Beach day

    The mornings in Chile all start out pretty cloudy and cold, and then warm up in the afternoon, so we picked the warmest day to go to the beach, and went back to Concon, and Emily showed us where to surf. We laid out in the sand waiting for the sun to come out of the clouds, then rented surfboards and wetsuits (which are needed all year round because the water is so cold) for 10 dollars an hour. The waves were pretty tiny, and I spent most of the hour just riding the board on my stomach when small waves would come in. The wetsuits really helped keep us warm, and it was pretty tiring lugging the huge surfboard through the waves the whole time. Following this we got more empanadas, and I tried the one filled with manjar and nuts, which was overflowing with dulce de leche. Unfortunately Sara and Skylar both got food poisoning from the ham and cheese empanadas at this place, and were sick all the next day.
    We hopped on the bus to go back to Vina del Mar right as the sun was setting, and watched an amazing orange sunset as we drove along a sea wall right next to the ocean. This made up for the cloudy sunset the previous day. The buses in Chile are very different than in Mendoza. They are nicer seats, half as many seats, and much cleaner and organized. There is a list of where they are going on the front of the bus rather than having to decipher three numbers on the front of the bus. But they don't have a preloaded bus card they can use, and instead have to pay every time they get on the bus. It costs probably 3 or 4 times as much each ride, and you can't do free transfers if you need to switch buses within the same hour or something. Every time the bus stops, people get on, and the driver normally starts driving before he's issued tickets to everybody, so I was watching him drive along the sea wall into the sun while also making change and choosing between 5 different colors of tickets, which seemed a little dangerous.   

     Since it was Sunday night, nothing much was open for us to do after the beach day. We stopped at a little market to look at artisan jewelry and clothes and gifty items, but a lot was already closed. We wanted to find terremotos, which are another typical Chilean drink of wine and ice cream, but couldn't find a place an ended up at a Mexican restaurants to get some food and margaritas. Another DU friend in Vina came and visited us there, so we had a total of 6 DU kids together. Exhausted from the beach, this night ended pretty early.