So since Santiago did not have much going for it, and since we had been marooned in the one of the driest places on the planet, we jumped on a bus to the lesser visited beach town of Ritoque on the Pacific coast of Chile. We had seen an amazing hostel right on the cove and thought it would be a great way to spend our last day in SA. We were right.

We had our own small house with two pairs of fun Dutch and German travelers coupled with the surfers kind of running the place at another one of the houses up the hill. We spent the night drinking pisco sours on the beach, and then the real fun began. Our housemate told us that crabs came up with the tide at night and people went on the beach to catch them. So we spent the next hour or more with our headlamps and gloves waiting for the waves to crash and leave unsuspecting crabs in their wake that we snatched up. It was not as easy nor as pinch free as originally imagined, but a great experience to walk away with seven of the critters that we dropped into a pot of boiling water for a midnight snack.

We bussed it back to Santiago the following afternoon and did our stretches before our 13 hour flight to New Zealand leaving just before midnight on the 25th and arriving at Auckland 5am on the 27th, losing the 26th forever in some time warp. I managed to get through the first two Lord of the Rings on the plane (they had all three on the plane) as a source of inspiration for the journey to the most beautiful scenery in the world. Leah mainly looked over disapprovingly.