today i swung by the rock museum in copiapo, then continued south to la serena. la serena is a nice little city of a couple hundred thousand people. not too much to do here: see some churches (they have a couple dozen), check out the mall (still waiting for the bruno movie), see the beach (the rocky coastline of chile is reminiscent of northern california), eat some food, etc. a few notes on chile:<\/p>\n
1) speed bumps are strangely absent from chile. so far, i’ve encountered two in the whole country…what a relief! ..although i did back into a rock today on the beach, and my muffler is broken again (…my bad).<\/p>\n
2) chileans drive completely different from the other latin americans i have seen so far. they’ll stop for pedestrians. they don’t honk all the time. they’ll obey road signs…even ridiculous ones….like a stop sign in the middle of the desert where the train crosses the road (most latin americans would only slow down if there was a speed bump and most americans would just yield, but chileans come to a complete stop).<\/p>\n
3) i’m now positive that chileans are obsessed with 80s rock. tonight, at dinner, on the tv they played a 30minute montage of music videos from the 80s. on the walk home, i got my own little mash-up as each store played michael jackson, madonna, etc.<\/p>\n
4) the term joven (young person) is used a lot. even people who are obviously younger than me call me joven.<\/p>\n
5) different countries sell different grades of gasoline. in some places, i used 84 octane. in chile, the minimum is 93 (in peru, super was 95).<\/p>\n
6) although sandstorms may sound cool….well, they actually really are pretty cool. but they pitted my windshield pretty badly, so it’s harder to drive into the sun now….looks like i might have to be doing more afternoon driving as i head east to iguazu falls.<\/p>\n\n\t\t