Border trouble - leaving Chile

We decided to go north from Malacahuelo in Chile through Santiago and cross the border to Argentina, about 900km in total, mostly motorway. We’d read about road works on the Los Libertadores border crossing, meaning that it was open for traffic going from Chile to Argentina from 8pm to 8am and then closed after that for the traffic coming the other way!  So we reasoned a mid to late evening arrival would allow for any earlier queues to subside. 

The boys swam and mucked about with water balloons with Diego and Davie, two Chilien boys staying at our cabin park with the owners family.  They said their goodbyes (again - this was our second visit) and we left at 2pm.   This was a little later than we had planned so Phil was on a mission to make up the time and I spent much of the ride with white knuckles.  The boys had taken a travel tablet each which led to them falling asleep for the first nearly 4 hours of the journey!  They were sleeping when we drove over some very large parts of a blown tyre scattered across both lanes of Ruta 5 which was pretty scary.  A lorry was slowing down on the side of the road just ahead so I think it had just happened - fortunately no damage done.

We got past Santiago and stopped at McDonalds around 9pm - not very fast food meant we didn’t leave there until around 9.30pm, and it was now dark.  Only a few minutes on and we were back in the fast lane. Phil noticed that the lorry in front had curiously swerved back into the slower lane after starting to overtake a slower lorry. Moments later we saw an angry looking man walking towards us in the fast lane.  Phil swerved to avoid him, luckily nothing was on the inside lane and as we passed this man, he seemed to throw something at us.  We were in shock and checking the rear view mirror, Phil saw a number of other cars managed to avoid him too but we wondered for how long.  He must have been on some kind of drunken or drug-induced death wish, it was unbelievable.   We had no phone but hopefully someone would call the police very soon.

Minutes later a double lorry pulled out in front of us to join the highway from a side road and again swerve tactics and urgent braking were adopted.  The lorries on our journey towards the border mostly drove as if they were working to a very urgent deadline, they had no problem overtaking us and other cars on blind bends and drove incredibly fast as if they were behind the wheel of a racing car rather than a 30 ton truck!  They have a very poor reputation here and sadly we’d heard that only the month before a lorry trying to overtake in a tunnel in this area had crashed into a coach, causing 10 fatalities.  

The journey up to the border from Los Andes was sadly done in the dark (which we had said we didn’t want to do as the roads were somewhat perilous - also we wanted to enjoy the views).  So we couldn’t really get too much of a sense of the height we were driving at.  Occasionally I got a glimpse in the moonlight, the scale of the mountains was incredible - the Andes at this point are very high, Aconcagua towering above you not far away at nearly 7,000 metres.

The Chilean side of this border crossing is famous for its 27 odd switchbacks and even though it was dark, it was lit up in places with lamps.  When you looked down you could see it snaking into the distance.  We kept thinking any minute we would hit the queue but it was still moving at this point.  We got a piece of paper from a soldier in a cabin which was stamped and were naively hoping that maybe that was it!!  How wrong could we have been, about 10 minutes later we hit the queue from hell, it was approaching midnight at this point.  It moved at a snail’s pace and even when we moved just one car forward, thinking there is no point starting the engine just for that, an officious guard would tap on our window and tell us to move up!  

Phil was knackered at this point and desperately wanted to sleep so he nodded off and I told him whenever the cars moved forward, perhaps at five or ten minute intervals.  Louis was awake too (Frankie slept through most of it)  By the time we got to the actual border control it was about 5am and we were all awake!  They checked passports and then we had a bit of trouble starting the car again as we had worn the battery down with all the stopping and starting. Finally a lady in the very last booth asked us to open the boot.  We had to switch off the engine again as we needed to use the key for the boot.  We were very worried that the car wouldn’t start and only after quite considerable encouragement did it burst into life!!  

So we had made it over the border and we carried on our way at around 5.30.  It was only a few kilometres to get to Hotel Ayelen at Los Penitentes, but we thought we’d save a night’s accommodation cost as it was already morning!  We dozed in the car for a while (the kids didn’t) and eventually after admiring sunrise over Aconcagua, we walked into the hotel at about 6.30, it was such a relief.  Steve, the owner, proved to be a real star, brought us a coffee and hot chocolate and then at 8am we had the best breakfast of cereals, scrambled egg and bacon and toast, cake....... definitely one of the top 5 breakfasts this trip!