Final Sale
Wind blowing through the uneven slats of the old house whistled in the light of early dawn. Strong gusts shook the windows as we tossed and turned in the tattered sheets of a bed that was a size too small. Nights are short in summer at the bottom of the world. We were filled with nervous anxiety believing that today was the day that our fortunes would change. There is nothing inherently wrong with Punta Arenas and, for its 100,000 residents, it is a charming enough place to call home but it was not where we wanted to be. Being unable to leave weighed on our psyches with every passing day.
We had covered 20,000 km and rolled into Ushuaia, Argentina – the world’s southernmost city – knowing that we no longer had the stamina to consider returning to Colombia. After 3 months of travelling through Patagonia, Chile and its more stable economy emerged as the most sensible place to sell Tranquilo. I was prepared to accept any reasonable offer.
As we passed through Punta Arenas on our way to Tierra del Fuego, I placed a “For Sale” sign in the window, took out an ad on Yapo (the Chilean car exchange website) and spent two days on a quest through the city visiting mechanics, auto parts shops, and used car dealerships, in an effort to understand all of the legal procedures and learn about the local market.
Despite all of the troubles we had had along the way, I still believed that Tranquilo was a roadworthy car and had developed a sentimental attachment. Our level of trust was tenuous but that sentimentality led me into believing that she was worth more than the marketplace dictated. I set my asking price at 8 million pesos (about $10,000). I had invested enough money into repairs that I believed she was worth more than what I had paid for her but my early visits to auto parts shops quickly set me straight. Everyone liked the look of the car but hearing the age and knowing the mileage made them giggle and urge me to lower my price. Two factors forced me to rethink our strategy. The first was the fact that Tranquilo had Colombian, not Chilean, plates and put off any prospective buyer that was unwilling to suffer through the bureaucratic red tape involved in transferring the ownership of a foreign car. To ease the inconvenience, I would have to shave some pesos off my asking price. Punta Arenas is also a free trade zone – a ‘zona franca’ – that is designed to stimulate economic activity in the region. It is one of only two places in Chile where foreign cars can be imported and then sold. This drives down the overall cost of the marketplace and locals are used to getting cars, even new cars, on the cheap. I had to toss out early estimates that I received from mechanics in the north of the country and again chop at my initial asking price.
When we arrived in Ushuaia, I set about testing out my sales skills at every opportunity. In a local bar during the World Cup quarter-final between Argentina and the Netherlands, I ingratiated myself with the members of a tightly-knit Israeli ex-pat community. My name and number got floated around and I heard from a few people who were interested in doing our trip in reverse. Jenia encouraged me to join other Facebook groups of travellers to South America seeking travel advice and post our car for sale in various forums. Most folks travelling from one end of South America to the other are interested in camper vans and Tranquilo’s sedan status diminished her appeal. But I had a story to sell above and beyond a set of wheels and I had developed the courage to approach strangers and ask them if they were interested in the adventure of a lifetime. Most travellers to Ushuaia, or Punta Arenas, are on their way to visit one of the Antarctic research stations so the adventure of a lifetime is something they are presumed to be keen on. Selling the car to other overlanders seemed ideal as it removed the scarlet letter that were Tranquilo’s Colombian plates. Whenever I overheard English being spoken in the streets, or in restaurants and bars, I suggested driving the car back up to Colombia where it could be sold without needing to go through the import process. There were many cars and camper vans for sale by foreigners on various social media forums and an equal number of interested buyers. I reached out to many of them about the legalities of transferring ownership and what to expect when crossing borders, or attempting to resell a vehicle, in South America. People are quick to respond when you are interested in buying or selling but if you are only looking for information, then everyone suddenly disappears.
When we returned to Punta Arenas, my objectives were to get the best possible price for Tranquilo, sell her legally, and, if possible, keep her on the road. I paid to have every inch of her spit polished to look as clean and radiant as the day she was driven off the lot. I passed my information to the owner of the car wash who noticed the for-sale sign and I promised him a commission if he could connect me with someone who would buy the car. I took daily walks to visit more mechanics, auto parts shops, dealerships, and transit authorities or anyone who might have more information about buying and selling imported used cars. I kept constant tabs on my various social media channels and car selling forums. I told everyone I met that I wanted the entire city to know who I was and that I had a great car to sell at a price that was practically giving it away.
The first few days were frustrating and fruitless. We had set an overly optimistic goal of selling Tranquilo and leaving for Buenos Aires by the World Cup final. No one had so much as had a sniff at the car and we were still clueless about the laws and about Tranquilo’s true worth. Our new $4 million peso asking price was still way above market. In an attempt to change my selling information on the Yapo website, my listing was flagged for violating the website’s policies and my email address blocked from posting new listings. I moved away from inquiring at car lots and mechanics and shifted to approaching complete strangers each time refining my story to seem more appealing. If I heard English being spoken in the streets, I would approach whoever was speaking and try to sell them my story. If I ordered a beer or an empanada at a bar, I would simultaneously ask the bartender and any nearby waitresses if they were interested in buying a car. I was starting to get desperate and at one point approached an elderly woman sitting at a bench waiting for the bus.
Excuse me, are you waiting for the bus? I asked.
Yes, she replied.
Would you like to buy a car? Then you could drive yourself to wherever you need to go.
