The Serene

La Serena

Getting on the truck today is a completely different experience from before. Only a couple of days ago each person had at least 2 seats to themselves. Now almost every single seat is filled. Martin, who is also a large man, looks at me balefully stuck in a seat next to a new guy. Gone are the days when he could stretch out across four seats and sleep laying down. So now
Finally

there are 31 sets of eyes looking at me saying ‘now what?’ I go over our itinerary from Santiago to La Paz, talking about the towns we’ll be visiting and the tours that will be available. If they read (or are read) the itinerary and are made to understand it, it eliminates a lot of the questions that they’ll ask later. Unfortunately, only about 15% of them seem to be capable of listening to it or reading it themselves and so the questions persist.

We make our first stop at a Copec gas station, the nicest gas stations anywhere. Besides providing 5 star bathrooms (1 star for cleanliness, 1 star for working order, 1 star for T.P., 1 star for a door and 1 star for a toilet seat ((I’ve seen lots of no star toilets, but that’ll have to wait until Bolivia))), showers, a remarkable selection of soft drinks and delectable pastries, they offer Chile’s national food (I kid you not) hot dogs. I very rarely eat hot dogs anywhere, but for some reason every time we stop at one of these gas stations, even at 9 am I have to get a hot dog. They’re so good.

During our lunch stop I once again do a truck tour for all of the new people, showing them the wonders of Doris. On the road again we separate everybody into cook groups and work teams. Everybody gets a shot at cooking and everybody will have a job that rotates weekly. Basically the jobs get split up into two categories which I’ve named, rather diplomatically I reckon, Strong jobs and Finesse jobs. Strong jobs include things like Bootpackers who load and unload the back packs off of Doris, Gas man who sets up the big gas tank for the stoves, Tent Packer who packs and unpacks all of the tents, etc. The finesse jobs include sweeping the floor of Doris when we arrive somewhere, keeping the refrigerator clean, etc. It just so happens that there are as many strong jobs as men and finesse jobs as women.

When we get to La Serena we go over the job responsibilities and Steve teaches the new people how to set up a tent. I have a bit of a dilemma because it just so happens that at the campground where we’re staying, there are some really nice apartments that have kitchens and everything. The problem is, is that there aren’t enough for everybody. I solve the problem by decreeing that all of the new people have to camp at least the first night. I figure it’s only fair as the old people have been pretty much camping every night for almost two months now.

La Serena is a fairly good size city situated on the beach. The campground that we stay in is just across from it which is convenient. All along the beach are nice little restaurants and ice cream stands and such. It’s pretty crowded during the high season which it now is.

After everybody is situated, I take some people out shopping. The one good thing about La Serena is that they have a huge supermarket which makes everything easy to find. Then we come back to camp and the cook group starts cooking and everybody else goes out to this little bar a block away that has a nice deck that looks out to the sea. I notice that Kate and Naomi have taken the 18 year olds under they’re wing and are feeding them drinks. I have a premonition of danger, but they have to learn sometime.