The Atacama Desert is pretty freaking big. 41,000 square miles big. It took us several long days of driving to make our way through it. Two other relevant bits of data: It’s also called the land of 10,000 mines and it is the driest non-polar desert in the world – the former leading to a tour of the largest copper mine in Chile and the latter partly explaining why so many of the world’s most important observatories are located here. It also provides plenty of opportunity for middle-of-freaking-nowhere-camping, which even after nearly a year on the road never gets old… (more…)
Chile
Chile
Chile
This page will include everything north of Patagonia in Chile. For the Patagonian region, click here.
Border: Hijo Canyon, Bolivia – San Pedro, Chile
Don’t forget to stop at the remote Aduanas office inside the Park at the Boric acid plant to hand over your vehicle papers!!!
Bolivia Side – Hijo Canyon
- Go to Aduana office, turn in permit (S22 26.454 W67 48.357)
- Drive to immigration (S22 52.860 W67 47.901)
- Stamp out. New requirement at this border is a Bs fee of 15-20 pp for maintenance of the border.
Chile Side – Drive 30 minutes to San Pedro
- Go to immigration, fill out tourist card. They will enter info into computer and hand passports and copy of tourist card.
- Go to aduana’s. Give registration and driver’s passport (they will not need copies). They will give you a vehicle permit.
- Across the street is the declaration building. Need to fill out forms declaring stuff. If you have any eggs, milk, cheese, vegetables, you need to say yes on form. They will search your car and if you said no, it is a $200 US fee if you have anything that you did not declare.
We were never asked to present proof of Chilean insurance at either border or during our time in the country, but it is obligatory. You can easily and cheaply purchase it online here: http://www.magallanes.cl/venta/index.aspx?key=k66cl3
Our Route
Chile Tips
- Be careful entering Chile. They will hijack you for your food at every border! Sometimes they take your cheese and vegetables, other times they’ll take your meat and dairy. The best thing to do if you’re like us and carry a lot of food with you is to stop before the border and hide it. Do this at your own discretion though – if you were to get caught they claim there is a $200 fine. We hid our food in a backpack way under the bed and left a few things in the fridge on purpose, claimed them on the form, and let them confiscate it. Worked fine.
- Copec truck stops/gas stations are excellent places to camp free if you’re on a major highway. They have bathrooms, showers, security, free wifi, and sinks for water and dishes.
- We were randomly pulled over and had our van searched by drug dogs, this would be a bad country to drive around in with anything.
- The limit for drinking and driving is so low in Chile that you essentially cannot even have one drink.
- There are a lot of campgrounds in Chile’s cities, but they’re expensive. We found stealth camping or camping at Copec stations saved us a great deal of money.
- Gas is also really expensive.
