Last day at La Casita

I am not sure if I explained where La Casita is in Chile.  We are south of San Antonio, near San Domingo close to a little town called El Convento.  It is a mile from the coast as the bird flies.  This country is fertile and there are acres and acres of avocado orchards, oats, grazing land, and  Eucalyptus line the little roads.  The coast is beautiful and the land is dry-looking, similar to the Santa Barbara area.  When we leave here tomorrow I might not be coming back as we will meet my sister far south of here where we will explore the lakes district and the south.  I will probably leave from there by way of bus or a smaller plane back to Santiago.

By the way this is what my brother feeds me.

Oops, just kidding!  And I took this picture before he put the onions and mushrooms on top of the steak.

Today we did a day trip up to one of Pablo Neruda's houses, Islas Negras. (Thanks, Lisa).  This is the house where he and his wife are buried.  Really amazing inside!  Lots of nautical rooms, a room that looked like a train car, and treasures just packed inside.

We continued north along the coast so I could see the largest swimming pool in the world.  There are guards at the gated entrance of the San Alfonso del Mar so we couldn't go in.  It is a huge, ugly complex of 6 or 8 highrises that must hold at least 1000 guests in each building.

I did want to mention some of the birds I have seen besides the Burrowing Parrot. At the casita, along the driveway to Rob's house we saw several Chilian Tinamous.  In Cochigaz we saw a Giant Hummingbird.  It is 8 or 9 inches high and has slower wing beats than our smaller ones. While driving I saw a Caracara which is a falcon, but I don't know what kind of Caracara it was.  We have also seen Fire-eyed Diucon, Common Diuca finches, and grassland finches.  There are lots of quail here.  They say that there are more here than in California.  When we get to the south I really want to see a Condor.

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Tomorrow we head south to Concepcion which is a city on the coast south of here.  It is where the trailer is and where we will be spending some days getting the trailer ready to roll.  It will be a long drive of 8 or 9 hours.  Did I mention that there are many toll roads here?  It seems we are frequently stopping to pay tolls ranging between 700 pesoes (a little over $1) to 3700 pesoes (about $6).