For our last week in South America we decided to spend some time relaxing in a couple of Chilean beach towns just north of Valparaiso. We spent the weekend in Horcón, a small fishing village, and then up to Maitencillo to a more resorty beach town.
Horcón is a cool, funky little town that, like seemingly all Chilean beach towns, is jam packed full of Chileans on the weekends. We stayed in a nice little place right on the ocean and spent our days lounging on the beach in whatever available real estate we could squeeze into. The beach was certainly crowded, but we seemed to be the only gringos there.
 |
|
The town is an interesting fishing village in that, at least on the weekends, the fishermen need to be in with their catch before the throngs descend on the beach. This is due to the fact that the small beach is used to bring the boats in after the catch and horses are brought down to help pull the boats from the water.
The food selection is limited, but just about everyone sells very tasty seafood empenadas. Probably not the healthiest of diets, but we ate a lot of them!
Things were seeming to calm down on Monday, but we decided to check out Maitencillo for a change of pace. Maintencillo is much bigger with a long stretches of white sand. We found a little place along the beach complete with a kitchenette. When the sun was out it was beautiful and the first day we had an amazing sunset from our cabana.
We had hoped to do some surfing here, but the water was very cold and board rental plus wet suit rental was a little beyond our budget. Instead we took some long walks down the beach in between the hours of laying on the beach and reading. On one of these walks we went to the fish market and picked up some clams. Leslie made a great white wine garlic sauce in our kitchenette and we enjoyed an extremely fresh clam dinner.
One final thing of note is the huge population of pelicans in this area of the coast.
I enjoyed the post--though I'm reading it 3 years late. LOL I'm Michael. I live in Arequipa, Peru--and Missoula, Montana--but I'm thinking of spending perhaps 6 months or so next year on a beach somewhere in Chile or Peru. I'll have to check out Maitencillo. I thought Horcon would be great, but the more I read, the more I find that there is no true beach there. I did spend two months in Zorritos, near the border of Peru and Ecuador. It was nice but their beach is RATHER trashy.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, sincere thanks!
Michael (Michael@RobertMichaelMorgan.com)