tan lejos y tan cerca: heinäkuuta 2013

Unbelievable! On the 23rd of January 2013, that was 6 months and a day ago, I took my first steps on the Chilean territory after requesting a tourist card for 30 days (instead of the maximum length 90 days) "just in case". The initial idea was to spend a few days or a week in Santiago and then continue to Argentina or back to Bolivia and start heading up north to Ecuador again. Didn't quite go as planned but on the other hand, does anything ever go?

Because as a tourist it's possible to stay in the country for 90 days at a time, two times a row, I have visited Argentina twice during these six months in order to avoid paying an administration fee of 100 USD to the Immigration office.
The first time I actually spent two nights in Mendoza but the second time, just a couple of weeks ago, I decided to sacrifice one day and save a few pesos and take a bus to the Argentinian side of the frontier, hop out of the bus and immediately take another one back to Santiago. Now I wasn't sure at all if that is something anybody actually does and standing behind a door leading to the immigration police's office on my way back to Chile, without a passport or a tourist card (that were taken away from me by some officer who all of a sudden just disappeared) with only 5000 pesos in my pocket I was pretty sure that they're not gonna let me enter the country anymore and accuse me of whatever (at that point anything was possible in my mind).

Well in the end it turned out that the officer with my documents was actually just helping me and apparently thinking that as a foreigner I wouldn't know how to do my paperwork. Finally I got my passport and a new tourist card for 90 days and a few hours later I was happy to be back in Santiago. The story doesn't reveal though why I was made to stand behind a closed door for 20 minutes, but at that point I didn't even care to ask anymore, I was just relieved that they let me continue.

I would like to post some pictures mostly around the Metropolitan Region of Santiago and the 5th and the 6th region, also known as the Region of Valparaíso and the Region of Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins that were taken over the past six amazing months. Good times, great people, delicious food and breathtaking places!