San Francisco

When we finally left Santiago last Tuesday, we headed to San Francisco to visit our friends Nick & Vans and their 2 month old son Xavi.  

It was so nice being able to relax and not think about having to sell the van!  We spent our first day in San Francisco doing nothing except having a curry delivered to the house in the evening.

On the Saturday (the day we were originally meant to fly to London) Nick, Vans & Xavi headed to Europe themselves, but they kindly let us stay on at their place for a couple more nights.  There was an end of Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco, so we headed to that on Saturday evening.

It took a bit of wandering around to find a good spot - little old Chinese ladies aren't afraid to push in front of you!  But we eventually found a place to stand right at the front next to the barriers, so we ended up staying right to the end.

The next day, we took advantage of the fact that Nick & Vans had bicycles and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge.

I haven't cycled for ages so my legs were absolutely killing me after about 3 hours!  I really enjoyed it though, there were cycle lanes most of the way and Sausalito, on the other side of the bridge, was a pleasant place for dinner.

On the Monday, our friend Cat arrived from London, so we met up with her and her friend Emily in the evening and had delicious Argentinian food at Lolinda.  We had such a lovely meal that I totally forgot about taking any pictures!  The waiter advised us to share food saying each of the dishes was perfect to share between four, so we ordered a few small plates and Paul's favourite cut of meat (bife de chorizo).  It was really good food, but if we go again I think we'd just order a starter and main each, as we only really got a mouthful of each dish each.

The final day of our trip was a bit of a hectic one (would you expect anything less?)  I had booked tickets for us to go on the 9.30am departure to Alcatraz with Cat.  But it turned out our flight to London was earlier than I had thought, at 4.20pm.  This meant we wouldn't have time to get back to Nick & Vans' house to collect our luggage after Alcatraz, so we had to get up super early to drop our baggage off somewhere before getting on the boat.  We were already running a bit late when the hotel we'd decided to try (the Hyatt Regency) refused to store our bags, citing security reasons.  So we jumped in a cab and headed to Pier 39 where we could store our bags for $5 each.

When we arrived at Pier 39 it was about 9.20am - we should have been boarding the ferry by then.  I left Paul to check our bags in and headed on foot to Pier 33 to collect our tickets.  By the time I'd collected them, Paul had managed to sprint over and by some miracle, we made it!

We enjoyed Alcatraz!  We did the 'free' 45 minute audio tour of the jailhouse and watched the film on the history of the island.

There was also a real live former prisoner signing copies of his book in the gift shop!

Back in San Francisco, Cat headed to Chinatown for lunch with Emily, while Paul and I had enough time to have some lunch at Pier 39 before heading to the airport.  And then that was it - end of our travels!  Still can't believe we've done it!

Multi-millionaires!!!!!

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....

Emergency trip to Santiago

The only way we could sort out the van's paperwork without it taking weeks was to go back to the office in Santiago where the transfer was done!!!!  So frustrating but we were fortunate that Hugo, the buyer, was understanding and was happy for us to leave the van outside his house.  He even dropped us off at the airport.  The cheapest flight we could get was later that Friday evening (and even then it was £200pp for the 2 hour flight) so we set up camp at the airport café and did some organising.  

In Santiago, we could stay at Javier's apartment again, although this time with the whole place to ourselves as he has moved elsewhere and is renting the flat out in its entirety on airbnb.  We actually went over to his and Jason's new place the night we got back, for a mini reunion with them, Eddie and Ravi.  This homecoming of sorts was very comforting after all the stress of the last couple of weeks.  Seeing their reactions to some of our stories and photos made me forget the stress for a bit and appreciate the adventure we've had.

The offices we needed to go to were closed at the weekend so we tried to relax by doing some sightseeing that we didn't manage last time (Santa Lucia Hill) and going for dim sum on Sunday!

There were 10 of us altogether so we ordered loads of different things and it was little more than £10pp.  I was very happy this day.

On Monday, Paul and I got up early and headed to the Registro Civil.  After an hour in the queue, they said we needed to go to the notary to have Paul's address on the original contract changed to a Chilean one.  Salvatore, the previous owner, had very kindly agreed to meet us at the notary in case we needed him - he helped us understand what the notary was saying but in the end wasn't actually needed to sign anything.  The notary added an addendum to the bottom of each copy of the contract and then told us to come back at 5pm - they'd do all the shuttling to and from the Registro Civil for us.

I had terrible nerves for the rest of the day, worrying about them not being able to give us the documents we needed to sell the van the next day.  We had spent a small fortune coming back from Antofagasta and changing our flights out of Chile, and couldn't really afford to extend our stay any longer.  We went back early at 4pm, much to the amusement of the notary.  They did manage to get the document we needed confirming the transfer, but the Registro Civil had missed Paul's surname off it!!!!!  Wah!!!!  

