The Williams Family: Southward bound: To Curicó

Thursday morning we left Santiago with the kids and headed about two hours south to the town of Curicó. Guillermo loaned us his car again for this weekend, which we are so thankful for, and it also made for a much quicker drive to Curicó than in a tiny little rental car. We had Caleb in our carseat, and Landon was riding rear-facing in an infant seat that we had borrowed from Matt and Jessica because we didn't have another option available. Well the morning turned out to be a rough one despite having a comfortable SUV to travel in. About 30 minutes into the drive Landon had been whining for what we assumed was just because he didn't like being rear-facing. We soon realized that it may have been complaints of motion sickness because he threw up all over himself and the borrowed carseat.
So gross, so unpleasant, and so terribly timed since we were in a hurry to get to Curico in time for a meeting Jimmy had at 11am. Plus we had no towels or things in the car to clean with other than one pack of baby wipes. We thankfully found a nice guy who worked at a gas station who gave us a roll of paper towels, spray cleaner, and helped us clean out as much of it as we could as quickly as we could, and back on the road we went. The road down to Curicó was full of factories and packing plants, many of which were for fruit and vegetable companies, including Del Monte and Dole.

A few more of those long and unusual city names with plenty of syllables. (Jimmy had a good comparison though - words at home like Mokelumne and Tuolomne would probably seem strange to people from other places too...)

I can't believe there is a place with this name. "Peor es Nada", which means 'Nothing is Worse.'
Can you imagine being from there??

During Jimmy's first meeting we stayed in the area since it was outside of town and let the kids run around in a soccer field and old run down park that was next to the packing shed where his meeting was.

This park was far from in decent condition, but the kids had fun just the same

Some good 'ole fashioned fun, kicking around in the leaves

Random detail: In Chile, they generally use Olive Oil and Lemon Juice on their salads, not vinegar.

Curicó was very different from Santiago, or at least from the area where we live in Santiago. The buildings are much older and not kept up as well, and there isn't as much money available for upkeep of the streets and neighborhoods. Nonetheless, I enjoyed getting to see a different part of the country, as well as the drive seeing the countryside. It is amazing that there hasn't been a single place we've gone in Chile yet where you aren't surrounded by some part of the Andes mountains on all sides. They are always visible - its pretty incredible to think how far they stretch.

Didn't get many pictures of Curicó, but this was near our little apartment/hotel

All the buses were from the 1960s and '70s - very different from city buses in Santiago

The Andes on the drive home. Looks like snow, but I think this was rock. Still very beautiful.

Jimmy had four meetings in the two days we were there, and after the first meeting on Thursday we were able to stop at a packing shed where he has some contacts and got to buy some squeeze pouches from them! This was a treat for the kids and a convenience for me to look forward to keeping in my diaper bag again. The kids love them - they're fun to eat, and easy to take with us. We bought a few extra boxes so we can share them with some Chilean friends who haven't seen them before. As far as we know they aren't sold here yet.

Thursday night was Valentine's Day, which I almost didn't even realize because it has not been commercialized and become so wide-spread here like it has at home, so you don't hear everyone making a big thing about February 14th. However, some businesses are starting to take advantage and promote special V-Day dinners, so we weren't able to get into any of the nicer restaurants without reservations, so we spent the evening having dinner with two of Jimmy's Chilean business friends, Rodrigo and Mario, and ended up barbecuing at Mario's home. It turned out to be the best option anyway because the kids were able to just run around and play with Mario's 3-yr-old son's toys (who was out of town with Mario's wife that day). We had a great evening hanging out with them.