I already own three cars, she responded to my surprise.
Then why are you waiting for the bus? I asked.
I don’t drive, she said.
It was easy to spot foreigners and separate them from the locals. They were easier to approach because they typically spoke English which meant I could cut straight to the chase and the interaction would be less exhausting. Pitching my story in Spanish, though a great opportunity to improve my language skills, was taxing on my brain and had me running for the safety of our accommodation and the tiny little nest we had fashioned for ourselves.
One night out for supper, I approached a table of foreigners and shared my plan to sell them my car. They were searching for motorcycles to drive north and were finding it as difficult as us to strike a deal. We exchanged contact information and, during their own search, they put us in touch with a local English-speaking used motorcycle salesman named Salvador who was helpful in explaining much of Chile’s bureaucracy.
We took new pictures of the car so that they would not be flagged by the Yapo website and Jenia found ways of using shell email addresses to get our listing posted. I created a listing on Facebook’s marketplace with what seemed an embarrassingly rock-bottom asking price of $2.5 million pesos. Jenia also thought that the car was worth more and we argued over the asking price. With my unwillingness to drive further, Tranquilo was now an anchor attaching us to Punta Arenas and I convinced her that cutting our losses was our path to freedom. Finally, at $2.5 million, we began to draw suitors and I began to believe that a sale was possible. We had driven from Cartagena all the way to Ushuaia, we had accomplished our mission, and we made peace with selling her at a loss if it set us free.
We watched the World Cup final in a downtown bar. In what seemed a horrible twist of fate, Argentina were crowned champions and wild celebrations erupted throughout the country as every citizen of Buenos Aires, where we had hoped to be, flooded the streets. A small contingent of Argentina supporters occupied the central plaza of Punta Arenas, beat their drums, and waved their flags. We enjoyed the final for what it was, with some small part of us unable to shake the disappointment at missing out on the party, and set a new target hoping to be in Buenos Aires by Christmas.
Our early postings on the web brought an initial offer of $1.5 million pesos from a man named Ivan who wanted to convert the engine so that it could run on natural gas and then use it as an Uber taxi. At the same time, we received an offer from a couple, Pedro and Luisa, of $1.5 million pesos for her to become spare parts for other cars. The offers were low and I believed that there was someone out there who could keep her on the road and offer an amount closer to what we were asking. I never said no and requested that, for the price that they were asking, they wait and give me time to find someone who might offer more money.
In order for a car to be imported and sold legally in Chile, it needs to pass through customs. Early on in my search, I was guided to the customs office near the downtown port and spoke with a customs agent named Alexis who was in charge of overseeing the importation of used cars. He spoke quickly and was difficult to understand, but he was reassuring about how streamlined the process was in a place like Punta Arenas.
All you have to do, he said, is find a buyer and then you come here and sign some papers that allow you to sell the car. Then you go to the notary and sign over the car to the new owner and you are free.
He made it sound so simple. The day I met Alexis, he brought a prospective buyer to see the car. I told them to take a look and that they could take it for a test drive if they wanted. They opened the hood and looked inside. They poked around the frame pointing out the patches of rust that had developed from the salt air in Cartagena. The woman who was interested in buying the car got inside and it became clear that she had never driven a manual transmission car before because she could not start the engine and Alexis had to step in to get it running. When they had decided that they had seen enough, the woman approached me and started her negotiation with the words: I don’t love it. She followed that phrase with what became a popular negotiation refrain from the local Chilenos: What is your lowest price?
Being asked to shoot straight to my rock bottom price was not how I was used to doing business. Where I came from, the buyer made an offer below asking and the seller countered by shaving some money off their asking price and the two sides chipped away until they met somewhere in the middle. My response in negotiating with locals was always the same: Make me a reasonable offer and I will say yes and we can fill out the paperwork tomorrow. This perplexed them and it seemed to me that they could not conjure up a reasonable offer. I reminded them that I understood that their goal was to get the car for the lowest possible price but that my goal was to agree to an offer that was as close as possible to my asking price. This logic did not seem to resonate with locals and I never heard from that woman again, nor did Alexis ever bring another buyer to see the car.
I had confidence in Alexis and I believed in his good word. He was always reassuring me that the car was in good shape and my asking price was realistic. For a week at a time, he needed to travel up to the Chile-Argentina border 200 km out of town. While he was away, my contact point at the customs office was an older gentleman named Victor whose Spanish was even more difficult to understand. He spoke without moving his lips which meant that all of his words were just a string of vowels and no consonants. He was similarly reassuring about my situation and reminded me that what I was doing happens all the time and that everyone in Punta Arenas was aware of the bureaucracy involved. He showed me a stack of binders with listings of people who had gone through the importation process and sold their cars. He mentioned a key point of bureaucracy that Alexis failed to that, after the car cleared customs and I had been given the documentation allowing me to sell the car, it then needed to remain at customs until an Interpol investigation was conducted to ensure that the title of the car was totally clean and had never been used for any illegal activity.
