A little trip south

Forecast that day was for partly cloudy. But, it looked like it would end up mostly. In the pics ahead you will see we spent most of the day in a light rain, but it was beautiful.

By the way, thanks for coming back. I haven't been very good at posting on a regular basis because it doesn't seem to me that we have anything real interesting happen very often. We couldn't travel much because our transportation was a bit sketchy. But, when our neighbor headed to the states to look for a new house in preparation for his transfer to Florida, they told us to drive his car. So now with wheels, we headed south to Talca.

East of Talca in the foothills of the Andes we came upon a beautiful little lake called Lago Colbun. With the mist in the air and the beautiful spring folage we had some great views.







































If you have followed this blog from the beginning you will remember my great desire to take advantage of one of the many natural hot springs in Chile. Well, we call them hot springs in the states, but here they are called termas, which cognates with thermal. Now termas doesn't mean hot. It just means that it is not as cold as surface water running in the creeks and rivers. Many of the termas have water that is in the 70 to 80 degrees F range. Nothing that gets a hot spring enthusiast to take off his clothes. But, in the area of Talca I found one that had promise. They posted a pool at 40 degrees C which is 104 F. That is doable. So we paid it a visit.


A beautiful setting and some nice grounds.


















The pools were ok, but didn't look real spectacular, but for some hot water I could close my eyes.




Then the disappointment. In order to use the pools you had to buy a package deal. The package included a room for the night and meals for the day. As I remember it was about 150,000 pesos for a couple. That comes to $214.23 and we didn't bring clothes or girl stuff to stay overnight. We had swim suits, flipflops and towels. No bueno!!!!

We continued on our trip and visited a cute little town called Villa Alegre. A very typical old Chilean village. You saw some of the pictures in my last Spanish lesson post. We are falling in love with the colorful houses and buildings. This was indeed a Kodak location.


Certainly the horse and cart are worth a picture, but notice the white flowers in the field over the fence.





Kind of an interesting phenomenon we have noticed here. There are many row crops that are harvested by hand - perhaps strawberries or grapes or potatoes. Whatever it is, at the end of each row of crops there is a beautiful stand of flowers. Perhaps it is to brighten the day of the field worker.




An appropriate statue given the surrounding foliage.

This should be named Rainbow Street.






















































We finished with Villa Allegre and headed for Talca. There we visited with the family of one of our mangers from the farm. His family is moving to the farm in December when school is out. We had a great day seeing this amazing country. It is different from home in many ways, but it is basically good people going through life doing the best they can, just like home.

Let's Test Your Spanish

A few posts ago, if you regular subscribers remember, I discussed the topic of cognates. Cognates are very helpful to Gringos with no language experience. I personally know a couple of people like that and can verify how helpful they find cognates. Let me first give you an official cognate definition.

kog-neyt
adjective:
1. related by birth; of the same parentage, decent etc.

2. Linguistics. Descended from the same language or form. Such cognate languages as French and Spanish.

3. Allied or similar in nature or quality.

Armed with that little bit of information, if you will grab a pencil and paper, we will begin the test. I will give you a hint once in awhile if you need help. Number your paper from 1 to 17.
Your job is to look at the picture and answer the question in the caption. Don't panic, but we are going to start with some medical topics. (We have spent a little time with the medical community lately)
Here is your first one.

No. 1 What main activity takes place in this part of the clinic?

No. 2 What can I learn about if I turn right?

No 3. Name one service I can receive if I go downstairs.

No. 4 Why would I come to this location in the clinic?

No. 5  What am I politely asked to do? (sorry ladies)

No. 6  Why might I need to remember this direction?

How did you do with all that technical medical terminology? Let's cruise around town and find a few more signs to test your knowledge.

No. 7 What might my wife be looking for at this store? (Again)

No. 8 (Ignore the sign material) What car service is performed here?

No. 9  Which direction would I go if I had a question and could speak the language?

This is a clue to help you with the next question. No side by side, single file only.

No. 10 On this two lane road with lots of slow traffic, what can I now do?

No. 11 With a curve ahead what advice does this sign give?

