As our flight to Santiago was coming in for a landing the flight attendant told us about the items we were not allowed to bring into Chile: edible products of animal origin, flowers, fruits and vegetables, no dried fruit, trail mix or nuts, honey, home baked goods, unpackaged candies, etc. If you’re caught ‘smuggling’, the fine is $240 US and you’ll have to languish at the airport until a magistrate arrives to process the infraction. Yikes. Well, that was a shock. As usual, we travel with healthy snacks, granola bars, salted almonds, etc. in ziptop bags. They all went into the barf bag. Being a good recycler, I folded up the plastic bags and tucked them into my rolling backpack. No biggie.

Wrong-o. As Hub and I watched the luggage coughed out on the belt, a cute little pooch wearing a fluorescent vest wandered around. I thought, Ah, drug-sniffing dog. Wrong again. I’m not paying attention, because I’m trying to figure out here my big Samsonite is and if I have any contraband tucked in with my socks and t-shirt. Poochie sits down beside my roll-on.