Summer (Part 1)

I guess I have to get to it sometimes. 

Try to fit the best summer of my life into the white confines that are my blog.

Well then here it goes.

 Summer 2012

The truth about my summer is that, looking back on it, I can safely say it was the best summer of my life. But I can't safely say that it started that way. The first 2 weeks were spent mostly in my room, hating myself for not doing more, but doing little nonetheless. However I see this now is the time I spent learning what it would take to fill my summer, and the possible consequences of not getting up and finding ways to entertain myself. It's free time I now look back on as wasted, but it was wasted time that served a purpose. If I hadn't passed those first two weeks so miserably, I might not have passed the next 2 months so incredibly.

This is the highway that takes you to the north of Chile. On either side is vast desert, rolling dunes, and sun that sucks all like out of the sand. It's incredibly interesting, for the first 20 minutes of the trip. It does however lose it's appeal during the next 10 hours spent driving through it.

My family and I spent about 12 hours driving north through the Atacama Desert to arrive at Bahia Inglesa, a small town on the Pacific Coast. We unloaded the truck into the beach house with the smell of the sea all around us. The first few days were spent exploring the town, lying on the white
 beach (considered one of the most beautiful
 in Chile), kayaking and eating at the great
 restaurants on the beachfront. After a couple days of relaxing on the beach, Ramon flew up from Santiago to enjoy the vacation with everyone. After more days spent on the beach, and in the pool, I decided to go to Antofagasta. 
Antofagasta is the largest town north of Santiago, and my host brother Celso happened to be going to university there. I took a 8 hour bus even more north, but eventually arrived, and was met by Celso who took me around the city. After a couple days getting to know the 
downtown, going to the "Portada" (a rock structure off the coast that Antofagasta is famous for), and getting lost on the bus a couple times, we decided to head back to the rest of the family in Bahia Inglesa. We spent the last days of our holiday visitng the beaches that run along the coastline, and enjoying the incredible weather that makes up a Chilean summer. We also saw a pretty cool sunset (see picture).

At times I find the relaxed nature of Chileans very easy to live with, something I almost wish more Canadians could adopt, at times even my family could adopt. Changing families 2 days after coming back from vacation was not one of those times. Due to a bit of a miscommunication between my new and old families, I had less than 24 hours to prepare all my things, and say a very difficult goodbye to my family, with whome I had spent all my best memories with in Chile. 

From left to right: Danny (cousin), Lucas, Me, Magaly

So with a sad 24 hour "despedida" (a goobye, hard to translate to english), I was in the car with my second family, driving to "lo Miranda", a suburb 30 minutes outside of Rancagua where my second family lives.
However right away I began to get to know them, playing in the pool with my brother Lucas, and my sister Paula, and getting to know my parents Magaly and Christian. We played lots of soccer, swam a lot and went to the plaza 5 minutes from my house a lot during the first 3 days I was there. But right away I found out I was to go on holidays with my new family to the South of Chile, but that is a story for another blog entry...

The South