The first time I visited customs, I told Alexis that I wanted to know every detail about importing cars into the zona franca because I wanted to be able to explain to a buyer what they should expect. Both he and Victor were insistent that the process was a simple one for me as the seller but I was insistent that the process should seem equally simple to a buyer. I was repeatedly reassured that everyone in Punta Arenas understood the process of buying and selling imported used cars. Victor opened his binder, picked up his office phone, and made a couple of phone calls. He hinted that there are lots of agents in Punta Arenas who buy and sell imported cars all the time. I sharpened my concentration to focus on Victor’s end of the conversation but he blasted out his words so rapidly and indistinctly that I only caught every fifth word. Of those, the words I caught pertained to Tranquilo: Renault; Samsung Sm3; 2011; Colombia. Victor made three short half-hearted, attempts like this and came back each time saying that the person he spoke with did not resell cars like mine.
Wesley was one of the semi-permanent housemates living with us in the boarding house we had chosen as our accommodation. He was from Haiti, had bowed legs, and was living in Punta Arenas collecting cardboard boxes and other recyclable material from supermarkets and stores in the area that he and his team transported to a nearby facility to be processed for recycling. He was gracious about making space in the kitchen so that we could cook our supper and, each night when we were finished, he would begin to cook his stews. Filled with plantains and spiced with banana leaves and other strange herbs, the smell from Wesley’s evening meals permeated through every wall of the house.
We have to move, Jenia complained. It was fine at the beginning but I can’t tolerate this smell any longer.
Guests from around the world would saunter in and stay in one of the other spare rooms for a night or two. Most were on their way to, or from, Puerto Natales to visit Torres del Paine. Jorge, the house manager, who always dressed in slacks and a shirt and tie, would appear every other day to perform his house cleaning duties which were to replace towels and arrange bedsheets that were rarely ever washed or changed. He would add rolls of toilet paper to the bathroom spool which was the extent of the maintenance that took place in the most critical of the house’s shared spaces. Jorge and I often crossed paths and each time we spoke we discussed the car. His eyes beamed when we talked about Tranquilo and he was reassuring that we would have no difficulty selling her. Each time, he would inquire what our asking price was and each time we spoke my asking price had dropped. Each time, I reminded him that if he knew someone who was interested in buying the car that I was happy to give him a small commission and each time he left the conversation saying that he would talk to some people that he knew and see what he could find. Every morning I woke confident that I could sell our car by the end of the day but by the afternoon it became evident that I would have to book more nights in this rickety old house that reeked of stewed banana leaves.
Despite Jenia’s insistence, I was reticent about altering our living arrangements. Often in the quest for a better alternative one winds up with something worse. Our situation was far from ideal but I needed to remind myself of what our goals were and remind Jenia of how where we were would help us to achieve those goals. With our indefinite departure date, for the small sacrifice of a dose of privacy, we were able to occupy this little room for a price that was way below market value and flexible with the multiple extensions we requested. Moreover, we were benefitting from fast and reliable internet. During our journey south we had stayed at many places where the internet either performed below what we required or cut out completely when there was so much as a strong gust of wind which, in Patagonia, is the default weather setting.
Let me sell the car and I will solve our living situation, was a refrain that Jenia heard me repeat often.
It was the holiday period and life in Punta Arenas slowed to a crawl. Locals left the city to visit family spread throughout South America. Businesses closed or reduced their hours. Jenia and I had long since sent boxes of souvenirs along with our winter clothes back to our respective homes in anticipation of a swift arrival to Buenos Aires’ summer. In the cold of the deep south, we bundled ourselves up in every article of clothing that we owned and would make our daily visit to the grocery store. Until the car was sold, I was trying to keep our costs as low as possible and there was no point in storing away ingredients in the kitchen pantry for a later day as, the moment we could leave, all of them would be abandoned.
Occasionally we would walk a little further to get some fresh air or indulge in some local treats. On a clear day, when the wind would die down, we might stroll along the beach or sit staring out to sea like the cormorants watching passing ships and listening to the sound of the waves. Jenia developed a taste for the king crab and sea scallop empanadas that they cooked fresh at the municipal market and, when my enthusiasm for a home cooked meal was at its lowest, she would make the case that the walk was also a chance for us to get some exercise.
For months, Jenia had been itching at a craving for pelmeni. I had tried to staunch this leak back in Mendoza by buying tortellini and smothering it mayonnaise. The half-assed approximation of one of Russia’s staple meals left her unsatisfied and only whetted her appetite. Since then, I had managed to beat back her requests to buy a sack flour so that she could prepare the meal herself as she would back in Russia. During the trip, I was unable to jump the mental hurdle of purchasing an ingredient that was so entrenched in domestic living and it led to inane arguments.
A small bag costs maybe 1 or 2 dollars, she would say. So what if we use only some of the bag? Then we just leave the bag and someone else will use it.
It was a convincing argument and I had routinely spent money on more expensive items simply to avoid paying for that sack of flour. Finally, I ran out of counterarguments and Jenia was able to close the door on her craving for pelmeni. With little else for us to do in Punta Arenas our pelmeni evening was made into an event and became a coordinated effort. Jenia fashioned a dough that she rolled thin and cut into small circles. She pressed together the ground meat and spices while I filled the small pockets and folded them into dumplings ready to be boiled. We got two full meals out of all that pelmeni.
