It was the beginning of the end: time to work on the problem of what to do with the Safari.

Information on how to get rid of a car in South America is fairly hard to come by. Random mentions in blogs hint at what might be possible, official policies are impossible to interpret, intricate growth-encouraging tariff management plans giving us hope while strict used-car importation rules take it away. We decided it was worth investigating Punta Arenas in the Magellanes province of Chile on our way north.

Punta Arenas is the southernmost town of any significance in Chile, way at the southern tip of Patagonia. The highway in Chile also ends here, although a dirt track continues south a few dozen km south to Puerto Hambre – “Port Hunger”, right aross from Bahia Inutil – “Useless Bay”. To help stake their territorial claims in this remote area, both Chile and Argentina have been trying to promote development in the far south

If it were successful, Punta Arenas would be better than our original plan in a couple of ways: we might get more money for the Safari in wealthy Chile, we wouldn’t have to drive the 3000km to Buenos Aires, and we wouldn’t have to continue up to Paraguay after that. We also didn’t know whether Paraguay would be any better, so it was worth investing some time checking out this solution.

Getting in late to town after a 10 hour mission from Ushuaia, we grabbed a hotel room and went to a midnight dinner. In the morning it was straight to work. We set up our base of operations, moving to a more comfortable hotel and settling in, and then went out to chase the goose.

Dealership. Customs. Customs Agent. Car importer. The hunt was fast paced and exciting: in just over an hour, we had a man named Juan test driving the car. We still didn’t fully understand how all this importation stuff actually worked, but having an interested buyer was definitely helpful (the customs agent told us that it was critical).

Juan checked the car over and took it for a spin. Neither Kuba nor I took a single breath the whole time, both desperately hoping the car wouldn’t fall apart under his thrashing. El Safari wasn’t feeling super solid at that point, it must be said. Everything held together though, and Juan seemed to be fairly well connected: we immediately followed him to the customs office to find out how to initiate the process. Customs closed at 2pm, 30 minutes earlier, but Juan had a friend on the inside that came outside to talk it through with us. All good, let’s get an importer and talk later.

In the meantime, we got the car cleaned then went hunting for more buyers. Punta Arenas has a Zona Libre, a duty free area located just outside the city centre where importation rules are loose and businesses are sketch. Perfect. We talked to a bunch of people and found a couple of leads. The most promising was Mauricio, who told us to come back in the morning.

At the end of the day we were pretty satisfied with our progress: several positive leads, a rough idea of the paperwork involved. We enjoyed a nice dinner and wandered the town.

In the morning, things continued to go well. Mauricio told us to come back in the afternoon and he’d buy it in cash. Another dealer had a friend who might be interested. We hadn’t heard news from Juan, be he seemed to be in play as well. We went to every car dealership in town to try to drum up more interest.

By the afternoon, though, things started to fall apart.

One after another, good leads started to die off. And as we learned more about the importation procedures, we lost hope ourselves: this was going to be a pain for the buyer, no doubt. We finished the day with Mauricio pulling his offer (“Boss says too many KMs”) and started to prepare to cut our losses.

On Friday morning, we pursued our three remaining leads. And there it was: a cash offer of about $2100, to be paid at noon. We were sceptical, but it was from a used car dealer so he might actually know what the difficulties are. When we returned at the prescribed time, the lot was closed for siesta. Not good.

Time to get out of this town.

Although the car sale was a failure, there were a couple of good things that came out of Punta Arenas: we sold both bikes for decent prices, and we met Marcelo Kuntsmann, director of Fin del Mundo magazine. After a nice night of drinks with Marcelo on Thursday, where we explained our trip and learned about the magazine and his story, we arranged to have dinner on Friday. And it turned out to be a really great meal.

Thanks for this great picture of the team, Marcelo: