14th March – Volcanoes are just the Earths pimples

First up, I need to say that my discipline to have daily reports is something similar to buying a British Vintage Car. Most of
the time it works well and as expected, however, sometimes for no reason at all it does not play by the rules and doesn’t work. So just pretend you have bought a British Vintage car by subscribing to my blog and you will never be let down 😀 Awesome!

Yesterdays funniest story first (by my standards). Driving through rural Chile and me and Dad both comment on the fact that we are in a nice area. The entire region was just nice, big farms, big houses, nice driveways and fences. We say “this is a really classy and respectable farming region here.” Not 30 seconds later we drive past a large “Welcome to some town” sign and someone has spray painted a giant cock and balls on it! I couldn’t stop laughing! I’m not sure why father dearest didn’t find it as funny as I did. I thought it was the best and funniest thing since Dad’s hat blew off his head onto the road.

There must have been more olive tree’s in one valley we drove through yesterday than all of Australia’s olives trees put together. I have noted so far that Chile has an abundance of 3 things, vineyards, olives, and gravel. They should never ever ever run out of gravel to make roads. It seems that gravel covers 90% of the surface of every mountain in the Ande’s.

Chile still does not cease to amaze in all aspects. From the aridest of arid deserts in the north, the temperamental volcanoes, vast farming lands, earthquake remnants near big bridges all the way to Ferrari’s zip lining down side streets in Santiago and horse and carts carrying pumpkins to the market not more than 1km from the cbd of Chile’s biggest city. I still cannot describe Chile – let alone South America – in words for the sheer reason that every corner of every region is just on a different scale.

Piccies will come after I call roadside assistance to come collect a broken down British car. Most likely tomorrow arvo.

Tonights little stop in Pucon should have the most spectacular sunrise in the morning. The sun is expected to beam up and over some nameless (named but I just don’t know it) volcanoes which stands guard next to a large lake. The kind of lake and volcano set-up you would expect any wealthy Chilean to have an exorbitant holiday house on the lakeside and have their Malibu ski boat dry-docked or mored at a private boat club. Yep. This town has it all. Huge houses on huge acreage with huge front gates with huge boats next to huge mountains and a huge lake. Huge.

Only a few trucks slowed us down on the time trial today and after some street-side rumors it sounds like we were a few seconds faster than Billy Boy in the Bentley (our strongest competitor in our class) which firmly secures our still equal tied first position until tomorrow. Lloyd and Chuck in a big ass white Cadillac are neck and neck with us and every afternoon there is at least 5-10 minutes of quality banter on what will happen. It usually ends up with us being called convicts or something of the sort.

James