In Vina Again

Because of the events the last time we visited, Sara and I decided to head back to Viña last weekend. We wanted to see the last of Pablo Neruda's houses before we left the country and see more the city than we got to see last time. So we caught a bus in San Felipe late Saturday morning and made our way there.

We found a great little hotel on 5 Norte, a part of town with a bohemian vibe near the beach. It also had TONS of restaurants, and Sara and I got very excited and very hungry--it's been so long since we've had pizza (without ketchup), italian food, mexican food, chocolate...We tried to fit it all in, but we couldn't. We're thinking about going back next weekend just for the restaurants!

Saturday afternoon we walked along the boardwalk taking pictures of sand sculptures and looking at all the artesanía. This artesan fair is a permanent fixture along the beach and famous for its lapizlázuli. Sara got her hair braided at one of the booths. Then we walked to the mall, which was crazy with people. The next day was "El Día del Niño" (Children's Day), so everyone was out shopping for presents. Right in the middle of everything was a Barbie Beauty Day where young girls would wait in line to get a Barbie makeover (complete with blue eyeshadow and a boa) and have their picture taken.

The next day we went to see one of the Moai transported from Easter Island (the Moai statues were nominated as one of the seven wonders of the world, but in the voting they came in eighth). Then we caught a bus to Isla Negra to see Neruda's house. Well, we tried to catch a bus. But as always happens, something goes wrong, but it all ends up okay in the end. We boarded the wrong bus. In order to find the bus the bus you've bought a ticket for, you look for the destination and the departure time in the windshield; they don't give you a bus number or anything else to identify it. So we got on what we thought was the right bus, but it turns out it was going another direction and they dropped us of at the next stop. Now we had to do a more Chilean thing and flag down the bus from the side of the road that would take us where we wanted to go. Fortuneatly the bus attendant on the first bus told us what we were looking for, and we only had to wait 20 minutes before we were on our way again.

Isla Negra is the last of the 3 Neruda houses we wanted to see. It was beautiful, overlooking the ocean (of course), and full of the random stuff he collected (figurines that go on the front of ships, paintings, bugs, seashells, masks from around the world, etc.). This was the only house that was not sacked after Pinochet's coup in 1973, and Neruda's remains, along with those of his 3rd wife, are there. Neruda died a few days after the take-over, and many Chileans view that as symbolic of the dureza of the regime.

We traveled safely and without incident back to San Felipe and to our respective towns. The only thing we were sorry about was not being able to eat more food while we were in Viña.