Vina Del Mar

When we arrived in Santiago last night the noise was almost painful!  WE had become accustomed to the peace and quiet of El Saltamontes and the street sounds of buses and cars, along with emergency sirens and the voices of what seemed like millions of people were deafening.

Allan and I left Hotel Plaza San Francisco and Santiago just before Noon in our rented Mazda with the GPS that speaks only Spanish.  We had a rough start because it took me awhile to get myself oriented and Allan isn’t too patient. After we left Santiago proper, all was well.  We drove for about an hour and a half over mountains and under and through them in tunnels  until we could see the sea!  The building are right on the beach at the base of the mountains and there were small sailboats and large ocean-going ships in the harbor.  The city traffic around Valparaiso aw we entered Vina Del Mar was stop and go, more stop than go.  We followed the road along a busy and lively beach then turned right and drove up and off road for a few blocks until our hotel appeared—brand new modern brick building behind a wrought iron gate.  We were offered and accepted a welcome drink (we each had Pisco sours) while we waited for the room to be ready.  It turns out the hotel sits amid a small forest (bosque in Spanish) of huge eucalyptus trees.  I walked up the hill to the middle of the bosque and searched for a very vocal bird, listened to the soothing water sound from a small koi pound and just enjoyed the beautiful warm (but not too warm) weather and peaceful solitude while Allan napped in our room.

Around 6:30 in the evening, we took an exploratory ride, past Renaca to the small town of Concon, a little

further North.  There were lots of people driving very slowly along the beach road so we went up and were met by a very high sand dune with many people sand surfing and many more watching.  It reminded me of my youth and sand surfing in the Sugar Bowl dunes on Pensacola Beach—much smaller dunes, but the same exciting feeling.  At the big highway we turned around and drove back toward Renaca on the beach road where we were right on the water.  The entire mountainside was covered with terraced apartments and the beach was covered with people enjoying the sun and surf.  We did see cormorants, gulls, turkey vultures (really?) and Chilean pelicans, among other birds I didn’t recognize.

And, once again, returning to our hotel was an adventure.  After inching along on the beach road, we took a very sharp left and zig zagged our way over the big sand dunes.  We followed our GPS directions and ended up on a dirt road somewhere behind our hotel with the road we were supposed to follow blocked and apparently washed out.  Resourceful as we are and because it was beginning to get dark, we gave up on that route and found our way to the original route we had followed coming in to Vina Del Mar and arrived at the hotel safely.  For most of our dinner, we were the only guest dining.  It took us a bit of translating with Google, but we were able to safely order a beef filet for me and a beef ribeye for Allan.