We failed to get to Buenos Aires by Christmas and new week began with us praying for success and hopeful of spending our New Year’s celebration in the Argentinian capital. Days passed and I continued with my routines traveling to the customs office in the morning to press the agents there to use their contacts and put the eyes of buyers on Tranquilo. In the early afternoon, we walked to the Unimarc for ingredients for our evening meal. By the late afternoon, I was responding to inquiries and inviting people to come for a test drive. By 7 pm, Jenia and I ventured down to the kitchen to prepare supper as the sack of flour continued to sit on the pantry shelf. The success of our evening of pelmeni had closed one door and opened another as Jenia now developed a craving for blini. Jenia had been gluten-averse for the majority of our adventure only occasionally joining my indulgence in an empanada or a pizza. She complained that gluten made her skin break out in blotches that she would point to and try to show me but that I was too ignorant and unobservant to notice. Now we had this bag of flour that I bitched about and avoided buying for months and she resolved to demonstrate that, were we so determined, we could use it all. She prepared a heaping pile of Russian crepes which we dipped in melted butter or sprinkled with sugar and we closed another door.
One evening, I prepared fish and chips for supper using the flour for the batter and I tried to sneak spoonfuls of the flour into our meals in countless other ways. But that bag continued to sit on the pantry shelf as a symbol of our inability to leave.
We failed to get to Buenos Aires by New Year. Christmas is not widely celebrated in Russia and we cruised through it, but New Year is a big deal and our subdued celebration affected Jenia’s spirit. She began the day with optimism and a plan to prepare a variety of salads as they would in Russia. Enthusiasm waned by the afternoon and, for supper, we ate nothing but a small bowl of traditional Hungarian szekelygulyás that I prepared. We spent the day in bed watching Soviet-era slapstick comedies with English subtitles. There were moments of sadness because this portion of the adventure was not going as we had hoped and future plans were beginning to unravel.
The optimism we mustered with the dawn of a new year felt manufactured. We convinced ourselves that the holiday season had put households in a position of austerity and with new year finances reassessed, new buyers would emerge. Jenia’s various attempts at listing the car on Yapo were all flagged and removed. Once again, I lowered my asking price for the car and sent out messages to my growing set of contacts throughout the city.
Sets of interested parties came to look at the car and test the engine. I was now offering the car at a quarter of my initial asking price and the offers I received of $1.5 million pesos was still half a million pesos less than what I was hoping I could get for her. I continued to ask those that made offers to wait.
Jenia and I sat down and discussed the offers we were receiving. It made it her furious. Only she and I seemed to see any real value in Tranquilo. Jenia suggested I tell anyone offering $1.5 million to fuck off. She believed that we could take our time to sell the car and that eventually someone would come along to give us our price. But every day that passed squeezed the value out of our target. Because we had no interest in staying in Punta Arenas, the longer that the price on offer was $1.5 million, the less that that $1.5 million was actually worth. It occurred to me that we might not receive a better offer and should, therefore, take the first offer that came along.
I reached out to Ivan, the first man who made an offer and wanted to convert the engine and use Tranquilo as an uber taxi. I told him that, if he wanted to buy Tranquilo at $1.5 million pesos, I was ready to sell. He declined.
Hoping to draw even more attention, I dropped my asking price, once again, to $1.8 million pesos. I had had a few offers of $1.5 million pesos, even an offer of the same just for her parts as a fall-back option, so I hoped that more people would come in with the same offer and get bidders to the table hoping that one would kick in a little extra and get the price up to $1.6 million.
Rodrigo was a young kid with a young family who drove up in a car that was even older and rustier than Tranquilo. Hoping to make an incremental upgrade, he had a buyer for his car at $1.2 million and would use the money from that sale to buy Tranquilo. We went for a spin together through the neighbourhood and he liked the car and wanted to buy it. I explained the details about the car needing to pass through customs as best as I could and he seemed to understand and said that he would be ready to buy the car the moment that his was sold and that he would let me know by noon the following day. I returned to our room in the old house along Avenida Armando Sanhueza and told Jenia. We ate supper and barely spoke as I checked the prices for upcoming flights to Buenos Aires.
At noon the next day I received a message from Rodrigo that the buyer for his car had pulled out of the deal and, as a consequence, he needed to pull out of our deal. The saga was dragging on. If it was impossible to keep Tranquilo on the road for $1.5 million pesos, then the money was more important than her being on the road. I reached out to Pedro and Luisa – the couple who made an offer for Tranquilo’s parts. By now, I had been flatly turned down by a number of chop-shops who would not buy her at any price. Pedro and Luisa remained interested but I was unsure how to make that sale legally. I sent several messages inquiring how we could finalize a sale but every time we exchanged messages our wires got more crossed.
Every part of Oscar, from his belly to his fingers and his teeth, was round and his shirt was a size too small and exposed a dangling globule of belly fat. He learned that I was from Canada and could not keep from smiling and fuddling through the bits of English he knew. With a round wife and a brood of round children, they pulled up in a van that, considering their cumulative girth, seemed the more suitable vehicle to Tranquilo, but he seemed all too eager to buy a car from a Canadian. He drove Tranquilo around the block with a gleeful grin spread across his face. Once again, I delivered my spiel about customs and importing a foreign car. He finished my sentences for me and seemed all too willing to take the car off my hands. He was going to be our saviour. He would keep Tranquilo on the road and he would complete the sale legally. He made the offer of $1.5 million pesos that we were both expecting, to which I agreed, and we could take care of all of the formalities the next day.
