ASSESSING THIS TRIP AND FIGURING OUT WHAT´S NEXT

Yep, that´s a map of central Chile, borrowed some time ago from the website of Turistel, which is no doubt the foremost Chilean publisher of tour guides for the country. I´ve posted it here because it illustrates where I will soon be going once I finally take my leave of the capitol city and venture out again on the road.
Since I finished my "forced march" drive down from San Pedro de Atacama following that very unfortunate explosion inside the pickup truck, I´ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about what to do next. Part of the task has been to make a study of the current realities I´m facing, and that includes looking at my costs so far. When I left Santiago back on the first of the month, I kept note of my gas purchases, and it turns out that the drive up to San Pedro and back cost me nearly $500 USD. Gasoline, as some of you know, is quite expensive in Chile, with the rates for the "regular," or 93 octane running between roughly 625 and 670 Chilean Pesos per liter, depending a number of factors. When you convert liters to US gallons and pesos to dollars, in my case, and then figure out the "average" price I paid for that run up to the north and then back, it came to about $5.33 USD per US gallon. And you thought YOUR gas prices were high!
Realizing that I spent nearly $500 for gas to drive that distance in a period of only two weeks is really kind of humbling. Add to that my own sudden aversion to spending so much of my travel money on fuel and so much of my valuable time left on this adventure behind the wheel, and I can start to see myself stepping back from going on another extended drive into some as-yet undetermined hinterland but rather opting for something much less ambitious, so that I can spend more time enjoying where I am at and less time getting there.
In more precise language, I am now leaning much more heavily towards heading due west from Santiago, out to the Pacific coast, to try to rent a cozy little cabaña for something like two or three weeks and spend my time reading books, meditating and beachcombing. Another reason why I am thinking this way is that I am still fairly shell-shocked by the explosion and the attendant hassles and fears which arose from that incident, (NOTE: If you are logging into this blog for the first time in a while, I suggest that you go back a couple of posts and start reading from there) and, as my fellow vagabond amigo Roberto told me, "it´s at times like this when the calming sound of ocean waves lapping on the beach is much desired." -Of course (to you, Roberto) those weren´t his exact words, but it was his sentiment, exactly.
So, I have in mind going back to the same little cabañas I´d stayed at back in March of this year, at the end of my last South American trip, just 2 km south of Isla Negra, where the late, great poet Pablo Neruda is buried, on the grounds of his fabled oceanfront home. at the moment, their name escapes me, but that´s not really important. What is was the fact that when I stayed there the last time, the housekeepers told me that they were for sale, and were about to be sold, so now my chief concern is, what changes have the new owners installed, and, considering that the real tourist season hasn´t quite started yet, if they are even open for occupancy?
I guess I´ll see soon enough. But for now, I´m spending another couple of days here in Santiago as the most welcome guest of Andrés in his third floor apartment over on Calle Mosqueto, on the other side of the block from his office, where I stayed this weekend. I´ll post more here soon, so stay tuned.