The Southern Cone – the kingdom of bureaucracy

February 2-13 We arrived back on dry land and needed to get organized for our trip back to Canada. We gave ourselves a week to a) finalize the shipping plans for moving Dallas by plane to Shannon and Vanessa’s in Calgary; b) complete the paperwork to formally transfer ownership of our pickup from Trillium to us, and then sell the pickup to friends in Rio Grande; and c) finalize loading and shipping – to Canada - of a 20’ container with all of our worldly belongings. A week, boy were we stupid…………

We received a ton of help, mainly from Lucila in Rio Grande and Maria Luisa in Punta Arenas, and even then, we were delayed by a full additional week. Our plan to have a relaxing and “touristy” drive up to Santiago, Chile to meet Susan - a good friend that was coming to visit from Montreal - had quickly vanished.

In the end, it took nearly the full two weeks to register the truck sales, Andrea ended up spending 15 hours on a bus going over to Punta Arenas and back to help with the shipping, and our “star” shipping company (World Wide Dogs) lost Dallas at the airport in Buenos Aires.
We were especially appreciative of the generosity of Lu and Carlos and Rosie and Rocky for welcoming us into their homes over the two weeks, we know for a fact that we were not the easiest people to be around near the end when our frustration levels were rather high!

Thankfully, everything eventually worked out and we left Patagonia in our “temporary home”, our Toyota Hilux. Everyone that we worked with was very great and all have become great friends. We will miss them all, and hope that they will come and visit us in Canada one day.