Observation

Thu, 9:10pm. I plan to write up today's exciting activities on the more tractable laptop keyboard, but as I am down a bar mentally trying to get a handle on what I will do for the next four weeks, I wanted to make this observation for future reference.

Nowhere I've been yet have the immigration officials asked for proof, or seen proof 'accidentally', that I have a ticket out of the country before letting me in. You maybe can't rely on that never being a problem, but for what it's worth I note it down. I am thinking that - although I didn't plan enough up front anyway - it would probably have been better to have travelled overland from Santiago to Buenos Aires, stopping off in Mendoza and the apparently (based on talking to a couple of people) interesting places round there en route. As it is, I may end up travelling (by air or land) almost as far west as Santiago from here or elsewhere in Argentina, which seems both unnecessarily expensive and time consuming. But if I had planned on that originally, I wouldn't have had any proof as to how I was going to leave Chile when I arrived there, as I would have bought the bus tickets into Argentina no more than a few days in advance. As it turned out that hasn't been an issue, but I was adv
ised it was safer to be able to furnish such proof if asked. I would have been able to show an onward flight from BA to Panama, but I was advised that immigration officials can be a touch arsey and that, illogical as it might seem, that might not easily convince them I obviously planned to leave the country in order to be in BA to take that flight. I suppose in some sense you could justify that by saying that if push came to shove for some reason, they want a pre-paid travel plan they can force you to take out, rather than being stuck with the risk of the Chilean (in this case) government having to pay to deport me.

22:40. Just paid up in the second bar, three draught probably half litres for ARS33, call it 38 with tip. That's pretty good. It clearly depends where you go, what I find annoying is I can't easily tell which places are expensive. (The first bar I was at tonight cost about the same for two 350ml-ish draught beers and a coffee, for example. The menu even made it clear it would have cost about 30% more between 8 and 11pm. OK, you could tell from the menu, but - maybe it's just because I'm not local or experienced here yet - in London I can go to a bar and I know if it's a pretentious place which is going to overcharge me almost by instinct. It's not as if I regularly go into a new bar and get charged a fiver for a pint and am totally surprised.)