There was nothing that could be done about it that afternoon though and the notary insisted it wouldn't matter.  But the actual transfer would take about 3 weeks to process so we paid for a notarised document giving Hugo the right to transfer the van to his name in Paul's absence.

Armed with this new paperwork, Paul flew back to Antofagasta on his own in the early hours of Tuesday to see if the sale could be completed.

I love Chile (but could give the bureaucracy a miss)

A few months ago, when Paul and I had our first setbacks, we consoled ourselves by saying "that'll be a good story to tell back home."  Well right now, I think we've got enough stories, thank you very much.  I've had enough troubleshooting and would quite like things to be straightforward please!  (Paul isn't quite there yet though and is sadistically enjoying all the challenges!)

On Friday morning, we finally met Hugo and his wife Elizabeth.  They're a lovely older couple who owned a campervan way back when and were looking forward to owning another one.  Having fallen in love with pictures of the van, they were just as enamoured with it in the flesh.  Our fear that they might pull out went unfounded and, after breakfast in their house, we headed to the notary to get the paperwork sorted.

It was there that our plan began to unravel.  It turns out that the transfer of ownership to Paul had failed because he wasn't showing up on the Registro Civil database.  This meant that the van was legally still in the previous owner, Salvatore's name!!  Hugo & Elizabeth suggested writing a contract whereby Paul gave them the power to take ownership of the van from Salvatore, and for a reasonable reduction in the price of the van, they would take on the burden of travelling to Santiago to complete the paperwork.  But the notary put paid to that plan, saying because Salvatore legally owned the van, any contract they signed with Paul would be meaningless.  

We went to the Registro Civil to find out why Paul wasn't on their database even though we'd got our RUTs when we first arrived in Santiago.  After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we finally found out that it was because the address we'd used for Paul in the original contract wasn't in Chile!!!!!  Worse still, the only way to sort this out was to go to the office in Santiago where the original paperwork was done!!!!!  ARGH!!!!! For $#¥%'s sake!!!!!!!!  ARGH!!!!!!!

No, this is the last road trip

So after 10 days on the market, we still didn't have an acceptable offer for the van.  Both us were beginning to despair - we were in limbo with just days before we were supposed to fly to San Francisco.  We had one guy who was really, really keen to buy the van - he even came for a second viewing and to check our documents were in order, but he was having trouble convincing his wife.  

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.

Thermal baths in Chile!

What was probably our final jaunt in the van was to some thermal baths (of course!) 160km from Arica, near the little town of Putre.  They're at 4,000m so the scenery en route was pretty good.

Although when we arrived, we both passed out for about an hour because of the altitude.  When we finally made it to the baths, we were on our own in the whole complex for most of the time, until a young family arrived about half an hour before we left.  The baths included a few small mud baths, although not as good as the thick mud baths we went to near Máncora.

There were a couple of small indoor baths with clear water and then one big, very warm, open air pool.

We camped that night near the complex, as it was probably our last opportunity to camp somewhere remote and completely dark and quiet.  We tried to watch the sunset from the roof of the van but it was so cold!!  So we made do with taking some quick pictures before retreating inside.

Paul prepared our last cooked meal in the van: scrambled eggs with salami on toasted oat and quinoa bread.

I had been hoping for a peaceful night's sleep but forgot how the altitude affects you.  I kept waking up to catch my breath, while Paul had a headache after just a couple of small cans of beer.  And the next morning, we had a bit of a scare when the van had trouble starting because of the altitude.  With some perseverance, Paul managed to get it going, but then it felt as though the brakes had gone again. Then, when Paul went to open his door, the handle broke!  It was like the van was collapsing around us.  But thankfully there was nothing wrong with the brakes and the door handle was fixable.

Once back on the road, we headed to Putre, a tiny, quiet, Aymaran village, with the obligatory main square.

There was hardly anyone around, but there was a little Artesan shop where we did some last minute souvenir shopping and then had a delicious 3-course set lunch for about £4 each.

(Soup, fish with salad, and semolina (not pictured))

After that we headed back to Arica stopping en route for maybe our most exotic Geocache yet.  Paul had picked up a Travel Bug somewhere in the UK and had been holding on to it for ages, so it was time to drop it off.  The cache we looked for was maybe 60km from Arica, but 150m off the Pan American Highway.

Unfortunately, the pen in the cache wasn't working and we'd stupidly forgot to bring one of our own.  It was such a trek down to the cactus that neither of us could be bothered to trek back to the van just for a pen.  But the cache had only been found a handful of times in the last few years so we couldn't leave without signing it!  So Paul made use of what was nearby - cactus spikes:

If this is your cache, we are sorry for messing up your logbook!  And if it was your Travel Bug Paul had, we're sorry it might not get picked up for a while!

