Gringos go to Portofino!

Though my actual birthday was on October 17^th, I had the awesome privilege to celebrate for an entire weekend the following week. My host family has a house on the beach at Portofino, which is a TINY beach village about 15 minutes south of Chanarall (an hour and a half northwest of Copiapo). There are no stores, no electricity, and My host mom invited all of my friends up for the weekend, and all (minus Ben due to his ankle) were able to come and celebrate. On Friday Joy and I went up early with Gloria and Monserrat to open up the house and get it ready. We played cards and as Heinz was due to arrive sometime between 9pm and 1am, in the complete darkness, with no real idea where the house was, we made frequent walks out to the highway to look for him. Luckily on our last trip out before quitting for the night a bus stopped and our fellow gringo got off.

The next morning Joy and I caught a bus up to Chanarall to do some grocery shopping, and though we tried to hitch-hike back to Portofino my host mom ended up driving by before any other cars picked us up. We went for a run on the beach around noon, and by the time we got back ALL the other gringos had arrived! Joy, Heinz, Terryl, Donte, Nicole and Mike (along with Gloria and Monserrat) and I spent the afternoon on the beach relaxing, and the more adventurous of us got in the slightly frigid Pacific. The beach at Portofino is small but beautiful, with grand amounts of rocks jutting out into the water at various places, white sand and water that is clear/aqua colored close into the beach. It was a wonderful day spent together, eating lunch, relaxing and playing games, eating once, relaxing and watching the sunset, and eating a HUGE asado at about 10pm with all of us and a few of Gloria’s friends and family from Chanarall. Followed, of course, by delicious torta de chocolate (chocolate cake!) They made me get out the guitar and we sang songs for a few hours on the porch, relaxing and talking until some of us had to give into the pull of exhaustion.

On Sunday most left in the morning, but Donte, Terryl and I got to stay while my host mom closed up the house and spend another afternoon on the beach just thinking, praying, writing, etc. It was so wonderful. Though Portofino gets busy in the summer the whole weekend we saw about 5 other people in the whole place. It was an amazing birthday weekend (again), and made me very thankful for my host family and all the friends I have here in Chile.