Just as we were thinking we might have to change our flights and stay longer, on Tuesday (4th) evening, Carlos told us someone had called him and was ready to offer us more than the minimum we'd agreed to accept. Yay! BUT he was 700km away in Antofagasta and we would have to do the travelling.....boo....
If we decided to go for it, it would mean a >10 hour drive with the possibility that the buyer still pulled out once we got there. It would be risky. So we decided the best course of action would be to fully disclose all the van's imperfections to the potential buyer and see how that affected things. The next day, we took photos of the broken windscreen etc and sent him an email detailing everything that might put him off. To our surprise, he said he was still interested and made a firm offer that we accepted.
But our timetable was tight. We had to get to Antofagasta by Thursday night, in order to complete the bureaucracy of transferring ownership of the van before the Registro Civil closed at 2pm on Friday. Then we had to get to Santiago in time for our 10.45pm flight to San Francisco on Saturday night. There was no room for anything to go wrong!
And so it was on Thursday we set off for Antofagasta! Although leaving Arica was a relief, we were both sad to say goodbye to Javier's parents, Edna & Carlos. They had become like our adoptive Chilean mum & dad and we had got in to a routine of having breakfast and onces with them in exchange for Paul occasionally providing tech support!
In addition to the buyer pulling out, we also ran the risk of being reprimanded by the police for driving the van without its MOT. Fingers crossed we wouldn't be stopped, but just in case, Carlos told us our defence should be that we officially had until 11th February to change the windscreen and get retested, but we had to go to Antofagasta to do it. Anyway, there are no police checkpoints on the way to Antofagasta, so we should've been fine.
Our hearts skipped a beat though, when about an hour in to the journey, we came to a pop-up checkpoint. Luckily, the truck in front of us got stopped, so we were waved through while the officers busied themselves with that. PHEW!
But a couple of hours later, our luck ran out when we were pulled over at a second checkpoint. Apparently, we'd been doing 74kph in a 50kph zone. Eek!! We hadn't noticed the new speed restriction sign. When we handed over our papers and the officer saw our MOT certificate with 'FAILED' stamped across it, he pulled a "You don't have an MOT?!" face and took all our papers to his booth.
Our biggest worry was that the van might be impounded, so we were (slightly) relieved when we were given a fine. But Paul's licence was being withheld and would only be returned once he paid the fine. When we explained that we were flying home in 2 days, the officer said we could go to the Public Office around the corner and pay the fine immediately.
It took the woman at the Public Office some convincing to let us pay without her having seen Paul's driving licence (I think it would have eventually been brought to her office by the police) but after a phone call, she agreed to print the paper we needed. We then had to go to the Municipal Office down the road to pay the £150 fine:
Then it was back to the Public Office to get a receipt to take to the police to get Paul's licence back! All-in-all, the whole process added an hour to our journey. Theoretically, we could've left the licence, continued our journey and got a replacement licence at home. But an unpaid fine would have been problematic when we came to selling the van, so it had to be done.
After that, the rest of our journey was fine, I even got behind the wheel for a bit. Despite this, we eventually arrived in Antofagasta at 9pm - a full 13 hours after we left Arica! We camped near the beach and spent the evening packing our stuff and cleaning the van, having agreed to meet Hugo, the prospective buyer, early the next day.