There’s just one thing at customs that I am curious about, he said. I passed him Alexis’ and Victor’s contact information so he would know exactly who to speak with and, before he left, he said: I’m sure everything will be fine, but I just want to make absolutely sure.
As I had on so many nights prior, I returned to our room in the old house along Avenida Armando Sanhueza and told Jenia. We ate supper and, again, barely spoke as I checked the prices for upcoming flights to Buenos Aires. Our busy minds, once again, were filled with optimism but racing in the brief moments of the night.
Oscar sent me a message the next morning after his visit to the customs office. He outlined a list of additional costs on top of the car that he would have to pay. Paying the notary was the responsibility of the buyer, plus import duties and various insurances left him with a bill that nearly doubled the price of the car. That was on top of having to wait anywhere from 30 to 90 days for the car to pass its Interpol inspection. For those reasons, he said that he could not justify buying Tranquilo. In desperation, I asked him if it would seal the deal if I covered some of those future costs and he declined saying that it was not so much the costs but the hassle that made up his mind.
I dialled Pedro and Luisa’s number. In that moment, they felt like my last resort and I was prepared to suffer through the awkward conversation in broken Spanish. My call was ignored.
Disconsolate, I trekked to the customs office to speak with Alexis and Victor. It was the first time I had seen both of them in the same place at the same time.
Everyone loves my car, I complained, but when they come here and learn what is involved in buying the car, suddenly it becomes toxic.
Once again, they tried to reassure me that everything was above board and this was just business as usual – all of it just part of the process.
I spoke up: No, there must be something wrong with the system.
I looked around the office, on the verge of making a scene, and asked if anybody wanted a free car.
Seeing my demeanour on the border of becoming a commotion, a woman came and asked what kind of car I was selling. As I had done a hundred times before, I gave her the details. I showed her the photos and told her my story. She smiled and liked the look of the car. She looked at Oscar and asked him what the situation was. They spoke swiftly and incomprehensibly in their local version of Spanish but I could recognize that he was telling her about my desire to return to Canada and inability to drive the car back to Colombia. She placed her index finger over her pursed lips as she listened to Victor’s explanation about the car. I watched intently trying to decipher what I could from the conversation and eventually the woman simply rolled her eyes and looked at me saying, Hard pass!
I looked at Victor, shrugged my shoulders and said, What do you expect me to do?
Victor led me upstairs to a row of offices and sat me down in front of a lawyer, Gabriel, who spoke English better than anyone else in the building. We shared a polite and pleasant introduction as my anxieties eased now being in front of someone who I would not struggle to understand. In a few words, I was able to explain the situation and told him that there must be a problem with the customs system. Once again, I suffered through the all too familiar refrain that selling an imported used car was very simple for the seller. Everyone in this office keeps telling me that. But it is not true.
Listen, I know that there is someone who wants to buy the car for the parts, I told Gabriel. Could you please speak to them and explain that I will sell them the car for the price that they offered?
Gabriel agreed. Pass me your phone and I will call, he said.
Could you call from your phone? I asked.
Gabriel furrowed his brow in confusion.
Let me explain, I continued. The situation with this person is fragile. I am worried that I have made this situation too complicated for them and I think that they might be ignoring messages from me. I tried to call them a few minutes ago and they ignored my call.
With reluctance, Gabriel agreed.
The phone rang only once. Besides having a much better command of English, Gabriel’s Spanish was more understandable than that of his peers in the office. He asked Pedro if he was still interested in purchasing the car. The answer was obviously affirmative since Gabriel then began explaining who he was and why he was calling. He continued by explaining the procedure involved in purchasing the car and then gave a moment to listen. Gabriel adjusted the glasses perched at the tip of his nose and stared up at the ceiling. He interjected with a few indiscernible clarifications before cordially saying goodbye and hanging up the phone.
So? I asked
Basically, the answer is ‘no’, he replied.
I was flabbergasted. How can that possibly be? They only want the parts, so what is the risk to them?
It was not long before we were embroiled in a detailed conversation about my experience selling Tranquilo. I explained how everyone would immediately jump to asking what was my lowest price and he giggled with understanding. I related my stories about offering the car up at auto shops, empanada stands, and bars with the phrase: Does anyone want to buy a car? Every person I asked the question to would immediately dismiss me as though I were a telemarketer but would then pause and ask what kind of car I was selling. The pattern was always the same. Instant rejection, to curiosity, to genuine interest. My phone was now filled with contacts from around the city, each one with a detailed explanation of who they were: Ivan, fat, wants car for Uber and change engine; Rodrigo, young father, track pants, getting rid of old car; Sandro, tattoos, met in sandwich shop, doesn’t want to buy but knows a lot of people. Amaury, Colombian, should understand the legalities, works as a waiter; Oscar, fat family in the minivan, big smile, excited to buy; And so on. Every interaction that led to an exchange of contact information, so I thought, was done in good faith.
This is what you do not understand about Chilean people, Gabriel said. They will always say that they are interested – even if they are not – and this is the case of the people who said that they want the car for the parts.
If someone is just buying the car for its parts? Does the car still need to undergo an Interpol inspection? I asked.
Of course.
