After a day of eating and shopping with our friend Beth at the Pampilla in Coquimbo, a walk through a gorgeous Japanese garden, and a tour of downtown La Serena, David and I returned to our Apart-Hotel for what we thought would be a quiet evening. It was an absolutely gorgeous day though, one of the sunniest we’d had in a week, and I really wanted to take a nice stroll on the beach. So after grabbing some jackets, we walked down to the “boardwalk”.
What we saw surprised us. Now that I think back on it, I’m not sure why. What do people in the U.S. do on their Independence Day? Go to the beach, of course! The fact that it is just rounding on Spring here did not stop Chileans from enjoying the seashore. But instead of sunbathing and swimming, they’ve taken to a different Independence Day pastime - kite flying. The beach was covered with hundreds of families all up and down the shoreline with beautiful kites. I was really excited; David and I love flying kites, but the only significant breezes in Gainesville usually came with names (Frances, Jeanne, etc.) and generally flying a kite in a hurricane will win you a Darwin Award.
Sadly, our really awesome, high quality-kite is packed away in a windless crate on a boat. We had to settle with shelling out $4 for a really crappy, albeit functional, kite. We found a little spot on the beach and started our kite flying. Everything was going fine until we ran out of string and belatedly realized that the end was not attached to anything. This resulted in David diving all over the beach after a loose kite, while I collapsed on the sand laughing; not really helpful I know, but it was a little ridiculous at the time.
So, we flew our kite on the beach until the sun went down. I got some amazing pictures of the David and the sunset before it was time to pack our little kite away for another day.
Being that this is our blog, I’m sure you can guess what comes next. Food! After a lovely evening on the beach and a full day exploring our surroundings we found ourselves quite hungry. I wasn’t willing to tear myself away from the ocean to go home and eat at our house, so we decided to find a place to eat on the beach. After walking around for quite a bit, we formulated a plan: get empanadas to-go from a nearby restaurant and make a picnic on the beach.
This was a ridiculously good idea. Imagine if you will eating hot, crispy handmade empanadas filled with a variety of fresh ingredients in front of crashing waves on a cold Spring night. The empanadas were made to order, and we tried a crazy collection of fillings including clam, goat cheese, chorizo and mushroom, artichoke and bacon, and good old ham and cheese. We found a table at an empty ice cream restaurant that faced the ocean and had a magnificent dinner. We also made friends with one of the one million dogs roaming around La Serena; this one (surprisingly) belonged to someone and so, didn’t get any treats from us. This didn’t stop him from laying out our feet for 45 minutes hoping we would drop something. Unfortunately for him, these empanadas were so good, even if we had dropped a bit, I think he would have had to fight David for the recovery.
So after a long day of Fairs, gardens, plazas, kite-flying, and eating we finally called it a day. Looking back on it, I can say that this was the type of holiday that only a German tourist plans (you know, Grand Canyon on Wednesday, Yellowstone on Thursday, Disney World on Friday) We were in over our heads all day, but managed to keep ourselves above water anyway; it may have been the pork we had for lunch, the company of a good friend, the graciousness of the Chilean people or all of the above that kept us going.
What we saw surprised us. Now that I think back on it, I’m not sure why. What do people in the U.S. do on their Independence Day? Go to the beach, of course! The fact that it is just rounding on Spring here did not stop Chileans from enjoying the seashore. But instead of sunbathing and swimming, they’ve taken to a different Independence Day pastime - kite flying. The beach was covered with hundreds of families all up and down the shoreline with beautiful kites. I was really excited; David and I love flying kites, but the only significant breezes in Gainesville usually came with names (Frances, Jeanne, etc.) and generally flying a kite in a hurricane will win you a Darwin Award.
Sadly, our really awesome, high quality-kite is packed away in a windless crate on a boat. We had to settle with shelling out $4 for a really crappy, albeit functional, kite. We found a little spot on the beach and started our kite flying. Everything was going fine until we ran out of string and belatedly realized that the end was not attached to anything. This resulted in David diving all over the beach after a loose kite, while I collapsed on the sand laughing; not really helpful I know, but it was a little ridiculous at the time.
So, we flew our kite on the beach until the sun went down. I got some amazing pictures of the David and the sunset before it was time to pack our little kite away for another day.
Being that this is our blog, I’m sure you can guess what comes next. Food! After a lovely evening on the beach and a full day exploring our surroundings we found ourselves quite hungry. I wasn’t willing to tear myself away from the ocean to go home and eat at our house, so we decided to find a place to eat on the beach. After walking around for quite a bit, we formulated a plan: get empanadas to-go from a nearby restaurant and make a picnic on the beach.
This was a ridiculously good idea. Imagine if you will eating hot, crispy handmade empanadas filled with a variety of fresh ingredients in front of crashing waves on a cold Spring night. The empanadas were made to order, and we tried a crazy collection of fillings including clam, goat cheese, chorizo and mushroom, artichoke and bacon, and good old ham and cheese. We found a table at an empty ice cream restaurant that faced the ocean and had a magnificent dinner. We also made friends with one of the one million dogs roaming around La Serena; this one (surprisingly) belonged to someone and so, didn’t get any treats from us. This didn’t stop him from laying out our feet for 45 minutes hoping we would drop something. Unfortunately for him, these empanadas were so good, even if we had dropped a bit, I think he would have had to fight David for the recovery.
So after a long day of Fairs, gardens, plazas, kite-flying, and eating we finally called it a day. Looking back on it, I can say that this was the type of holiday that only a German tourist plans (you know, Grand Canyon on Wednesday, Yellowstone on Thursday, Disney World on Friday) We were in over our heads all day, but managed to keep ourselves above water anyway; it may have been the pork we had for lunch, the company of a good friend, the graciousness of the Chilean people or all of the above that kept us going.
No comments:
Post a Comment