We wish you a Happy New Year for 2013!
It’s been a bit up and down since we left Santiago on the 27th but we feel like we turned a corner yesterday and that things are looking up! On our first night out of Santiago, we found out that we had to take the car for a revision (WOF or APK) and after reading about other experiences of dealing with it we were filled with dread. The revision technica is like the Warrant of Fitness in New Zealand or APK in The Netherlands and is necessary if you want to keep your car legally on the road and be covered for insurance. The dealer who we bought the car from insisted that he would send us a new revision technica with our permanent pardon (ownership papers) but once we paid and took the car he changed the story and said he’d told us that we had to go somewhere else to get it. Our Spanish is bad, but not that bad and we knew we’d been lied to! A few other things popped up during the last few days that made us question everything else the dealer said to us. From only one of the two new car alarm remotes not working, to not knowing where our ownership papers will end up, and a couple of other little things, well these made us feel not quite so positive about Chile so far. But with the knowledge that the revision technica was running out on the 31st December we decided to just try to do it at the next big town we came across after spending a couple of days camping in Siete Tazas National Park.