And let me guess, import duty still needs to be paid on the car and everything needs to be overseen and stamped by a notary.
Yes.
What happens if I cannot sell my car? I asked.
You are actually lucky, Gabriel explained, because if you are unable to sell your car, what you can do is give the car to customs and we will sell the car at auction. You can then claim your portion of the sale from the government. Now, I have no way to know what the amount would be and you should know that you would only be able to claim that money when it becomes available from the government and that can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years.
And how often does that happen?
More often than you think.
All that I could think to do was sit there shaking my head and laugh. By ensuring that the car went to auction, customs had a stake in profiting from the car’s future sale meaning that it was in their best interest that Tranquilo could not be sold. I thanked Gabriel for his time and help and left the customs office for the last time. By then, my feet instinctively knew the distances between each of the staircase steps that led from the offices on the second floor to the lobby and the weight of each of the doors to pass through along the way. I peered through the glass that separated the offices from the atrium to give one last disappointed glare at Alexis and Victor seated at their desks lazily playing with their paperwork – the mindless and pointless clerical busywork of an ever-expanding bureaucracy.
I walked along the usual route back through the plaza onto Gobernador Carlos Bories. My feet were dragging and the lighthearted skip in my step was gone. With my head down, I did not once glance up or pause a moment to inspect the fruit sellers along the way. Never glancing at a map, one month living in Punta Arenas, my body now could make the journey on instinct. The lock to the gate of the old house was sticky and required a deft and coordinated pull with one arm and a spin of the wrist with the other. For weeks we had clumsily spent too long jiggling and shaking the keys in the rusty old lock and pushing and pulling on the iron bars but by now my muscles had become perfectly tuned to the gate that I could I delicately slide in the key and, with a click and a pop, draw open the gate as if it had been installed the day before.
I trudged up the stairs and entered our room. Jenia was sitting on the bed at her computer and could hear the huff in my breathing.
What’s wrong? she asked.
I think we are going to have to drive to Colombia, I replied.
Jenia seemed almost too pleased with this solution. I told her about everything that I had learned at the customs house and how I now believed that selling the car was impossible. We investigated the various routes back and drew up plans. We had been on the road for nine months and, unlike when we had started, time now felt against us. Driving long and difficult days of 800 kiometres or more was possible and, in theory, the drive could be done in a few weeks. Jenia said that she had the stamina for it if that was going to be my decision. But I could not suspend all of my work for three weeks just to drive all the way back.
Only days before we arrived in Punta Arenas, Peru’s president, Pedro Castillo, had illegally attempted to dissolve Peru’s parliament leading to a change of the country’s head of state. Political protests broke out throughout the country. Tourist sites were closed and foreign nationals were stranded as airports closed and roadways in and out of the country were blocked. The situation had no foreseeable end in sight and it made a return journey by land a non-starter.
We visited tourist agencies and transportation companies to inquire about shipping Tranquilo by boat back to Cartagena or, more likely, to the western Colombian port of Buenaventura. Information on costs and logistics were difficult to hunt down and became an option that not only had no cost benefit but threatened to extend our stay in South America indefinitely.
Days earlier, on my way to drop off laundry, a young man with spiked hair, a ring in his nose, and tattoos along his arms, drove by and yelled to get my attention. He looked me up and down and told me that he worked in the building across the street from where we had been living. He asked if I was the one selling the car that had been parked out front and how much I was asking for it so I passed along the details that were relevant at the time. He pursed his lips as he revved the engine of his rusty old car, nodded, and drove away. As everything was falling apart, in a final desperate attempt to sell Tranquilo the legal way, I sent out another text to my ever-growing list of contacts. I thought back to that chance encounter with the man who worked across the street and decided to pay him a visit.
The building across the street had the look of an abandoned office. There were a few old cars parked behind a sliding gate. From the street-facing floor to ceiling windows, I could make out a lobby under renovation. There was nothing but a round picnic table and two chairs, some old posters and broken light fixtures strewn across the floor, and a refrigerator stocked with energy drinks in the corner. I was caught creeping around by a young woman who asked me what I was looking for. I explained about the young man who had inquired about my car and she told me that that was her husband. She could see that I was struggling in Spanish and switched to English and introduced herself as Michel. In her early thirties, she had freckles and curly auburn party hair. She wore thin, silver-rimmed glasses, and, though she was the wife of a mechanic and had no higher education, spoke English better than anyone we had met in Patagonia, including the lawyer who worked at the customs office.
She and her husband, Rodrigo, had bought the building back in November and were in the process of converting it into a car wash and auto repair shop. I told her about my hopes for Tranquilo and she stated that they bought and fixed up old cars for resale all the time. I gave her my price of $1.5 million pesos and, with little hesitation, she said that she would speak to someone that she knew at customs about buying foreign cars but, if everything was okay, they would be happy to buy the car.
Jenia began to investigate through Russian social media channels to see if she could find out any information that might help us. Having once again dropped my price, I received offers of $500,000 pesos on Facebook marketplace and through my contacts. We made our daily visit to the Unimarc. Jorge performed his cursory visit to the house. We exchanged pleasantries and did our usual song and dance about the car.
Yes, I dropped the price again so please tell everyone you know, I said, the tone of my voice becoming more robotic with every utterance of the phrase that poor Jorge had become too accustomed to hearing.
