Goodbye Ushuaia! Early start this morning from the port in Ushuaia on the National Geographic Explorer, all luggage needs to be out for collection by 6:30am. It has snowed again overnight, and Ushuaia is looking very pretty under a dusting of spring snow.
Ushuaia
We are being herded onto buses for a trip to the Maritime Museum and then on for brunch at Patagonia Mia, at the nearby National Park. The charter flight is due to depart for Santiago at 12:50, and the usual debacle of 115 people collecting boarding passes and having their hand luggage weighed (8kg limit for the largest bag) ensues. 3.5 hours later, the same chaotic scenes ensue at Santiago airport, as the (mostly American) passengers and Chilean immigration officials battle to understand the need to pay the $US140 reciprocity fee for entry to Chile. This is caused by the charter flight – check-in to subsequent flights is not possible, so technically everyone is entering Chile long enough to collect their luggage and check it in for their next flight.
Australians pay a lower fee ($US61) for a tourist visa that lasts for 90 days, which is based on what Australia charges Chilean citizens for a similar visa. I’m pretty sure that I was out of the airport and at my hotel in Las Condes before my fellow passengers exited the reciprocity fee and immigration queues. Some pretty unhappy passengers, but still less troublesome than being a foreigner entering the US – no fingerprinting and ‘random’ searches in Santiago! The ‘official’ taxi service at Santiago airport proves to be reliable, and reasonable value at $CLP17,000 (about $US35). Now for 4 days of ‘downtime’ in Santiago before heading to Peru.
