Sunday 7 February 2010

My first land border crossing

I woke up OK and am now in El Calafate, Argentina, following my first ever land border crossing. I was a bit apprehensive after leaving the Chilean passport control and before arriving at the Argentine one, since I was in that 'transit' state with no permit to reside in any countr
py. In hindsight it's not much different to being airside at an airport. It just seemed a bit less controlled, as we were driving along an apparently ordinary road between the two.

It seemed very cold at the border crossings despite being sunny. It's the wind, it's quite strong and very cold. I hope I'm OK at the glacier. I am wearing a T-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece and a (fairly thin) jacket. If it's not enough then tough, I don't *have* any more clothes I can layer on. I wore the same set of clothes (along with just normal trousers - Chubbard/Ives please note, no long johns) at Torres del Paine and was OK. I am vaguely heartened to note most people on the bus don't seem to be sporting super-thick-looking jackets.

We just picked up the guide, it looks like I am the only English speaker here. :-( Always a bit embarassing. I feel my Spanish is moving backwards a bit lately, but we'll just have to see how it goes.

Will this appear automatically? Hahahahahaha, fat chance.

PS I slept most of the drive from the border to here. Parts of it were on very bad roads, parts on normal. No mobile signal at all as far as I could tell, so very isolated. Scenery was mostly just far-off brownish mountains when I was awake, so I probably didn't miss much.

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