14th March 2017 Copiapo

We drove 432 km to Copiapo. Driving on the highway in Chile is quite expensive and you are often asked to pay. Overall, the price-performance ratio is not right in the whole country. The hotels are in a pretty run-down condition, but the prices are horrendous.

By the way, there are these little shrines everywhere on the roads here. We have already wondered if they were all deadly accidents. Sometimes there are pictures or even the whole car. Or at least whatever is left of it. These shrines are sometimes only a few hundred meters apart. Driving here is obviously not entirely safe! I have photographed a few of these shrines...

In Copiapo we found a small hotel in the outskirts. However, looking for the address cost us a lot of time again. The Chileans are not particularly good with street names and house numbers. One-way streets are still not obvious to us. The roads are also built really steeply on the slopes, which would make driving a nightmare for me. Fortunately, Wolfgang enjoys it!

The hotel owners welcomed us warmly, but the hotel is (as usual here) more than modest. By the way, the Chileans love music in addition to painting and kindly share it with the neighborhood. So you can enjoy different music genres all night long. Luckily, I have the earplugs from the flight with me...

By the way, our Spanish skills are quite challenged here (good exercise). Someone who doesn't speak Spanish really has problems communicating here.

Oh yeah, we saw our first hummingbirds today... taking spontaneous photos of them with your phone is not really easy though...