after dropping off the german couple at the bus station (they’re taking a 24hr busride to buenos aires, $60 for a first class ticket), i tracked down the chilean automotive club. last night, the germans had told me that police checked their car insurance papers every day (nobody has asked to see my insurance papers yet). my international insurance through AIG covers most of latin america, but does not include argentina…so i need some argentinian insurance asap.

it turns out that the chilean automotive club may be the most incompetent organizaation in chile. why? well, i didnt expect them to have insurance for me, but i thought they might be able to help out a bit. turns out they don’t even have map of santiago. and when i asked for suggestions, they had none. even the security guard at the garage was more helpful.

next, i tried falabella, which is a huge chilean store….selling everything from clothes to car insurance. for $130, i now have auto insurance for all of south america for another 6 months.

from there, i continued my trek for the best bakery in santiago, but didn’t have much luck. so after an hour, i took off for el cajon del maipu.

the area is very nice and, at an altitude of about 2k meters, i reached refugio lo valdez. well, almost. at the end, things started getting kinda snowy. the main road was fine, but the last 500m of the private road to the refugio was covered in snow. i made it up about 5m before slipping. i then got stuck and had to put on chains to get out. this took about 30minutes. it would have been easier if i) i could move the car; ii) there was another person; iii) the chains fit the tires (they’re a bit big, and thus fall off); and iv) i wasn’t on a hill. anyway, i finally made it out…and decided to try the hill again….probably a stupid idea, but that’s me. this time i made it 10m. i didn’t get stuck, but couldn’t go further up the hill. so, i just left the car there and walked up to the house with my stuff. i hope the car is still there tomorrow morning.