January 16
Our border crossing was within 40 miles of our hotel this morning and I thought we might get there so enough not to have to worry about much traffic. Not only were there a bunch of buses that hit there just before us, but the officials were giving us the cold shoulder and we couldn't make any progress. That is, until I ran across a customs official in the back warehouse that liked to speak English. He said he never got an opportunity to practice. He had even been to Washington D.C. about a year ago. Anyway, he grabbed the forms that we needed, led us over to the office and helped us fill them out, then walked us through the whole process. He took a several-hour-process and turned into minutes. It was nice.

When we got over to the Chile side, we got lucky again. We started out in long lines, but an official saw us there and gave me some forms to fill-out. Once we completed the forms, he moved us up to the front of the lines. Again, hours to minutes. We had a good border crossing today.

We rode the first 200 miles across some more very serious desert (including a gravel section) until we stopped for gas. Once we looked at the map, we found a beach highway that ran parallel with the Pan-am. We jumped over there and had a great ride in to Tocopilla where we're staying for the night. The accomodations aren't the best, but we're glad to have somewhere to stay. The food is getting harder and harder to order. I ended up with some sort of squid tonight? I don't know how I did that, but I guess it will work