Chilean Autobahn...

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Hey everybody...So after 21 hours of travel time and going through 4 countries we made it to Santiago, Chile...Our travel agent neglected to mention that we were flying from LAX to Costa Rica to Peru and then finally to our destination in Santiago...We arrived at 2am totally wiped out from our journey (although Lacsa TACA airlines had very impressive food and free wine) and took a shuttle to the city center to stay in a hotel for the night...The night door man at the hotel some how talked us into a suite for $5 extra dollars...We thought, "Hey, why not?"...Turns out our suite was made to sleep five and the extra perk was 3 single beds and 1 full...However, I have never been soooo happy to have a hot shower...The next day reminded me of how much I do not miss the language barrier...We started off the day trying to explain to the lady at the front desk that we needed the shuttle to come pick us up and take us to the airport so we could rent a car...Finally, we ended up at budget rent a car to pick up our coche...In Chile there is a huge lack of automatic cars, not to mention it can be $200 more expensive to rent one...so Elizabeth and I picked up out manual, little, red car and stalled our way out of the parking lot...The employees looked on in horror and probably wondered why we were allowed to rent the automobile...The drive to La Serena was very nice...In the valley on the first stretch of the journey there were thousands of bright orange poppies...I seemed to stall out at each and every toll booth we stopped at on along the way...the attendents would laugh while drivers behind me would honk...about 40 minutes into the trip we go flagged down by a police officer...ughhh...after a confused exchange we finally realized that he wanted my driver´s license and registration...we gave it to him and then he tried to explain my headlights were not on...apparently that deserves a ticket in Chile...then he mentioned the word "infraction"...some how he let us off and we continued on our way...we stopped in Vina del Mar and had lunch in a beach front restaurant...the Chileans are all about butter seafood and melting parmesan on top...so we had a seafood platter with scallops, razor clams and shrimp...following this we drove the rest of the distance to La Serena which took about 4 hours...the drive was really pretty and most of it was along the coast...about 1 hour from our destination there was a man standing in the middle of the road ahead...as we got closer I realized it was another cop...great...so we pulled over and went through the same routine...license and registration...but this time my lights were on...so that means I was doing something wrong...come to find out we were speeding...oops...I couldn´t help myself...It was like the Chilean autobahn..everyone obeys the left lane pass lane only...so it was really easy to speed along with no obstacles...somehow the words "lo siento" and "no entiendo" saved us from one more infraction...We arrived in La Serena at 21:00 exhausted and hungry...Werner (our bosshost) helped us drop off our stuff and then we went to his house for a drink and some food...He and his wife Maria have been very hospitable...Our room or apartment rather is a two bedroom, two bathroom with a kitchen, living room and dining room...and when we woke up next morning found out it was directly in front of a beautiful beach...The past two days have been a lot of work...we went to the feed plant yesterday and visited the local university and today visited an abalone hatchery and another abalone grow-out farm...We will be here till Tuesday at which point we fly to Portugal for more farm visits...miss you all...K and E

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