Arriving in the morning on board of an airbus 340 of IBERIA into the typical low laying condensate of Santiago de Chile I take over a Chevrolet N300 commercial delivery van. Its speedometer shows 000024 km - so it is really brand-new. The guy tells me "Take care, the car is not nuevo, it is nuevo-nuevo-nuevo !" I will take care and the van will thank it the whole trip … Since I was here in 2009 a lot has changed. Infrastructure and energy seems to be, where the money, gained from mining, is flowing into. About all of the desert road from Santiago to the north is on its way to a divided highway with two lanes in every direction. Road works are signed for 104km, 87km, 94km, 46km the shortest, a.s.o. Also there are a lot of new road toll stations with low amounts to be paid, but these tiny fees add up. If you counter calculate it to the savings in driving time and less consumption of gasoline it may come close to zero. On windy ridges and hillsides there are wind turbines as far as you can see and every 40 - 60 windmills there is a transformer station, that transformes the electricity into power lines.
