Chilean Coastline: where surfing began

We just had an incredible 2 nights at the beach in Chile where surfing first started. The place is called Ritoque beach and is about a 30 minute drive north of Vina del mar where we were before that.

The beach was totally like a NZ west coast beach - we came to the conclusion that is was Piha crossed with Raglan. Rod never went for a surf though. Surf was 4-6ft and didn´t look too bad but apparently it gets a lot better. Water was damn cold and without a wetsuit there was no way Rodney was going surfing (it was colder than the water is in NZ winter!).

But before we stayed in Ritoque, we went to a little town called Quintero where we stayed the night at Ritoque had no room for us. Well well well it turns out this is NOT a tourist town. We were the only gringos (foreigners) we saw in the whole 24 hours we were there! We later found out that in the 11,000 tourists that have visited that town in 2008 only 460 were foriegners! No wonder NO ONE spoke english! But we got by on our hand signals and 15 words (yes we are progressing! ha!).

But with every cloud there is a silver lining and while the town was a bit rough around the edges, we went for a walk around the coast of this sleepy fishing town and it was an amazing walk! Beautiful clear blue seas and gorgeous scenery and small beaches nestled in between rocks with huge fat sea lions (with lots of fur cos the water is so cold) were just hanging out! So was a nice surprise when our expectations weren´t exactly huge of the place on arrival! We had our first ´scare´, some bloody stray dogs decided to have a wee bark at us (there were about 6 of them). It wasn´t really a drama in hindsight but at the time my heart rate definitely got up! Rods cool dog whispering skills had them running off with their tails between their legs in no time and I was very thankful of the many hundreds of dollars that we spent on vaccinations, and decided it was a very good investment as I´m sure they are no the last dogs we´ll see!

Onto Ritoque the next day where we stayed at a place called Dunas hostel, think the website is http://www.dunashostel.com/ ... it was amazing! We had the honeymoon suite - we could see the sea from our bed. Awesome. Basically just chilled out for several days, went for huge walks along the beach and explored the rugged coastline. There are HUGE sand dunes at Ritoque, ones to rival Hokianga in NZ and there were lots of dirt bikers around. Every afternoon we watched the locals try to drive off the beach in the soft sand and watch without fail, every 4wd get stuck in the sand!!! It was rather amusing, and provided entertainment between reading books and lying in the sun relaxing! Fortunately they all eventually got out!

Spent quite a bit of a time at the most authentic beach bar we´ve ever seen... right on the beach with a thatched roof, old surf boards in the rafters and sun loungers out front on the beach.

Now we are back in Vina Del Mar, and have booked a bus to La Serena tomorrow which is another resort seaside town about 6 hours north, so we´ll be catching our very first long haul bus (not that this is very long haul!)

Will spend a couple of days checking it out before we make our next move. Anyway time to enjoy the beach, hope you are all well and enjoying the NZ summer or winter if you are elsewhere in the world!

Love Dahlia x