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hi everyone, well, finally i have found timeto write about our adventures in this country. we have been here just over a week, and it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. we spent four days in Santiago, before setting off up north for La Serena. in Santiago,we were met by Beverley who works for our flower exporter. Beverley has been fantastic organising our accommodation and rental car and even getting us an invitation to a NZ Embassy barbie! We met quite a few new zealanders , americans, and europeans in Santiago - all doing various jobs, from teaching , to engineering and investment. Santiago itself was quite a mission,it was busy and polluted, you could harldy make out the Andes surrounding the city - even though they have quite an imposing presence, becasue of the smog that layers the city. driving in the city, well, you are risking life and limb! everyone just switches lanes when they want and some even straddle two lanes....and they drive fast! buses included. But once out of the city, we found driving easy. the motorways are very wide and long and straight - the only downside is the tolls Every 100ks you pay about $5 , which adds up in a big country like this. there are not many, if any alternatives to the motorway. In La serena, we went inland to a place called Vicuna and found a very nice hostal, (bed and breakfast here) , We did some horse-riding , visited a winery and a pisco distillery (its the local brew -and you make a pisco sour as a drink - which is pure alcohol with lemon and sugar basically! very drinkable! We also went to the observatory, that night - so quite a big day for the kids, but they did it ok. The stars were out and we got to see the moon and jupiter thru a telescope. Unfortunately, the guide hada very montonous accented voice, so if i found it boring, i guess we couldn't ask too much of the kids! Chile has some of the clearest skies in the world for observing the stars etc... the next day we headed south and took a secondary rd - which we later found out was more like a goat track to Ovalle. It took us four hours and more to go just over 100ks. We got a puncture too and ended up helping out a motorcylcist on the same stretch of road, who also got a puncture, but no spare tyre. However, the up side to the long hot dustry trail, wasthe scenery. no one in sight for miles and a beautiful flowering desert ....very pretty , awesome views, and then of course the suspense that went with it...what if we get another puncture>? we were miles from anywhere. ? stu drove very slowly after that..and fortunately the road improved.At Ovalle, a huge dam had built, cutting off the river completely from the valley below,. In the area, huge plantations of advocadoes had been established, all about three years old, also grapes and citrus. It wasn't just one or two hectares, we are talking 100s of hectares! some on quite steep hillsides, others on the flats - just amazing.After driving a further 200ks south we got to a beach called papudo, and stayed there one night. We got a run-down hotel, the wife was nice, but the man of the house, was counting his pennies...still we did ok and had a good night's sleep. We drove to Pichilemu the next day - so had two days of quite intense travelling and poor nicola spent most of her birthday in the car! however, in Pichilemu we were met by some local flower growers, jacked up Beverley, and they have taken us under their wing, finding us some reasonable accomodation here (cabins, or cabenas) and we celebrated nicola's birthday with a cake purchased at the local store! still eating it. We have seen the flowers grown here, and i think will be re-thinking our way of doing things in nZ! they are on a much larger scale here, and have help from the government. it has been very interesting today seeing what they grow. well, i will put some photos of our chilean experiences on this site now. thanks for our e-mails - keep sending us some news. we are looking forward to coming home. ps i am using my spanish, but finding it very difficult to make proper sentences - they speak fast here! We are both getting quite good at miming - its like charades! not many people speak good english.
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