The story continues to unfold

Hi everyone.
Wow. Our blog has suddenly attracted a lot of ¨regulars.¨ We love your comments, and appreciate all of your thoughts.
As I said in the last entry, it would be interesting to see what we find as we continue our travels. What we have found has been interesting, and ¨sobering.¨ We had definitely underestimated the effects of this earthquake. First, let me say that we are completely safe and healthy, even finding ways to enjoy ourselves. Chile, on the other hand, is definitely in a state of disarray. The information we have been gathering is probably similar to what you might be seeing on the news. In the north, there is much damage to infrastructure: roads are broken, the airport is closed, trucking is suspended, people have been displaced from their homes, or worse.
We are currently in Valdivia, which is a university/tourist/river town tucked in back from the ocean approximately 15 km. In these bigger towns in the south there are long lines for gasoline; the supermarkets´stocks are low; some ATMs are working, and many aren´t; the beginning of the school year (usually March 1) has been delayed by a week; some of the summer´s last vacationers are still stuck here because they can´t get back to Santiago and other cities north of here; there is some damage to a few buildings, but the roads are clear and people are generally going about their business. The rural areas seem largely unaffected.
How this all affects us? So far, minimally (I am hesitant to even mention it, compared to the grave effects suffered by others). We are dragging our heels a bit, here in the south, because going north doesn´t seem like a smart choice. We will have to alter our course for the rest of the trip, because the surf towns we were planning to visit next were basically at the epicenter of the quake, and have suffered a lot of damage (especially to their waterfronts). It´s crazy, even as I sit here, Ryan is researching the damage to some of the towns we passed through on our way south, which we were planning to revisit in this next month. What we are finding is that those towns are a mess. Some completely leveled. It looks like, in the next few days, we will be revising our vision for the rest of the trip, based on all this new info.
For obvious reasons, we have no complaints about any of this. We feel lucky for a thousand reasons: we were in the safest imaginable place during the quake; we are mostly self-sufficient in El Furgón; we don´t have a flight to catch, don´t have an immediate schedule. We have many options. The coast, here, is beautiful. The mountains are beautiful. We may even be able to find ways to help... We´ll be looking.
We will, as always, keep you posted on our whereabouts.
With love and deep, deep gratitude,
Jess and Ryan