Jane Chambers

It also depends because they have limited travel space, so small items that they can carry.

We have seen some that travel by car, again, through Mendoza, and they tend to take smaller furniture that they can also pass.

Yeah, because I was thinking about that.

You know, IKEA is known for bookshelves and beds and desks.

How are they getting these things home?

Exactly.

Also, we do have a packing system, which is our flat pack, that allows, and it's quite easy if you come by car, to fit the boxes in the trunk of your car, but not necessarily if you travel by plane.

And are there particular times of year that they like to come?

We've seen an increase in the holidays, of course, long weekends and wherever they have vacations on Argentina.

Economist Klaus Schmidt-Hebel thinks that this trend will shift.

There's a cyclical pattern to this.

For decades, Chileans and Argentinians have each enjoyed shopping trips over the border, depending on the economic situation.

A few years back, it was Chile's term.

Inflation was soaring in Argentina, and the unofficial but widely used black market for dollars meant that you could get double the price of the official government exchange rate.

Chileans would cross the border to do things like the weekly shop and fill up their cars because petrol was so much cheaper.

And so the pendulum keeps swinging.

That's all from Business Daily from Chile.

Thanks for listening.

I'm Jane Chambers, and if you enjoyed the programme and want to hear more episodes, search for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.