Viña del Mar is the closest beach to Santiago, so we decided to take a trip. I went with a few of friends from Startup Chile, including Tiago (Portugal), Raj (UK), Hank (US) and Jesse. We took the $5 bus through the hills and ended up in Viña about 1.5 hours later. They played a movie with no sound, but with Spanish subtitles, so it was a good way to practice.
We got to Viña at about 2pm and walked around. Viña is right next to Valpariaso, which used to be one of the most important shipping cities in the entire world. After the Panama Canal was built, Valpo wasn’t as necessary anymore. Our hostel was located about 4 blocks from the ocean, atop a huge hill. We had great views of the city.
We walked all over Viña to get the lay of the land and found a cool boardwalk and a bunch of bars/restaurants. Many of the restaurants were your typical tourist trap, but we found some good ones by asking out hostel owner which were good and worth going to. We spent some time on the beach and then went out to a few bars. It’s much cooler in Viña compared to Santiago, especially at night and we happened to be there during an extraordiarialy windy time, but it was still really fun. We spent most of the day Sunday on the beach, then took the bus back to Santiago.
We were only there for about 36 hours, but it was great to get out of Santiago and go to the beach with some new friends. We’ll be back over the next few weeks and I’ll write an in depth blog post about where to go, what to do and where to eat next time. For now, here’s a few pictures:
