In our wanderings around southern South America, we have crossed the border between Chile and Argentina by bus about 4 times. It is always an interesting experience to see how differently things are handled at different border crossings.
On our most recent crossing from Chile to Argentina, the Chilean formalities consisted of checking that we had a valid ENTRY into Chile, before checking us out. To make it easy for the officials, the bus steward lined us all up in the order we were on the bus paperwork... we were first every time, I think because we must have been the first one to reserve passage (several days ago).
On going into Argentina, they had a friendly drug-sniffing dog check the baggage. They open the baggage doors on the bus and just let the dog jump in and roam around in the baggage compartment. Anything he seems interested in is hauled out and the passenger made to open the bag. But it didn't seem very serious. Both bags they did this with, the owner opened up, rummaged around a little, explained what it was that the dog got excited about, and then they let him close up and that was that. Didn't look like a very thorough search to me.
Both times going back into Chile, we had to get all our luggage off the bus, and take it ourselves through 'Customs', including a questionaire and an X-ray scan of all the bags. Mostly what Chile is looking for are agricultural products. Their country is very agricultural and they are very serious about not allowing any soil, fruits, vegetables, and raw foods.
On the last border crossing, we had some raisins left that we'd actually bought only a few days before in Chile. One of the officers we asked when Dave turned in his agricultural questionaire said that the raisins were OK. But when his bag was X-rayed, they detected the raisins in his bag and pulled them out for a look. But he got to keep them in the end.
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