Greetings from sunny Chile. Now we are staying a little further from the coast and a bit further north the sun breaks through at about 11am and is very pleasant. It was just the right temperature for our horse ride this morning, I would like to pretend that we galloped off across the prairie and rounded up some cattle but in practice we walked sedately round the local paths. I nearly didn't make it, I had not realised how inflexible my hip has become, getting on and off a bike is just OK as I can put the bike at an angle, horses don't offer that sort of flexibility so getting on was a bit embarrassing.
Once that was out of the way we visited a national park forest which was closed (but we saw some big birds and another fox, pictures below) and then drove to a fishing village where we had an interesting time watching fishermen unloading their catch. There were scallops, clams, various types of fish but some other molluscs which we could not identify but assumed were abalone.
To try and confirm our guess I ordered abalone for lunch but what I got looked nothing like what the fishermen had (I have never eaten abalone before and won't again, an odd taste and not really my cup of tea). On returning to our hotel and good old google we think they may be a type of barnacle called picoroco.