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Day 32: Esquel - Coyhaique (Chile) (498km)
Pick your border ...
The Inca Trail wends its way now ever southwards, crossing and recrossing the Argentine-Chile border as it goes. The 4x4 route today took crews quickly out of Argentina and into Chile, to an area of more superb lakes and fiords. The classics passed through vast open spaces of steppe-like pampas. This is ranchland, with gauchos herding cattle, horses, sheep in the empty wilderness.
The organisers decided after receiving the Advance Course Car's road status report to split the classics away from the planned road. Major road works and closures on a key part of the intended common route, together with surfaces in too poor condition for classics were the cause. New roads were found on the map for Classic Reliability Trial entrants, taking them via a border crossing some 180km away from the original one, entering Chile at the end of the rallying day.
An overnight recce was carried out, the roadbook to be prepared in time for the morning. A HERO crew was despatched from Esquel to survey the road on the Argentine side up to the border, while the Advance Course Car worked back from Coyhaique to the Chilean frontier. Each crew briefed frontier officials manning the post on their approach side to expect the rally around mid-afternoon.
Don and Pat Griffiths' rapid reroute to the tiny frontier post ran perfectly. The Argentine border official worked well once the routine of carnet stamping was explained to him, and crews passed on through No Man's Land to the Chilean frontier. There, it was a different story. The two officials seemed unprepared for the arrival of so many visitors. Phone calls were made. They explained, politely, that they had no provision here for the usual customs examinations and car spraying processes that Chile insists upon to protect its Foot and Mouth-free status and prevent the importation of fruit-borne pests. This was a local frontier, not used by long-distance tourist traffic. There was talk of officials being brought from Coyhaique, half an hour away. Then more phone calls. It would not be possible to arrange this after all. Would we be able to go to another border post? It was bigger: all the officials and their equipment were available.
Visions of a long, long return to the originally planned crossing-point welled up. Seeking confirmation, maps were produced. No, the border police insisted, it was only 18km away: up to the last village and then slot left. With no other road shown on the map, further clarification was sought. Fingers pointed to their own border location: one centimetre south of the green road shown on the map. The rally had arrived at the wrong border crossing. The Griffiths' had driven this road, while the Prestons in their car on the Chilean side had recced and briefed at the post we were now being directed to.
More phone calls. The Argentine official who had so recently stamped the rally out of his country would allow crews and their cars back through without further formalities. His stamps would do for his colleagues 18km away. The Chilean police had already processed many carnets and passports, so again paperwork was returned to be handed on by the organising team to their colleagues in turn.
The entire rally drove back to the fork in the road which led to the main border post. Only one of the two roads was signposted 'Chile' - and it was the minor one that the recce team, in the dark, had noted and roadbooked. The main border post was a well-kept secret.. But then, they don't get too many strangers around those parts. Everybody around there knows which is which - so it doesn't matter much - does it?
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