RELAXING ON THE COAST AT EL TABO

After spending five idle days in Santiago, I finally resumed my travels, albeit on a much less ambitious course. To be specific, I drove more or less due west, in a return to the rustic cabins at El Tabo where I had spent time at the end of my trip last March. The resort is called "Las 7 Cabañas," and is located about one kilometer south of the center of town of El Tabo, and only a few kilometers from Pablo Neruda´s famous ocean-front home at Isla Negra. If you go back through my archives to my posts from March 2007, you will see images I´d taken at the Neruda compound.
Anyway, the above picture shows cabaña No. 5, which I am currently occupying. The big windows (my bedroom windows) look out upon a variety of dwellings down below the slope

and feature a superb view of the South Pacific.

In keeping with my resolution to cut back on driving and to spend more time relaxing and taking in wherever I am at, I´ve booked myself into this place through the holidays, with my scheduled departure for points south down the Chilean coast set for January 3, 2008. I expect that this will be a time for introspection and reflection. I´ve already gone for one really nice beach walk, an activity I am assuming will be part of my daily routine as I while away the days between now and the New Year.

The following pair of images hopefully will give you a little better impression of this quiet place. Incidentally, I also stayed here at the start of my 2005 Chile-Argentina trip, which was when i first found these cabañas. But during my visit last March, I´d learned that the place was up for sale; and now the caretakers have informed me that it has, in fact, been sold, and that the new owners have decided to transform it into a spa. At the end of this year´s tourist season in march, they plan to raze the cabaña I am occupying as well as cabaña No. 4, and in their place they are planning to erect a new "dormitory" which will become the primary residence for business executives and other upwardly-mobile types whom they intend to target at their principal clientele. The cabaña below mine, No.6, will be gutted and turned into a massage parlor, and the cabaña that is currently functioning as the residence of the caretakers as well as the office will be completely remodeled and used for other spa-related functions. The caretakers will remain, but will move into the cabaña up by the coastal highway. Naturally, from my point of view, these changes are a big disappointment, because it means that it is the end of this place as I´ve known it. Perhaps the one good thing about "progress" is that it follows the dictum that nothing stays the same; and all things must pass.

So I am looking at this time here in El Tabo as being my opportunity to enjoy this place for one final time.

Now, I need to introduce to all who visit this blog to my newest friend - a mellow little Chilean street dog who has taken up semi-residence here at Las 7 Cabañas and goes by the name of "El Negro."

El Negro showed up at my cabin door at about 8 p.m. last night and immediately took a liking to me, hanging around until I finally turned out the lights at 1 a.m.. But even then he didn´t want to leave, choosing to scratch at the door until i let him back in. Well, I turned the lights back out and El Negro came up to my bed and tried to jump up on it. I didn´t let him, and he proceeded to set himself up to sleep on one of the chairs in the living room, where he still was this morning. While I cooked my breakfast, I gave him some bread and cheese, as well as a slice of turkey sandwich meat, which he really loved. Actually, he has become fairly inseparable from me, as he joined me for my morning beach walk, and is currently waiting for me to re-emerge from the caretaker´s cabaña where I am writing this post. So I´d figured I´d be experiencing some relaxing solitude here at this time, but it appears that this time around, I won´t really be alone, with my little pal, El Negro, keeping me company.