Off The Deep End

We spent three days in Lima. I am not a huge fans of giant cities, but we ended up having a great time there. Jammie and I arrived the day before Adrial and we were all leaving together for Cusco on the 5th so we had to make the most of our short time.

We spent the night in Pucon before heading out to Kila-Leufu. It is a fun town if you want to party, go whitewater rafting, rent gear, and in general pay pay pay to do things with other tourists.
We were not impressed with the town because we were more into seeing local places, meeting local people and not being lumped in with thousands of other white people.
Still the town is fun and sometimes it is nice to just do the tourist things.

Today we packed up a modest picnic lunch and walked out to a park that jutted high above the rocky coast line and beaches below. From here we could see about 270 degrees of sweeping views. Although it was amazingly beautiful there was no shelter from the scorching sun so we were eventually forced to flee further sun burns.
Returning to the cabin briefly we restocked our sunscreen and headed down to the beach front of town. Walking through we checked out the fish market and then headed up to the grocery store to get food for dinner.

Today we walked out to a park on a hill above the shoreline and had a small picnic. From this spot we could see about 270 degrees of the coastline, including an insanely crowded beach and rocky tide pools.

On our third day in Algarrobo we walked up the beach to San Alfonso del Mar, a huge resort development famous for having the largest swimming pool in the world. The site features five huge ugly buildings facing onto a pool over 1 kilometer in length. Apparently the pool alone cost $1 billion and it costs over $2 million each year to maintain it. The pool is walled off from the beach and patrolled by guards. Outside of the pool is a beautiful beach with hardly anyone on it.

Each day the parking area outside Gonzalos building gradually fills up. This timelapse captures part of that intricate ballet.

On day 2 in Algarrobo, we set our sight high. We were going to relax at the beach for hours on end and stay out of the sun! Mission accomplished with our trusty tent. We set up the rain fly and lounged on the footprint. We relaxed on out sleeping pads, read books, did crosswords, wrote in our journals, and took in the scenery. It was fantastic!

The seagulls began to swarm at one point putting on quite a show.

We get to Algarrobo to find sun soaked beaches and quaint small town charm.

We left Valparaiso to head south along the coast to a little beach town named Algarrobo. We made arraignments to stay with Gonzolo a fellow CouchSurfer. He informed us that there is not much to do here except go to the beach and hang out. We thought that sounded awesome. Hang out all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go except some of the most beautiful beached in Chile! Alright...