Day 8

Man oh man did today feel like a long day! But, we did finally get a day to sleep in which was very nice. We had originally planned on leaving at 11:30 for Vina del Mar (a beach town about an hour away from Santiago), but some people had partied a little too hard the night before so we ended up leaving a bit later, around 1. From the hotel we headed to the subway where we took the train to the bus terminal and caught the next bus that would take us to Vina del Mar. The bus ride ended up taking about 2 hours which was a bummer because that didn't leave us much time to hang out on the beach, etc. Once we got in to the town we were immediately attacked by the tour guide people asking us if we would like a map and tours. We ended up nabbing a free map and skipped out on the tours. We wandered the streets, noticing that not much was open because it was Sunday and eventually found the ocean and the nicer part of the town. The group was hungry by then so we found a restaurant that sounded like it had good food. They sat us on the roof which was neat because we could see the beach and ocean from there. It was a bit chilly since day was turning in to evening but it was still nice. Kelly and I split a pizza, which was perfect since it was huge and it was also quite tasty. Everyone's food looked excellent and no one had any complaints. The group split up from there because some people wanted to explore the beach and others wanted to shop the markets. Cameron, Kelly, Emily and I (that day Brandon decided to stay behind and rest) walked down to the beach and followed the shore up to a little boardwalk market where there were all kinds of tents that had people selling goods. We also saw people playing music, having puppet shows and there were even those trampalins where you're strapped in to a harness and then jump to do flips and things. The sun started to set so we decided that it was time to head back, so we made our way to the bus terminal. On the way we were able to see the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean, and the sky was a beautiful mixture of pinks, oranges and reds. I was glad to be heading back though because it was really getting chilly. When we had bought out tickets to go to Vina del Mar they gave us a discounted group price for a round trip ticket and so we figured that we could just get on a bus, but since there were seat assignments we had to get off the bus we were on and get new tickets with seat assignments. This caused us to have to wait for the next bus, which came about 40 minutes later. The day started to get really long right here. The four of us were sitting on a bench, waiting for the next bus to arrive when Kelly asked out loud "where is my backpack?" Unforunately someone had swipped her backpack when she wasn't looking! It was a total bummer. We ended up missing our next bus just hoping that it might show up, and finally we got on the next bus with the rest of the group when they showed up, Kelly with out a backpack. The bus ride was even longer that time than on the way there, and then once we finally got off the subway and were walking back we realized that we were walking the wrong way. So, we turned around and eventually made it back to the hotel. Kelly and I went to talk to Jaime but he wasn't back yet, so we talked to Carrie (our other instructor) and decided it would be best to take care of everything in the morning. I went to bed pretty soon after that. Phew, it was a looooooooooooong chaotic day. Poor Kelly :(