Last night abroad, and I’m sipping a pisco sour in a courtyard in Santiago to unwind…

I made my final border crossing back into Chile yesterday, via a road so shoddy and neglected that it seemed like it was deliberately designed to make you feel like you’re doing something ultra-shady just by taking it.

Chile, you say? Ah'm afraid you can't get theah from heah...

Of course, the fact that I had seven keys of coke sitting in a backpack in the back seat didn’t help. (Dear Chilean Customs officials: joking – please, no body cavity searches tomorrow.)

The Argentinean passport control folks were so surprised to see me, they processed my paperwork wrong – prompting the Chilean passport control guy to make fun of them and essentially call them a bunch of rubes. Oh, will you two never stop in your squabbling?

But I’ve become well-practiced in the border crossing protocol – in fact, it’s probably the area in which I’ve picked up my most useful “applied Spanish”. All told, El Jefe and I have danced back and forth across the Chile-Argentina border six times, amassing an impressive collection of stamps on our transit documents.

So many memories...

And so it was with some sadness that El Jefe was retired today, after 15 days of valiant service. Of course, my rental car agent Captain Hard-Ass was somehow able to spot a “new dent” on my thoroughly dented and scratched pickup, and that set me back an extra $100. But it’s only fair – after driving more than 4000 km on roads that were alternately made of dirt, gravel, boulders, shards of petrified wood, and even – once in a rare, blessed while – asphalt, I’m sure El Jefe has been thoroughly befucked in ways that will only become apparent in a week or so, and I’m probably getting off the hook easy.  I hope he gets a little rest before they rent him out again.

As for me, I’m going to finish getting loaded and eat some ceviche. Ciao y hasta luego…