Here we are in Santiago – 4/16/2013
Apr 18th, 2013 by rallyadmin
Santiago, Chile is a long damned ways from Charlotte or San Clemente. Andyou can’t get there from here. I go through Atlanta, John through Los Angeles. Every trip seems to start with a day of hiking around airport terminals.
The flight out of Charlotte leaves about 10 minutes late but gets into ATL a few minutes early. Go figure. My Delta phone app goes off and suggests that since I’m going to be late, I might consider changing my flight to the flight that I’m already on. I get off the flight in ATL and check the monitors. The flight to Santiago doesn’t leave for an hour and a half. I’m almost as confused as the MyDelta app.
The good news is that the plane is here, I’m still on it and it starts boarding in 45 minutes. And just about on time we depart. The flight isn’t quite full and I have an exit row seat so there’s enough luggage space and there’s more than enough leg room. There is a person in the window seat but he’s already getting ready to settle in and sleep his way to Santiago. He obviously won’t be too chatty. I settle in for the nearly 10 hour flight.
A mere 10 hours later, the sun is up and we’re landing in Santiago. It’s very smoggy or hazy but the sky is clear and after, a few miles of taxiing, we deplane and start to long walk to immigration and baggage. It always seems that immigration is miles away from where the plane parks. I don’t get it. Even is a relatively small airport like this one in Santiago, it’s a hike.
As we enter the immigration hall, there are empty kiosks for something called the reciprocity fee (whatever that is) and it appears to be assessed only on a few countries, the US, Mexico, Canada and couple of others. Chile has no visa requirements for US citizens but the reciprocity fee of $160 per passport is payable in USD or credit card for international arrivals at Santiago airport only. Don’t ask. I have no idea what the reciprocal is.
That turns out to be the big delay in immigration. The line for the passport check is short and quick. By the time we get to the baggage area, the flight’s baggage is already sitting on the floor. Find the roller and get in line for the xray machine to exit the baggage area. Less than 15 minutes later, out in the terminal, looking for John.
John’s flight and mine arrived within minutes of each other. I start walking down to one end of the terminal. No John. I turn around and head back and he’s coming the other way. This is a new record for a meet up.
The first stop is Budget rental car. Paperwork. Stamps. This is not run up the car and go like the TV commercials show. This is the old hand-written contract way. But the car lot is only a short distance from the terminal and soon enough we’re packed into some small Chevrolet econo-box headed for downtown Santiago.
I get the GPS out and it finds us on the ground but I can’t get the damned thing to find where we want to go. The hotel address is coming up “not found” by the GPS. More on this later. As usual, my phone’s navigation app does find it and between the phone and the moving map on the GPS we get to the right area. The only remaining problem is working our way through the maze of one-way streets. Finally, we’re there.
We’re quite early and our room isn’t ready so we head off to find the Auto Club of Chile and some insurance for the car.
International driving insurance is a constant problem on this trip. Because this is US registered car, we have been having trouble finding insurance throughout the trip. We’ve always gotten it in the end. But we have crossed so many borders that no one insurance covers us for the next country. In Kazakhstan, insurance was sold right at the border. You couldn’t even get into country without buying it.
Russia, on the other hand we couln’t find insurance until we we’re in Tomsk. Australia was even more difficult.
We had been trying to get the insurance while we were still in the States but that didn’t pan out. Now, we’re trying to get it on the ground. The first try is the Auto Club of Chile. And the first failure is the Auto Club of Chile. Unlike the AAA, they don’t even sell auto insurance, let alone to foreigners. Next stop is Magellanes, recommended by the Auto Club.
No luck there. They sell auto insurance but only to Chilean residents and if we were foreigners with Chilean ID cards they would sell it to us. But we aren’t and they won’t.
Next stop Mapfre. They won’t sell it to us either but the very nice man at the desk who is working with us sends over to Liberty Insurance a few blocks away. He thinks that because they are an American company, they might.
And finally, we get lucky. Yes, they can sell it to us and they can also sell a policy that covers Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. They take our car and personal info and tell us to coma back tomorrow for the policy. We don’t have the paper yet but they say everything is good to go so we leave cautiously optimistic. If our luck holds we may have the policy late tomorrow.
The next problem s the rental car. As we were driving into Santiago, the air-conditioner started blowing hot air. Lovely. It’s not that hot but since we just got the car, we want to exchange it. Fortunately, there’s a Budget office a few blocks away from the insurance office. We’ve already called them and they’ve scheduled (?) a car swap for 4 o’clock. We stop in and a couple of minutes later we’re leaving again in some kind of Hyundai econo-box.
By now it’s almost 5 and we’re ready for some down time. Back to the hotel. Check into the room. Clean up and out for some dinner. We’re both exhausted and we’re back to the hotel by 8:30.
What a long couple of days.
Obi-wan