We got up at 6:30 for breakfast and were underway by 7:30, before the sun rose. To my great surprise, the road to the border is now paved. We had always wanted to follow the road beyond the paleomagnetic section we put in along the Río Guanchín in 1985-86 but the road was so rough and our vehicle so fragile that we never even attempted it. The new road follows the Rio Guanchín south of the paleomagnetic section. Traveling through here again brought back many good memories. The exposures along the river appeared to confirm my original interpretations. There are lots of fantastic exposures farther upstream toward Chaschuil. A bunch of us rode as techeros as far as Chaschuil. It was a cold but magnificent ride. The road to the Paso de San Francisco is beautiful with almost no traffic. It climbs a gentle grade onto the Puna. The actual pass is at 4760 m or 15,700' higher than I've ever been. Once into Chile, it rises to over 16,000', according to Todd's altimeter.

We reached Argentine customs; the 3 guys there obviously had way too little to do. They noted that our papers said we would cross at Mendoza and would not let us cross at San Francisco . The customs stop is 200 km from Fiambalá, the nearest town. Angel got on the phone and had his daughter call people in Buenos Aires who could make the change and fax it out. With the siesta complication, it took 5 hours before the fax arrived. We amused ourselves by trying to breath at >15,000'. Dome of the students discovered a lava tube not far from the building.

I made the mistake of wearing my video camera and was told that I had to register it and all digital cameras owned by the students. Todd told the students but I thought it was bullshit; so I told them not to bother. They didn't know who had cameras and who didn't and they were far too lazy to search the Green Machine. A few people had already gone in with their cameras so we waited fand got them registered. As Americans, Argentine law does not apply to us once we are outside of Argentina. The guy insisted that I register my camera so I gave him my South Carolina Educational TV membership card and told him that was the camera serial number. He wrote it down without questioning and we were on our way.

The wind was blowing hard as we left. We had noted that one of the front vista windows was loose, yesterday. Suddenly it blew out but caught on the curtain rod. Todd caught it so it did not break. San Martin crawled onto the cab roof and helped lower it to the cabin floor. We drove through the night with only the burlap curtain between us and the cold outside air.

We stopped at Laguna Verde, a beautiful alkaline lake with a haunting green color, just over the border into Chile. Soon after, we reached the Chilean customs, about 50 km from the border. In contrast to the Argentines, they were very pleasant and extremely efficient. I stood with one of the agents and told him about our experience on the Argentine side. We joked about the oxymoron of Argentine efMay 7, 2007 than an hour after arriving. We drove for a couple of hours before stopping in the town of Diego something (it's not on the map) for a decent dinner with loud video music. After dinner, we continued on through the night, at some point reaching Chañaral and turning northward along the coast. Parts of the descent to the sea passed through recent rockslides onto the road. We took a couple of hard jolts as we rode over the debris. The whole time we contended with either cold air blowing in the missing window in the front or extreme heat blasting out of the heating system in the rear. It was one of the few times I had experienced an exported momento argentino.