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Vina del Mar, Chile
Happy 2008! We hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's and that the year brings much joy and peace to everyone.
This is the last in our series of our travel blogs that we've recently posted, so if you are interested, you can check out the recent additions to the Argentina tab under Iguazu Falls (Dec. 26), Bariloche (Dec. 28) and San Rafael (Dec. 29) .
So, Vina del Mar, Chile. Wow! What another great place. The weather was perfect every day and we were just a block or so from the ocean and some more great South American public transportation. We spent quite a few days here just relaxing on the beach and walking around town. The weather was hot and balmy but the water was FREEZING! We couldn't stay in more than 2 minutes without getting slurpee head and feeling like our skin was turning blue. But it was refreshing!
We also enjoyed the city life for a couple more days and took in a couple of movies while we could at the local shopping mall. Shopping malls and movie theatres are quite a novelty to us now! We went there on the 30th and the shopping scene was comparable in craziness to Boxing Day in Canada or the day after Thanksgiving in the states. Chile is the wealthiest country in South America and it was a wild contrast to our little town of Mancora in Peru.
We went to a nearby town called Renaca on the 31st to celebrate our anniversary and had a lot of fun at the restaurant "Tiki Taco", a great little Mexican place in the town. And guess what? They had Negra Modelo! It was our first dark beer here and a great reminder of our honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Did I mention that we drank quite a few of those in Mexico? Loads of fun sitting at the bar. The lady that runs the hostel we were staying at put on a BBQ for all the guests and it was great to meet so many people from all over the world.
On New Year's Eve they had an amazing fireworks display over the sea, with about 10 different fireworks stations all going off at once. They lasted 25 minutes and we enjoyed each minute sipping our cervesa and ringing in the New Year. We beat y'all to 2008 by about 3 hours! ;) We thought of all our friends and family back home and had a toast to you. We were quite homesick over the holidays, so thinking of you made us remember all of the great things about home too and all the memories of 2007 before we came to Peru. An awesome and adventurous year.
On New Year's day we enjoyed walking along the miles and miles of gorgeous oceanfront, filled with markets and many thousands of people! We had a great lunch overlooking the ocean and had some of the freshest food (tasty salmon and a great salad bar) we ate on our trip. We also took a romantic little horse-drawn carriage ride through town and enjoyed the many parks and nice old buildings there.
After five weeks of constantly being a bit on our guard and moving from place to place, we were ready to head back home to Mancora and settle in again for the next few months. We feel blessed to have had this chance to see a bit more of this beautiful world!
Thanks for keeping in touch over the holidays while we were on the road!
Much love,
Stacy and Shelly
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