A Little Too Far
So, to get to Ushuaia, in Argentina, from Rio Gallegos, also in Argentina, you need to go through Chile. Great, thinks I, some more pretty stamps in my passport (to go alongside the special stamp the lady at Tourist Info in Ushuaia will give to you for getting this far)! Well, yes, but also a hell of a lot of faff.
I can understand that Chile don’t want foreign food/crop/animal diseases brought in to finish everything off. And okay, it’s good to be careful. But I somehow get the feeling that with the six hours we spend in Chile, on the bus, between the two places that they get a little bit overzealous.
No fresh fruit, fine, we’re used to that. But taken a step further, they also ban cheese and bread and any sort of food whatsoever. What about our sandwiches for the bus, eh? Nope, gone in the bin. They’re not big on biological material.
But wooden ornaments? How the hell can you ban wooden ornaments? Surely every traveller crossing the border has a bit of defaced wood in their bag somewhere, not to mention little bits of pottery which probably aren’t meant to leave the country, oh and those seashells, and that rock that was taken from such-and-beach with barnacles on it. Wooden ornaments?
They x-ray your bags, you know, to check you’re not carrying anything illegal. I think I did a great job of looking surprised when they frowned at the screen and beckoned me over to explain what was the thing that looked like… hang on. That’s not my little wooden heads, or my bits of archaeology, or my shells or my salt or my cooking oil or my wine… That looks like a garroting wire.
I still have no idea what it was. I told them it was part of a belt, and they let me through without searching the bag. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any belts lined with wires but still - got through. It’ll be good fun on the way back though!
Saf - Ushuaia, Argentina
Location, South America | saf | 
September 12, 2009 10:51 am
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By mum, September 12, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
did u get ur shells n ur wine n stuff throu or were they confiscated
oh by the way ur african shells r in the summer house looking very pretty