We arrived home this afternoon after spending the last four nights in Maitencillo. This was the first Christmas holiday in twelve years that we have not spent our break in Canada with Rich’s family (either in Toronto or Banff). Instead, we drove two hours to the North with our Chilean friends, Vicky and Joc. We stayed in Marbella, which is a coastal community, less than an hour away from Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. We spent our days playing tennis, finding unusual shells on different beaches, and swimming in the pool. The weather was idyllic. While it was over 100 degrees in Santiago, it was sunny but cool on the coast. Joc suffered a painful sunburn, but I lathered 50+ sunscreen on all of us, and we managed to avoid burning.
There were a few stark differences from our previous Christmas celebrations. Our Chilean friends eat their big meal of the day at lunch. So, each day we had a large lunch around 2:00 pm in the town of Maitencillo after working up an appetite playing tennis. The Blue Unicorn was our favorite restaurant. We ate a lot of muscles, oysters, clams, shrimp, and crab that all involved a lot of lemon and palta (avocado). We usually strolled along the beach and then enjoyed some ice cream. For dinner, our hosts served watermelon, cocktails, and snacks like peanuts; though when I made the kids capellini and meat sauce, Joc indulged, too. Rather than drinking Aquavit with our Canadian (Danish) relatives, we enjoyed our share of pisco sours with pico, which are juicier lemons. Our hosts made white wine in a honey dew melon. First, you drink the honey dew flavored wine from the melon, then you eat the wine soaked melon inside. For Christmas dinner, rather than eating a large turkey dinner, we reserved the bbq area and prepared lomo salteado, or salted grilled pork loin, on the grill.
Chileans open presents on Christmas Eve at midnight. We did not stay up that late, so ended up with a compromise by opening one present on Christmas Eve and the others on Christmas morning. As per usual, the kids spent Christmas day playing with their gifts. Although the holiday was modest, as always there were more gifts than I anticipated. Mia’s favorite gifts? A sewing machine we left in Santiago and a bracelet making kit. Max’s favorite gifts? A fit bit and 40+ video game player on a hand held device. Everything was closed on Christmas Eve after 2:00 pm and then opened again on Christmas day. However, Chileans have not started their holidays. They will be heading in droves to the beach after New Years, so we enjoyed the beach without any crowds. On the way home to Santiago, we drove along the coast stopping at Concon for lunch and Vinas for ice cream before finally arriving home to Spotty, our cat, waiting for us and Dominga, our neighbor asking if Mia could come out to play.
For the first time coming home to Santiago felt incredible. Though vacations can be dreamy, there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed, watching Elf on your own bean bag chair, and eating dinner at home. What a difference from our return from Regina after the Dieciocho holiday in September. Of course, it was winter in Chile then, and we had just arrived to Chile in July. It helps that it is summer in Santiago now, and we have furnished our house more comfortably since then. Also, we have six more weeks of summer holiday to savor. Our nanny cleaned our house for our arrival, and we had Christmas lomo (pork loin) in our cooler all ready to have as sandwiches for dinner. Rather than doing everything together, as we had for the last few days, we each retreated to our own activities of listening to NPR while playing online chess, jogging, organizing shells from Maitencillo, and analyzing our Fitbit statistics. You can guess who enjoyed which activity. Ah, hogar dulce hogar! (Home sweet home)
Living in Chile 