Testing times

We're still in Arica, still trying to sell the van.  Interest in it has been steady but no one's liked it enough to make an offer (other than the guy on the first day).  It's a little bit stressful as time counts down towards our departure date!!

In the meantime, we have been really well looked after by Javier's parents.  We've been camping outside their house most nights after onces, the light meal Chileans eat in the evening (lunch being the main meal of the day).  We've been managing to converse exclusively in Spanish, which is helping our vocabulary loads!

On Monday, Javier's dad, Carlos, took us to get the van's MOT or Revision Técnica.  The place we went to was like a conveyor belt of cars being tested.  

When it was our turn, the dudes checked the van's paperwork, then took the keys and sent us to the cashier to pay the huge £3 fee.  The waiting room looked out on to the testing area so you could see what was going on.  They also had screens where you could see the results of each test.

It was a bit nerve-wracking waiting for the results!  It felt like how I imagine it feels to be a parent waiting to get your child's first school report or similar.

We actually got our results on paper before they flashed up on the screen.  The bad news is the van failed.  The good news is it was only on the windscreen (although this does not help stress levels!)

We discussed crossing back to Tacna in Peru where it's supposedly easier to get a new windscreen, but this was the same day that a court in The Hague was ruling on the maritime border between Chile and Peru, and Carlos was worried that there might be some violence if either side felt aggrieved.  So, the saga continues....

Arica and meeting Javier's parents

Since getting back to Chile we have stayed in Arica, the northernmost city, about 10km from the Peruvian border.  It's a lovely little manageable town with lots of beaches and a cute city centre.  We've been camping on beaches mostly, which has the advantage that there are public showers and toilets nearby, plus we are kept cool by the lovely sea breeze.  Oh, and the sunsets are pretty good.

We have decided to try and sell the van here, in Arica.  The parents of Javier, our Air BnB host in Santiago, live here and they have very kindly agreed to help us.  One of our strategies is 'For Sale' posters on the van itself which people have actually been responding to.  I always wondered how effective they were.  Well apparently here it's the done thing, we've had a lot of people ringing us (and thankfully asking questions I can understand and answer!)

In fact, on our first day in Arica while Paul and I were at Fiat asking about windscreens (more on that in a moment), a man who spoke really good English said he was interested in the van and we arranged to stop by his house later that evening.  He made us an offer, but it's not quite what we are hoping to get for it.  Still, an offer on its first day on the market is encouraging. 

So yes, the great windscreen hunt continues.  I had emailed Fiat in Arica asking if they could get us one.  Someone had actually replied asking for the chassis number, but then never got back to me despite me sending it several times.  Funnily enough, they asked if it was me who emailed when I explained what I wanted, they'd just decided not to answer my emails when they realised they couldn't help me.  They sent us to a windscreen place down the road though.  The guy there said he could make a new windscreen for us if we returned the next day.  Yay!  

So we headed back early the next morning and the guy removed our windscreen to use as a template.

While we were waiting, we had a couple of people ask to look around the van - one guy telling us there was a market-type place down the road where people took vehicles to sell and that we should go there and get more viewings!

Meanwhile, the windscreen guy was in and out of his workshop with different pieces of glass, trying to find one with the right curvature.  Then we could hear him sanding away, which meant he had found an appropriate piece of glass to cut to fit.  When he came to us about three hours later, we thought he must be ready to install.  Instead he goes, "I've got some bad news, I haven't been able to make you a new windscreen."  Wah!!!!!  Turns out he'd almost finished, but the new windscreen had split down one side - it probably wasn't the right curvature after all.  For the second time, we had to have the old windscreen re-fitted with even more cracks!!!!  I could've cried.  

Oh well.  We cheered ourselves up with the easiest experience we've ever had buying gas.  We exchanged our empty 5kg Chilean cylinder for a full one at the Lipigas plant, where we were served by two very funny staff who just reeled off all the English (and German) words they knew! ("Hey baby!")

Then we thought we'd check out the car market we'd been told about.  It was exactly as described, a place where lots of cars for sale were displayed.  So we parked up to see what would happen.  

Even before we'd wound the awning out, a few people came and had a look and asked us some questions.  Some even took down Paul's phone number.  I don't know how many are genuinely interested, but I love that Chileans aren't too shy to inquire.

It was here that Javier's parents came to meet us!

We spent the rest of the day with them, managing to have conversations with them in Spanish.  They even took us on a sightseeing tour of the geoglyphs near Arica and a museum where Chinchorro mummies, the oldest-known in the world, are displayed.

(Geoglyphs)

(Mummified baby)

(Scary room with lots of mummies)

Then it was back to their house, where Javier's dad created an online advert for the van and Javier's mum made mango sours!!

Inevitably, we both ended up unfit to drive, so were at their house the whole evening.  We even had champagne after midnight because it was Javier's mum's birthday!!

Javier, we love your mum and dad!!