Vacation to the beach

ok sooooo updates. here are pictures, by day and night, from our balcony in the beach town of Reñaca. It was super fun and relaxing (though, i am on vacation, so i´m not sure how much relaxing i really needed). The town was about an hour and 30 min outside of Santiago, and a world away. Tons of these tiny beach towns, Valpariso, Vina del Mar, and Con Con line the pacific coast of Chile and host a large quantity of summer vacationers from Argentina, Chile, and Europe. The beaches are long and clean, lined with shops and bars, game stations, and tons of people. Being well versed in nice beaches i was excited to see what the beaches of Reñaca had in to offer. I must say...it wasn´t what i expected. Though beautiful i was thrown a few curveballs in terms of beaching.

When i arrived at the apartment in the afternoon, i watched the crowds frolic on the beaches below. Surfers took on some decent sized waves crashing close to the shore, kids played in the sand and swam, and lifeguards watched from their tall chairs. The sun was hot, but unfortunately setting, so i couldn´t wait to get to the beach the next day. Well. It didn´t go quite as i had imagined. Firstly, there was a problem, a big white cold one, called Fog. Fog. Fog. Fog. It creeped up in the night, and did not disapear until 2pm. Not just once. EVERY DAY. every single day. We´d wake up in a foggy cloud, have breakfast, laze around until the fog began creeping out onto the ocean horizon, leaving the beaches finally visable. It would hoover there until about midnight, and then roll back in, sure to be in place in the morning when we woke up. Lovely. Aside from that, we faced the extremes of mind numbingly cold water (wtf, its the pacific! its not this cold in hawaii!) and raging, boiling hot sun and sand. I think i got heat stroke a couple of times. def was dehydrated of all water after about 10 min on the beach, and basically had to bathe in 50 plus sunscreen every half an hour. Apparently there is no ozone left in Chile, so you burn quickly and painfully.

Those facts set aside, it was an awesome week! The apt also had a pool that wasn´t quite as cold as the ocean, so we could get some beach time, and some pool time. Ate some great seafood, and basically realxed. Very awesome.