Saturday some of us made plans to head up north to another beach town called Con-Con; it’s about a 10-15 min bus ride on a micro from Vina. We have all been craving some good seafood and Diego told us about an awesome restaurant called la Pica de Martin. It’s so funny traveling places where you literally have no idea where you going, but somehow you get there... so we told the bus driver about the restaurant; which luckily he knew of, so when we got close he let us know and we jumped off. After asking a few people for directions we finally got there around 1:30. Our friend Dan is training for a marathon so he left early on in the morning and ran up there to meet us. He was equipeed with our phone numbers (no phone though) and the address written on a piece of paper so we figured it’d be easy enough to meet up. After waiting and waiting…there was no Danny. Apparently the paper fell out when he was running so our table of 4 quickly and mysteriously turned into a table of 3 and we were left wondering of poor Danny’s disappearance the rest of the day until he showed up at our house later that night at 9pm. After lunch we caught another bus to a beach, Playa la Boca, where Nunu and Michael were hanging out. The swerving bus ride from the restaurant barely got us there alive after the driver averaged about 50 mph through downhill side roads and drove the whole time with the doors open. We lounged in the sun for a few hours, played in the water and took some mini siestas on the beach. Luckily not all of us were asleep though. Mara woke  up just in time to catch a clepto-duo trying to steal our bags. Our bags were literally right next to us the whole time but Mara saw a little boy around 7 yrs old slowly inching towards Peter’s backpack. He actually started moving it away from him when Mara locked eyes with the little boy and caught him. After we all came to, we saw an older man sitting about 50 ft away who was in on it too. When they realized they were figured out, each one got up at different time and walked away. The beach was packed with people but I’m sure that anyone watching would have let it happen because we’re American. We overheard a group of people sitting next to us that were watching the whole thing go down and talking about it afterward. I guess you can’t be too trusting when you’re the dumb foreigner.

On another note, in memory of my Grandma Olive and her passion for traveling, I wanted to bring some of her ashes with me to Chile and share the trip with her. I brought her to beach with us that day and before we headed back to Vina, I sprinkled some of ashes on the shore of Playa la Boca. Dan (dad dan) said I should sneak some of her into the wine fermentation tanks at the Vina Mar winery…I don’t know how that would affect the bouquet of their Reserva Cab Sauv, so I think I’ll stick with geographical locations. LOL.

Around 5:30 the wind started to pick up and the beach cooled down so we decided to head back. We hopped the bus back to Vina…and, of course, this would happen to us, the bus broke down. So everyone got off on the side of the road and waited until another one passed by. However, it actually kind of worked out in our favor because we were stuck on top of some beautiful green cliffs overlooking the ocean…Photo-Op!

We finally got back to 886, 2 Poniente, showered, made some dinner and just crawled into bed. It’s really nice that our house is the big hang out spot because at the end of the night, I don’t have to walk 10 blocks home, just 10 steps J