Jorge nodded politely. The pervasive smell from Wesley’s stews lingered in the kitchen as we prepared a pizza allowing us, at last, to use what remained of the flour.
This goddamn sack of flour, I said to Jenia. It has been the weight that has kept us here.
You are blaming the flour now? she replied.
My mind was too full of plans of escape to explain symbolism. Messages continued to come in on the social media marketplace but by now it seemed a lost cause. My phone would buzz and beep but I would just ignore the messages as the last of my hope I had placed in Michel and her husband.
Jenia and I reminisced about the meals we had orchestrated using the bag of flour that we had fought a hundred times about buying. And, as she had stated a hundred times about a hundred different cravings along the way, she said: We can close this door.
The next day, I walked across the street to follow up with Michel and Rodrigo. They shot me a disappointed look and told me that they could not buy Tranquilo. The car was fine, the asking price was fine, it was the situation of importing the car through customs that it made it too great of a risk for them. I thanked them for their help and returned to our home in the rickety old house where I sat at my desk and lost myself in my work – the oasis of what seemed under my control. My appetite was gone.
My phone beeped. An easily ignored message came in offering me $100,000 for the car.
Jenia sat in the bed working on her various projects. She had begun to investigate certain Russian community channels in South America and chimed in saying that she got in contact with a Russian businessman living in Santiago. According to him, selling a foreign car in Chile was outright impossible. Not only would the buyer need to suffer through all of the red tape we had already learned about but, moreover, there were conditions affixed to the car that, for a period of time after purchase, the car would not be able to leave the zona franca. We had mistakenly understood this to mean that the car would need to remain in Punta Arenas and Magallanes and could not be driven out of the country. In actuality, it meant that it could not legally leave a small portion of the city, a small network of about 10 city blocks lined by offices, dealerships, and outlet malls, and the owner of the car would be restricted to driving solely within this zone or face paying a penalty if they left.
Jenia and spent the next hour or so complaining about how ridiculous our situation had become. The mounting frustration was becoming so toxic to our psyches that it made us question the decision we had made a year ago to travel from one end of the continent to the other. Like so much about bureaucracies around the world it all felt needlessly arbitrary and punitive. From that moment, my mind was made up. There seemed to be only one option left: operate outside of the bureaucracy. This is how criminals are made.
I walked back across the street to visit Michel and Rodrigo. The words of the lawyer at the customs office rang in my ears: Chilenos will always say that they are interested even if they are not. I thought about the girl at the empanada shop who said that she loved the car and that it fit in her budget. I thought about the owner of the chocolate shop who looked at me with shock in his eyes and asked if it was true that I was only asking for $2 million pesos. I thought about the countless people who had come to take a test drive, look at the engine, and said that they would get back to me in a couple of days. How many times had I walked past them in the streets or stood in line across from them at the checkout at the Unimarc? I begged Michel to help me make one last attempt to sell Tranquilo and I gave her very specific instructions:
I asked her to call Pedro and Luisa from her phone. I asked her to explain who she was and how she owned a repair shop. She would then explain that I was with her and that I was willing to sell them my car for $1.5 million pesos and to not involve customs at all. Finally, she needed to explain that there would be no other people involved and no other transaction than between us – no notary and no officials of any kind.
She made the call and in under one minute she was done.
They will come here tomorrow at 11 am, she said.
So, it’s a deal? I exclaimed with a smile.
Yes, she replied.
I walked back across the street and, with renewed anxiety, struggled to open the rusty old gate. I skipped up the stairs to tell Jenia. I sat at my desk and worked while perusing the prices of flights to Buenos Aires. But Tranquilo was not yet sold.
The next morning, I paced around the room that looked out over the street to Michel and Rodrigo’s auto shop. This was my last chance and if this deal fell through it meant finding a way to return to Colombia. Fifteen minutes before the agreed upon meeting time, I walked across the street and sat on the curb to wait. The gait to the auto shop was still closed and there was no sign of either Michel or Rodrigo. The hour came and went. I returned to our room with nervous knees fearing my hopes had been brushed aside with another Chilean false promise.
At 11:30 I received a text message from Pedro saying that they were at the bank securing the last of the cash and would be at the auto shop in fifteen minutes. By now, Michel had arrived and opened the gate. I looked over at Jenia sitting in the bed working on her phone and told her the news.
Do you want me to come with you, she asked.
No, I replied, this is my quest.
I was keen to cordon off any potential interference and not allow anything to derail the deal. At this point, if the deal was going to fall through I would only allow it to be because of me or because of forces beyond my control.
A taxi with Pedro and Luisa drove up and parked itself next to the auto shop and I rushed down the stairs to meet them. Pedro and Luisa asked to inspect the engine again and did a tour of the car checking all of the spots on the frame and going through the trunk and checking over all of Tranquilo’s nooks and crannies. Pedro told me that he wanted to test out the car. When they had originally offered to buy the car, they said it was just for the parts. His wish to now inspect the car worried me as it might give him an opportunity to renege on the deal if it somehow did not live up to his expectation. But, for the $1.5 million pesos I presumed he was carrying, I would accede to any request and I happily, but nervously, handed over the keys.
