Bordering on the ridiculous.

A commanding voice awakes us from our sleep. “Chicos, vamos”…

I remove the essential eye mask to see a golden Labrador pacing up and down the aisle of our coach, meticulously sniffing the now near empty, semi-cama. He gives us a sniff as we grab our backpacks and get off the bus into a holding room full of people from the bus.

I check the time on my phone. It’s two thirty in the morning. All passengers are lined up into three rows in preparation for our hand luggage to be x-rayed in a system akin to airport security. The night is cold and swaggers into the building through open doors and single glazed windows.

We are on the border between Argentina and Chile, somewhere in the Andean mountains on an unsettling journey due to the weaving route the bus is forced to take. Prior to baggage check we had been startled awake to complete the immigration out of Argentina into Chile, blundering through the process, half asleep, trying to work out what was required from us in a language we desperately want to, but can’t speak. We follow the herd, shoulder to shoulder, hoof to hoof and get the stamps we need to enter the exit and exit the entrance.

Back in the holding room the process seems to be taking a long time. Papers are filled in and handed over to a number of customs officials dressed in blue outfits. Some have cool American styled initials on the back that say P.D.I. (A sort of customs/F.B.I officer amalgamation). The officials seemed to be taking a keen interest in our bus load and lead the Labrador through the group a number of times, letting the dog show off the power of his proboscis. But surely, this was now taking too long…

Argentina had been a truly mixed bag of experiences. We both loved travelling with the Danes Jacob and Line, and formed strong bonds, sharing a similar sense of humour with a love of eating and drinking. And spending.

But Argentina held a sting of bad luck in the form of preventing us from getting to our money. We had been told that Argentina had some economic problems but hadn’t foreseen that this would limit our ability to withdraw cash on our credit card to pay for things. We were in fact shut out by all forms of cash withdrawal for most of our time there. Not a single restaurant, cash machine or supermarket let us pay with cards leaving us frustrated and fruitless in long searches through Buenos Aires, San Nicholas and Rosario.

Luckily we had the incredibly generous Danes to bail us out (the bank of Denmark also treated us to a mini bottle of champagne and jelly sweets to cheer us up). They had done their homework and brought a significant amount of U.S dollars into the country to change in the blackish/blue markets of the city. Argentines love the U.S. dollar longtime and invest into the stronger stable market, paying way more than the advertised exchange rate. Ironically, this exacerbates their own economic stability even further.

Rosario dug it’s heels in harder through my feckless loss of the first debit card. In our vain attempts to get some dineiro, I somehow managed to lose the card around the many banks we visited along the way. A lengthy and expensive phonecall to the Halifax cancelled the card to our slight relief.

We were forced into trying a British money transfer company called Azimo. It had been recommended by a guy in the Millhouse Hipo and had the added benefit of a transfer rate way above anything official cambio wise. You essentially transfer money to yourself by debit card and pick up the cash in a local office. “Collect your money within 24 hours” was the claim. Three days later we contacted the customer service team who claimed the Argentinian office was at fault by not flagging the availability of our cash. We arrive at the office 13b find it boarded up, absent of any information as to what was going on.

Fantastic.

We somehow managed to explain to the rosarion boutique ladies next door our situation, and they somehow managed to explain that the office had moved… To the opposite end of Rosario. A long walk, a nervy exchange of a passport number and at last we managed to get our cash.

We looked forward to Mendoza which we decided to go as our last destination in Argentina. A new destination to wipe the slate clean. There we planned to do a number of outdoorsy activities which of course needed to be paid for. Opposite the hostel Alamo gleamed a Carrefour with a new cash machine enticing us with the promise of good times ahead.

Fingers crossed, I tapped in the security code and squinted my eyes almost praying to the money God to send us a moolla miracle. One thousand pesos please.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please… I muttered under my breath. The machine whirred and delivered a whopping silly numbered amount of pesos. I punch the air and silently mouth the immortal words… “Everything’s going so well”. I place the cash in my wallet and go to pick up the credit card…

Except the machine doesn’t want to return the credit card.

The machine decides it wants to keep the card for itself.

The machine wants to create a problem.

The machine is in a supermarket and can’t be opened by the staff.

When the machine is eventually opened, as we are foreign customers, we are told the card will be destroyed.

Beaten by the Galicia bank we tuck our tails between our legs and waste numerous skype minutes trying to get the Halifax to help us. In this particular situation they prove absolutely useless, sending us down blind avenues, dead ends and actually leaving us helpless. Shame on you Halifax. Shame. They offer to compensate us twenty five pounds but don’t even deliver that. Shame on you Halifax. Shame…

Back at the Chilean/Argentinian checkpoint, the two hour point has passed and we are still waiting. A backlog of buses queue behind us. The man with the Labrador enters the room, walks to the center and explains the situation. We happen upon a lady next to us who is a fluent speaker of Espanol. “They have found drugs in the toilet of the bus and nobody can leave until they catch the person who did it”. An excruciating two hours later, they make a positive match between the cocaine and the bag it was transported in and we drag ourselves into Santiago, depleted with Argentina completed.