yeah, I'm a hypocrite.

For those who know my views on car ownership (if you own a car, you are a bastard who should be taken out and run over), the following may seem a little, erm, inconsistent. well, suck me.

### Intro

There are several decent explanations on the web of how to buy and sell a car in chile.

Rather than duplicate all that advice (which we followed, and worked perfectly), I'll just add the following supplementary notes. But READ THIS FIRST, or the following will make no sense.

1. We looked at all the parking lots in Bulnes etc, but ended up (after a good recommendation from some fellow travellers) buying from a dealership called

Automotriz Las Condes. I can recommend them for the following reasons:

  • Throughout the whole process Pablo and his colleagues were incredibly helpful (see below), way beyond the call of duty.

    • They offered to buy the car back for 15% less than we paid for it, and kept their word.

    • They handled all notarisation and tax paying, making the transaction a lot simpler.

    • If your spanish isn't so good, we felt it was better off to go with a respectable dealership than try and negotiate with the sharks on Avenida Vespucio

    Further notes on the RUT

    Your temporary RUT is valid for 3 months, and during this time the proper one (a little orange piece of cardboard) should be sent to your address in chile (in our case, Scott's place). But you also need the RUT to sell the car. In our case, the lady in the SII office that issued the RUT got the comuna (district) in Santiago wrong when keying the address on the computer, so it never arrived.

    This was almost a disaster:

Since duplicates RUTs can only be issued by the office in the comuna of residence, but the mistaken address could only be corrected by the office that issued the original RUT, it took 3 trips to 2 different SII offices (and conversations with 15 different bureaucrats) to sort this out, and the guy from Automotriz Las Condes took most of a morning off work to help us. In the end, no-one could fix it, and someone just gave us a second temporary 3 month RUT. Chilean bureacracy is quite an experience. Check the details when you get your RUT, and look after it carefully!

### Paying for your car

Buying a car in Chile is a hard cash transaction. If you are drawing the money on a credit card, check AT THE BEGINNING that your credit card issuer will allow large cash advances. Egg, in Britain, have a 500 UKP per day limit. If drawing the money from ATMs, there is a 390,000 peso limit per transaction, and whatever daily limit you have also applies (so you can withdraw more than 390K by visiting several ATMs)

Others have reported success with an over-the-counter cash advance (try Banco Santander in Paseo Ahumada), but despite multiple phone calls to my bank in England, and hours in the bank, we couldn't get this to work (the bank in Santiago kept saying the request had been refused, but my bank in england claimed the authorisation request (for large amounts, this must be a phone call) never came through. Some mismatch between chilean and british banking procedure seemed to be the fault. We spent a whole morning trying to make this work without success. Remember also, that Chilean banks close at 2pm.

In the end we just hit the ATMs daily with both our cards, but we were delayed 4 days just drawing cash. If we'd started drawing the money when we started looking for the camioneta, we'd have been fine.

### To 4WD or not to 4WD

A significant percentage of the roads in Chile are unpaved. Argentina also. While many unpaved roads are perfectly ok in a 2WD drive car, many can get distinctly dodgy, especially when the weather gets bad. If you can possibly afford it, I would get a 4WD, because then you'll never be worrying about whether you should have done or not. Peace of mind.

### Getting a mechanic to check out the car

We were in a hurry, so we didn't bother to do this, but if I was doing it again, I would definitely do so. The camioneta was fine (and we clocked up 15K Km in 3 months), but there were a few things that we didn't spot that needed work later. We spent about 500 pounds on repairs in total.

### International borders

I've seen it reported elsewhere that foreigners cannot take their chilean cars into Argentina. This is complete bullshit. We crossed the border many times with no problems whatsoever. At the border you have to show the Padron (document showing your ownership of the car), and there's a form to sign (with multiple copies for different bureacrats on exit and re-entry), but the temporary Padron is fine, and there were no problems

### Selling your car

Selling the car to a dealership is (unless you have a disaster with your RUT like we did) a simple transaction that takes about an hour. After signing the contract (and leaving 8 copies of your thumbprint on it), we were given a cheque that we could cash at a downtown bank (in pesos).

However, if you are continuing on your travels, you probably don't want several thousand dollars in cash in your pocket. I've heard of people getting the money paid back onto their credit cards, but we wanted to get the money into our bank account in England.

This kind of international transaction is called SWIFT. You need to get a SWIFT number from your home bank, and some other details.

Because this is a very rare transaction in Chile, it can be quite difficult to get it organised. Citibank in Paseo Ahumada did this for us, but (again) it took a couple of hours to get all the details right, and the forms processed. Also, a SWIFT (sic) transfer takes about 3 weeks to appear in your home bank. A technological wonder of the 24hour, globalised banking world, I'm sure.

### In summary

Having your own car is a fantastic way to see Chile and Argentina, and is totally doable. Chilean bureacracy can be slow, and a little complicated, but Chileans are fantastically helpful to foreign visitors and you can get your way through it even if your spanish is bad/non-existent, like mine.

But be prepared for things to take longer than expected, and have patience. It'll take at least a week in Santiago to buy your car.

Pictures

Oh yeah, if anyone's wondering why I've been quiet recently, it's because, after the pain and misery that was the final 6 months of Upmystreet, Kay and I decided to take some time off and go travelling. We'll be back in June, and hopefully then I'll have lost some of my cynicism, regained a little enthusiasm, and be ready to do something new.

see you then.

stef