Vamos rapido a Santiago

13 Aug After Roger suffered through driving in the dark last night, he has received his just rewards. This morning, once we got on the other side of La Serena, we were greeted with a 4-lane, divided highway with "estaciones y miradores". Rest areas and scenic viewpoints are a pleasant change of pace. The highway is just inland of the coast. It is interesting to us how little the coast is developed especially where there is actual beach front and only a day's drive from Santiago. We suspect it all has to do with the lack of infrastructure, as there's a need for potable water and electricity. We've passed through several small windmill sites and the land has finally greened up with scrub bushes and cacti. The soil still looks sandy and in need of irrigation to grow crops. We did pass some olive orchards and one small grape vineyard (?). To date our biggest cash expense has been tolls. The Pan Am Hwy is either a money pit or maker for every country we've been in. We hit a gridlock 84 miles from Santiago. But, eventually, past construction, we had easy going on 4 lanes again We spent time chasing our tails trying to find a lavador para camiones. The first place we stopped was using the truck wash for repairs, the second and third place weren't taking any more vehicles. We stopped at a fourth place and the equipment didn't appear to be working. Finally Roger attempted to get the grunge off using 5 gallons of water and his brush. We eventually did find a lavador de camiones south of Santiago, so Roger was very happy to help the worker wash the RV. The cost was a little high, but water is high in all of Chile. While Roger was busy washing, I talked with a guy. I could see the western ridge of mountains with some snow and the guy told me that what little rain they see in Santiago, puts snow on the nearest mountain caps. The snow does not last the entire year, and melts in Spring/Summer when it gets hot in Santiago. He said if we wanted to go skiing we'd have to go further south and inland. He didn't recommend doing this in our RV, because a lot of the times the roads require 4WD. Next we decided to head further south to see if we could find the two RV sales places that I found on line. We couldn't find the first, which was supposed to be right on the highway. The second place we almost drove past, but I saw it in the nick of time. We waited for the owner, Ignacio, only to be told that he couldn't buy it because our unit is too expensive and too new for him to afford. He told us that RV's aren't selling, because the people who would have bought them are being cautious with their money because the Pinochet government is a problem with the economy. This was not the first time we've been told that there's a disgruntled population with the national President. [The local population elects a regional President and then those guys select a national President from amongst themselves. This way the local population has a say in their national politics.] However, Ignacio has a shipping POC in the USA, and said that he'd help us find a cheaper shipping price. Apparently ships come into Chile full with imported goods and leave empty. Hopefully this is the case and he can get us a bargain, because the current price we have quoted is 20% of the value of our RV. Only time will tell. In the meantime, Ignacio allowed us to spend the night at his RV lot. He has quite the inventory that he tries to rent out during the summer. The problem is gas is so expensive that people don't necessarily want to own an RV. He did say if ours was diesel it would be a different story. Roger then explained the problem with low sulfur diesel in the USA and Ignacio now has a better understanding why he shouldn't get diesel units from the USA. Tomorrow is another day, and things will work out.