Pick-Up Shopping

our new car at its first campsite
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After a quick pitstop in San Jose we arrived in santiago - at last.  We turned up at SCS habitat at 4am to be greeted by a bleary eyed Scott in some nice pants (english not american).  Spent the next few days going to the tax office to get chilean IDs and trawling the outskirts of santiago for used car lots.  Not the most fun i have ever had.  But we are now expert users of the Santiago public transport system.  It is very cheap and fairly efficient, and the ´as many journeys as you like in 90 minutes´system leads to some very long cross town journeys for 38p.  Which makes up for the $16 taxi we had to take one night.

our new car and some bloke collecting firewood
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We eventually found what we were looking for in Automotriz Las Condes - a 1999 Chevy LUV metallic red pick up truck with a double cab and 4WD and slightly big suspension4WD and slightly big suspension. The car sounds a bit like a hoover thanks to the 2.2 litre petrol engine, and has a huge dent in the rear bumper after, which gives it a nice lived in look already.

4WD and slightly big suspension

A very nice chap called pablo (automotrizlascondes@terra.cl) sold it to us and sorted out all the tax payments (quite complicated in chile) and insurance for chile and argentina.  He also serviced it and sorted out a nice big box for the back of it.  AND he´ll buy it back from us for 85% of what we paid him if we go back to Santiago in a few months, so that is quite reassuring.

alex and mary
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We can thoroughly recommend his (English speaking) services.  In fact, if you are going to be in Santiago, or northern Chile in early June you could even buy the car from us, including a neatly repaired airbed...

We had to wait a few days for it all the paperwork to be done, thumbprints to be scanned or whatever they do, but it sure beat going to more tax offices and being stared at beacause you were taught your spanish in costa rica and "Chilean" is something different all together.

Other stuff we did in Santiago:

watched a free opera concert by PLacido domingo and a Chilean lady - nice if you like opera.  although we thought they were being a bit too diva-ish when they came on an hour and a half late, but it turned out the clocks had gone back and we´d been wrong all day.

went on the funicualar and cable car up the hill with the big virgin mary on it.  the views were spectacular and sunset pretty cool.  we tried to go to an outdoor swimming pool up the hill, but it is closed for cleaning on tuesdays.  It looked really nice though!