Terrified that this would be the moment that Tranquilo would decide to not even start, I hopped in the passenger seat as Pedro went through the paces of shaking the gear shift and checking the dials and the mirrors before hitting the ignition. Tranquilo had some breath still in her and faithfully started up. We cruised around the block as Pedro sang her praises with a smile.
We returned to Michel’s half-finished office where they presented the stacks of cash – one and half million Chilean pesos in $2,000 peso notes. Nervous and deprived of sleep from the sun that never set, my hands shakily flipped through the wad of bills but I was unable to accurately count all 750 of them. Michel could see that I was struggling and offered to count the notes. Sensing my concern, Luisa spoke to Michel about drafting a document stating the details of our exchange. It would never hold up in any court, but both parties signed it.
Michel giggled. This is new for me, she said. I feel like I can add new skills to my resume: Translator; Unlicensed notary. She added her own signature to the document as a witness. I smiled and thanked her for her help.
I had my cash. Pedro drove Tanquilo and me up into the outskirts of Punta Arenas to their garage where they removed the license plates for me to keep along with all of the documentation. We drove further up the hills out of town where we parked Tranquilo in a small field surrounded by other disbanded cars. There was no time to say a proper goodbye. Tranquilo took me on the greatest adventure of my life and now there she sat unceremoniously on a hill in a field outside of Punta Arenas. My mind was already somewhere else but I was not free yet – worse, by Chilean law I was a criminal guilty of smuggling.
Pedro and Luisa drove me in their taxi back to the rickety old house where I hugged Jenia and showed her the bag of cash. The bag of flour was finished, Tranquilo had been sold, we had our money, but now we were on the lam.
As I had done every day ever since we arrived in Punta Arenas, I checked for flights to Buenos Aires. Jenia and I discussed what might happen at immigration if we left Chile by plane and were asked about the fact that we had arrived by car. We devised a simple story that would be difficult to disprove of visiting Buenos Aires to see friends with the intention of returning to Punta Arenas where we had left our car with more friends.
I had requested an extension to our stay in the house which technically ended during the moments when I was signing that not-so-official document and counting my cash. The owner had been kind and flexible about our stay, never asking us to leave, and by a happy coincidence, only a couple of days earlier, I had paid Jorge in cash for some days that had lapsed on the app – so we were fully paid up. One of the best deals flying out of Punta Arenas left that night at 2 am. I rescinded the extension request and bought our tickets.
We walked to the currency exchange and traded our Chilean pesos for a more universally exchangeable $1,800 US dollars. We packed our bags and left the rickety old house on Armando Sanhueza for the last time. I closed the gate behind me and could not ignore the gaping hole along the curb in front of the house where Tranquilo had sat for an entire month. My thoughts turned to her sitting in that farmer’s field up on the hill at the edge of town. It was not time to get nostalgic and my heart was pumping with adrenaline. We had sent boxes of our collected trinkets back home to our families but we were still heavy and toting far too much.
Our first night in Punta Arenas, we discovered an authentic French bistro where I promised Jenia that I would treat her to dinner once Tranquilo was sold. I knew I would never feel truly free until Chile was behind me and we were safe and sound in Buenos Aires. I raised my glass of wine to her to celebrate our victory but part of me was peering over my shoulder half expecting Alexis or Victor to be dining at the table across the way from us and wondering what we were so happy about. Jenia and I discussed what could happen at immigration and determined that no one was likely to care very much. The likelihood that we would be taken for anything but tourists who had travelled south by plane to visit Torres del Paine and who were now on their way to continue their travels in Buenos Aires was about 1 percent. But still, it was that one percent that ate away at my psyche and made the flight through the night a restless one.
We had a 12-hour layover in Santiago. I scoured the internet and found a hotel near the airport that allowed visitors to pay in four-hour chunks at an affordable rate. It was a pretty kinky sex hotel with ceiling mirrors, leather sex chairs, and a separate room service menu for strap-ons, dildos, and other toys. We were so exhausted that we could barely stand, so we took the opportunity to use the four hours for sleep, to take a shower, and drink a complimentary cup of coffee before heading back to the airport.
We had our boarding passes and were ready to pass through airport security and immigration. We handed over our documents to the officer who passed them through the electronic reader, glanced through the pages, looked us over, and punched his stamp without so much as uttering a single word.
Jenia and I were giddy with glee as we soaked up Argentina’s capital’s warm dewy night air as our taxi sped along the highway toward the accommodation awaiting us in the popular Palermo Hollywood district. Though we had barely slept and anxiety made every fibre of our bodies feel stretched, we were reinvigorated by our newfound freedom. A new adventure awaited. We had driven from Cartagena to Ushuaia and no one could take that away. Tranquilo had been brave in her service and would now give a second chance to countless cars that could use her various parts to remain on the road. I struggled to open the front door of the apartment building with our new set of keys. My wrist had grown accustomed to a very specific pull and twist that did not work on this new door. We laid down our bags and inspected our new surroundings. The accommodation had a kitchen but there was no sack of flour to be found nor did it reek of stewed banana leaves. We would sleep like angels. Buenos Aires’ hot summer night air clung to our skin and forced beads of sweat to drip from our brows. We stripped down to our shorts and t-shirts and headed out the door to explore our new surroundings. Every step was a mystery – order had been restored.