We made it to Chile. Our 10 hour flight from Dallas was a good flight, meaning it was uneventful. We may even have slept a bit, although I wouldn’t swear to it. Things didn’t get exciting until we got to Aduana (Customs) in Santiago.

Turns out my boyfriend is a smuggler. Who knew? Unfortunately, he’s not very good at it.  It took the customs agent approximately 45 seconds to find the orange cleverly concealed in his carryon. This was when the fun started. The Chilean government takes fruit smuggling very seriously. For a moment, it looked as though we were going to be deported. Search dogs were deployed. The orange in question was sealed in an evidence baggy and frown-lined customs agents shunted Macky into a back room for interrogation.

I guarded our bags and chatted nervously with other fruit offenders who were awaiting their interrogations. According to one glum Texan, the fine could be up to $250 USD depending on the weight of the fruit. Ludicrous, yet terrifying. The frazzled, gray-haired women next to me, on the way to a ceramics retreat on the Chilean coast, wondered if that meant she would be charged $500. She had been apprehended smuggling an orange AND an apple across the border. She swatted at the fruit flies buzzing around her head and groaned. I suggested that she make sure none of the insects followed her into the interrogation room. We laughed–gallows humor, I think this is called. I taught her a few key Spanish phrases like lo siento and fue accidente (I’m sorry  and it was an accident), but she wasn’t picking it up.

“Okay, okay,” she’d say. And then three minutes later, flustered–“What was it? Lo tenta?”

After what seemed like years but was probably only 15 minutes, Macky emerged. He had turned up the charm, dodged the $117,000 peso fine ($230 USD)  and secured some beach recommendations from the clearly smitten customs agent. He may be a lousy smuggler but at least he’s got game.

Macky shows off his paperwork. Luckily we didn't have to pay that.

After the orange incident, everything else about our first day in Chile was easy. We found our rental car, named him Sparky and proceeded to cram in two bicycles and all our personal belongings despite looks of doubt and incredulous snorts from the Rental Car Guy. On a whim we decided to drive to Valparaíso where we found a cheap-ish hostel and discovered (along with about ten million Chileans) a beautiful beach. We have sun on our skin and salt in our hair. Life is pretty good. And so it begins.