March 9 - Vina del Mar to La Serena

So what's with us and taxis? Another, albeit short, adventure this morning. Remember I mentioned the cycle race yesterday. Well, today was the ladies race and they blocked off the street just before we wanted to leave. No taxis allowed! In two different languages the clerk and I worked out a plan. I suggested we walk to the nearest corner where a car could access next to the race. Looking out the window of the hotel we could see the course and we chose a corner – two blocks away.

He called a taxi and arranged the pickup. Just as we were leaving he told us the taxi was grey. Not black? All taxis are black. Hmmm.

Off we went looking like a pair of overloaded donkeys. We got to the corner just as a grey car pulled up. We jumped in and made good progress to the bus terminal. Except he stopped two streets away and started talking, 90% in Spanish. After a bit of back & forth it dawned on me – he's not a legal taxi and can't be seen to being paid at the terminal. His last instruction – tell anybody who asks that we are with “City Tour.” I pay (a good rate actually) and we are dropped off without incident. I wonder if our driver was a relation to the hotel clerk. He certainly didn't look like Carlos from Mendoza!

I'm writing this on the bus to La Serena. The bus was a half hour late getting into Vina, and we are making a number of stops, so it will be a long ride.

Time for some bus window photos.  Just north of Santiago we make a couple of stops in smaller towns for pickups.  Then we're back on the main highway.

The scenery changes to very arrid and 'deserty.'  It looks dry & dusty.

Along the way are little ramshackle places.  I don't know what they are doing out here.  It doesn't seem  like a nice place to me.  There are a few farms - we saw small herds of cattle, sheep & goats.

We passed 3 very large wind farms (guess 100+ wind turbines each) on the way.  They are located in the middle of the 'boondocks,' although there were a few houses nearby one of them.  This area seems to be a natural location for this sort of power generation.

This caught my eye - a cactus fence!  Somebody has gone to the work of planting these, I would guess many years ago for them to be this size.  There were also stone fences along the way.  

Last photo of the desert.  Pretty typical of the last couple hundred km toward La Serena.  We crossed one river (Rio Limari) and all of a sudden there were green fields and a town.  A very vivid demonstration of how water can change an ecosystem.

We're in La Serena now.  It's Sunday and we have our typical restaurant problem - where is a restaurant that's open?  Answer - there aren't any.  So, we trundle down to the new mall in town.  9:00 at night and the place is fully open.  The food court is busy but every decent restaurant in town is closed.  Says something for the evolution of commerce, eh?  At 9:30 the place closed and at 9:31 it was dead.

A sad realization - this will be the last Sunday we have this problem as we will be leaving in a week.
A walk around La Serena tomorrow.