The drive out of Arequipa was stark and desolate. Big bone dry hills of sand and crumbling rock. But it set the scene for the days travel, all day we drove through variations on the theme of desert. If we had stayed on the coast in Peru we would have travelled through desert all the way from the Ecuador border and, from what we read, there is still many hundreds of miles of it to go in coastal Chile.
The border crossing into Chile was pretty simple but did require the help of a translator on the Peru side, as the information we had from the bumfuzzle.com website seemed to be a little out of date. But we got by thanks to very helpful border officials and a young lady that was doing a tourism survey; she spoke English and was able to help us and some other over-landers work out what forms were needed. The Chile entry was also straight forward thanks to helpful officials. The warnings we had read about food stuffs going into Chile was accurate, the guy in the green vest was VERY thorough.
We got done with the border just on dark and so had another opportunity to find a camping spot in the dark. Just to make this a little more difficult our GPS map of Chile seems to have no roads of any consequences on it !!
Peru/Chile Border
The border crossing was (I think) a little different than the description in bumfuzzle.com. Read this in conjunction with the bumfuzzle write-up.
On the Peru side, go to the middle door next to the ATM. There is a desk immediately inside, find the person that sits there and get a form to fill out. Once completed go to the door on the right hand side of the building, to the right of the door next to the ATM. The people in there will show you what to do. You need to stop at two stations there. Then go outside to the booth in the center of the roadway for the vehicle processing. Then you are done. You should have one copy of the form you filled in, you will need this for Chile processing.
Chile Entry
You need to find and fill in three forms at this crossing.
Immigration, you get, fill in and return the immigration form to window number 2 at the right hand most booth.
Then you need to get a customs declaration form, ask one of the guys in a green vest. Once filled in then you need to get in turn a green vested guy and a blue coated guy to inspect your vehicle. The green guy will search thoroughly for vegetables, fruit and other food stuffs. The blue guy in our case did not search very thoroughly.
Vehicle control - on the south side of one of the booths there is another booth labelled vehicle control. You need to get a form from that booth, fill it in and return to that booth. You are then done.
Camping
After getting through the border we camped on the beach north of Arica like a number of others before us. Heading down the PanAmericana turn right at the round-about (S18° 23.784' W70° 17.916) and take the road to V. Frontera. This road crosses a railway line and almost immediately hits a T intersection (at W18° 23.930 S70° 18.508). Take a left at that intersection and then an immediate right (staying on the paved road). Follow this road, through a couple of other intersections, until the pavement ends. there are a couple of parking areas beside the road. Quiet except for the sound of sea bird.
