Fourth Day, May 11th

Today was the day of our first company visits, we went to Bosque del Mauco and Centauro.
We had breakfast at the hotel again, it keeps better better and better each day; today they had jello.
We rode a bus to Bosque del Mauco, which is a mushroom farm. We got to see how they make their fertilized compost, how the mushrooms grow, how they can the mushrooms, and how they pack the uncut mushrooms. The entire process takes 90 days or so, but the last 14 are when the mushrooms grow. We had to wear hardhats, boots, and haircaps. The business looked very much like one in the United States, except they did not worry about making the buildings look pretty. They had plenty of quality control and advanced systems to increase production. They were the only mushroom farm not to be shutdown by the earthquake in Concepcion last year. At the end of our visit they were very kind and gave us a nice snack; we had some Chilean Oreos and wafers.
After Bosque we went to Centauro. It is a family business that sells canned and bagged fruit and foods, especially tomatoes.We were greated by the grandson of the started of the business, he was a very kind and nice man. Centauro was not working at the time, because they shut down after April due to being a seasonal crop business. Throughout the year they work with their tomato paste, but for Janurary through April they work with full capacity, with 9 times the workers. They showed us all their impressive equipment, which is almost all Chilean; they have one machine from Spain and one from the United States. They are working on adding Jalapenos to their product line for Mexico. At the end of the visit they were very nice and gave us 2 bags of marmalade and 1 can of Tomato sauce per person.
After the company visits we went to Las Deliciosas, an empanada shop. They were very quick and good, much faster than the first empanada shop we went to, but this one did not have any dessert ones.
After that we had class at the universtiy on Chilean culture and we gave our presentations on our business ideas we came up with; mine was that there be a month long trip stopping for 2 days in each region of Chile, the Easter Islands, Metropolitan area, and the Antartic region. Jose like the idea.
Then we had salsa class, we learned the double taquila, a spinning dance move.

Lessons Learned: 1. Chilean business are very much like U.S. businesses.
2. Chileans do not worry as much about visual appearences.