I decided to take the last ten days of our departure from the cars back in Chile. Yesterday was my birthday, and I spent it rather peacefully here in the second largest city of Chile, Concepcion. I found myself wandering the streets with a couple of people I met in Pucon, Chile, when we drove through the country two months ago. This city is rather banal and holds very little for any architecture whatsoever. Sort of a characterless urban sprawl. This scared me since it boasts being the second most important city for Chile after Santiago. But my company here with two very warm and entertaining Chileans is some of the best I have had on this entire trip.

It’s been a rather luckless week. The busses here make a game of drenching people with massive muddy street puddles during downpours, as I found out during one umbrella walk. I was completely drenched from head to toe in one massive dark grey wave of gutter water. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes…

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