How are you doing? If you need to, stand up and take a little break. Difficult tests can be very stressful. We will continue when you get back.

Let's finish this up. (You can probably tell I am struggling to find something interesting to post on our blog. Thanks for you patience.)

No. 12  I want a closer look. Can I go see what all those little white things are? 

No. 13  The road ahead is surprisingly clear. Is this a good time to go zoom, zoom? 

No. 14  Should I have brought my camera?

One question you need to answer that is not part of the test. Have you ever been real hungry and needed something to tie you over till you can get to some good food. Or maybe you went to the cafeteria at the new St. George airport. What was the name of the machine that you got your snack from?

This one may be a little tough to see so I'll give you two of the same sign.

No. 15  Why would this guy put that sign in his truck window?

No. 16  A different focus than the last one, but the same interest. What does this sign tell you?

Well you have made it to the last one. As the sun sets in the west, we will close with this picture. A little story once you've answered the question.

No. 17  Why might I pull my car off the road and enter this business?

This location gave me great hope just after we arrived in Chile. We drive past this spot each time we go to town. I had originally thought I had found some survival food. How lucky can I be? Chile has Twizzlers or Red Vines! But this Mormon was very disappointed when he discovered that the center item advertised needed a 'q' instead of a 'c.'

I will be interested to hear your test scores.

Not Much Exciting, Just Variety

I mention not much exciting. We haven't traveled very far as of late, or since we got here really. The car we have to drive has been nicknamed "The Christmas Tree." That is because is has various electrical problems and most every warning light on the dashboard makes an appearance at least daily. Some are on all the time. From what I was told, the alternator went out awhile back and instead of replacing it, the mechanic decided to fix it and save money. Since that time the electrical system has major Gremlins. Sometimes the doors will lock with the remote, usually not. Opening is much the same. But, you can always count on manually locking the doors and when you close the last one the alarm will sound, so have the remote handy so you can shut it off.

The Christmas Tree

The tachometer will sometimes dance back and forth for you. The headlights will occationally flicker and get the oncoming drivers a little perturbed. The mileage is just under 200,000 kms. But is has not left us stranded yet. So we take it where we need to, but hold off on where we would like to. 

Santiago has been the destination most visited lately. 

Barb and Yoyo

If you saw the Blog a few weeks ago you will probably recognize this building. We came here to see a doctor for Barb's cough. We received medicine and directions to return to the lab for tests if not better in 7-10 days. So we are headed to the lab.

Yoyo acting as interpreter for blood work and X-Rays

One one of the trips to Santiago we took the opportunity to stop at the BioBio. That is the nickname for a flea market set up on a street named BioBio. You can find about any kind of old stuff here you would like. Oh look, there is an old van.

I think my sister in law, Diana, would love this place and need a semi to haul away the old "treasures."

All kinds of old stuff and an occasional treasure

Dave, I need your address for shipping.

Some of these may clean up nicely

Back home to Longovilo again for another week and some great Spring additions to the yard.

Slide these two together for our side yard

The roses are making their appearance for Spring

Willy sang a song years ago name, "On the Road Again." So back to Santiago, but on the way, check out this sunrise over the Andes.

A cloud bank above the sun, but the bottom of
the sun is still behind the mountain peaks above
Santiago.

We had to stop and watch.

By now you know this place as well as we do. The doctor wanted to discuss the results of last week's tests and give us some more medicine.

Six weeks of coughing makes one weary. Wait,
makes two weary.

So on the way home a bit of comfort food. A good ole American hamburger our way. Complete with crispy papas fritas. That is french fries for the gringos, and down here they are very popular, but under cooked. Crispy is nice at an American chain.

AMERICA ROCKS

Lets finish with this. We were at our friends the other day and they gave us some nuts. They said they came from a Palma tree that grows wild in the hills around this area. I was surprised when they cracked one open and let us sample the nut inside. Wait till you see this.

Kind of like an old slideshow, right?

Check out the world's smallest coconut. You pop that in your mouth and it definitely tastes just like the big boys.

Hasta Luego