27 oktober 2023 – Rob's wandelsite

Date: 20231027

Time: 12:00 – 19:05

Distance: 18,7 km

Overnight stay: Mítico departamento dúplex, Valparaíso

Walk

Today we, Ada and I, are going for a walk. The plan is to go to Concón and then walk back to Viña del Mar where Ada will catch the metro to Valparaíso and I will walk back the last part as well.

After breakfast we go down with the ascensor and walk to Plaza Sotomayor. I decided to give Uber one last try and lo and behold, within one minute the driver shows up and delivers us in Concón. Here we start our walk, but since I gave up some random address in Concón, we first have to walk down to the ocean.

We walk along the ocean side which is very rocky here. We see all kinds of birds like the Peruvian pelican. At one point we also see 3 South American sea lions. When we continue walking it looks like there will be no bar or restaurant for quite some time, so we head back and go to the restaurant where the sea lions were. On the terrace we are very close to the sea lions and we enjoy our drinks. That is, I ordered a Michelada because I thought that it was a beer brand. The waiter pointed to the other beers they had, but I did not understand, my Spanish is not that well. When he came to serve, I got a glass with salt on the rim and some lemon juice (I think) in it. He then put in some sauce and some tabasco and I could choose one of the beers they had. I went for the Calafate ale and he put that in as well. Time to look up what Michelada means, apparently it is a cocktail with beer in it! Now that I had it, I also tried it. It was not too bad, but not something I will repeat. Luckily there was still some beer left in the bottle that I drank after I had finished the cocktail.

I notice that they have a lot of Hottentot Fig growing along the coast. I have seen this also in Portugal, the Hottentot Fig poses a serious ecological problem by forming vast monospecific zones and hence lowering biodiversity

We continued our walk along the coast by entering a section along the dunes of Concón. We already saw these from the car but now we walked on the other side, the ocean side. It was a nice stretch to walk with again a nice rocky coast until the road was blocked. As walkers, we could pass the barriers they put up and continued. But not very far because after 200 meters or so the road was completely blocked because of road works. So back again, we looked for a path into the dunes, but there were only options that were very steep and hard to do and I did not know if they would lead us to something. After a little less than 2 kilometers, there was a road going up the hill and we followed that through the sub urbs of Concón.

Once on the top, we found an Italian restaurant where we had a drink, a real beer for me this time, and something to snack, lemon pie and tiramisu.

Once we passed the dunes, we headed down again. From our high position we could see the other end of the road block. The good thing about the detour was that we had some magnificent views from the hill over the ocean and the coast.

We did not make it to the center of Viña del Mar however. After 18.5 kilometers Ada’s feet were sore. Also Sandy arrived at Valparaíso to spent the weekend with us and we didn’t want to let her wait too long. At a bus stop we ordered an Uber and that went well again. After 5-6 minutes the driver picked us up and brought us to the Valparaíso Beer House, where we found Sandy.

We had diner at a nice Peruvian restaurant and went straight to our apartment after that.

Weather

It started out a bit chilly today, but while we were walking it got warmer and the sun came out, which made it quite warm. I even got a burn on my face, not seriously, but still.