug, picked up the last suitcase of our things and headed off to the airport.
Unfortunately I just missed that flight and so instead I spent the rest of the day unpacking and repacking my bags to try to get down to my allowed check-in baggage limit and trying to get some sleep whilst still protecting the overly-valuable contents of my bags...basically tying them all together and sleeping on top of them.
By the time I got back to Santiago I was really looking forward to the dinner party Christine was laying on for our friends for our last night but, as we should expect from this trip, things weren't that simple. Once the baggage reclaim belt came to a halt and I looked around at the empty room I realised there may be an issue. It turned out I had stupidly put an aerosol can in the suitcase which I didn't even consider might be a problem. The suitcase had been held at Antofagasta and I needed to send an email with permission for them to open it and remove the aerosol. The airline were pretty efficient at dealing with the problem though and promised to have the bag delivered to our apartment the following morning.
So finally I was able to head home where we could take silly photos of our wads of cash like the multi-millionaires we had always wanted to be....
