En Reñeca

Yesterday, Tio Mario and cousin Pato picked us up to spend Sunday afternoon in Reñeca. Reñeca is near Valparaiso. The entire area is on the coastline of the Pacific Ocean. After a 2-hour drive, we arrived at Tio Mario and Tia Ceci´s beach house. Tia Ceci had been there during the week with Pato´s older sons, Marce and Simon and Marce´s mom arrived the day before. Uri, Ravit and kids arrived just an hour before us along with two visiting friends from Israel.

The view from the backyard is incredible, you can see the entire coastline and a few cruise ships and fishing boats in the harbor. We had lunch at the house then went out to see the area. Tio Mario drove us around the town where we saw a real castle surrounded by new high-rises. The place, like most of Chile, is a mixture of old historical buildings and homes combined with newer, modern buildings.

We drove into Valparaiso and went to the harbor to jump on one of the boats for a tour. There are a bunch of fishing boats that are being used for tours, the cost is 1,500 pesos per person (about $2.50 US). The boat takes you for a ride around the harbor, the tour guide, which on our boat was a teenage boy who was also doubling as a comedian, really funny kid! On the tour, the coolest thing was our boat passing right next to a bouy with 3 huge sea lions sunbathing on the bouy. You could tell they were old and one of them had a big slice across its back, looked like from a boat propeller-probrecito (poor thing).

After we got back to shore, we drove back to Reñeca and stopped at the beach where there were many booths selling trinkets, souvenirs and snacks, kind of like a swap meet. There were also some booths selling what appeared to be questionable items ("hot" stuff). A couple folks were selling pirated DVDs-they were all in Spanish though.

Also on the beach was a floating restaurant - it was a giant table with attached highback chairs that was suspended about 50 feet in the air by a crane. Kind of ridiculous, we didn´t see anyone eating there at all.

By 11:30, we got in the car and headed for home. It´s been different getting used to the schedule here, people are up and out way early in the morning. My sleeping schedule is a little thrown off. Good thing we´re really not drinking much otherwise we´d really be a mess!