Coastal day trip

The sun broke through the clouds one late winter day in August and off we raced to the coast.  It feels like time has stood still in the fishing village of Mehuín, where you can buy fish and seafood right from the fisherman who are cleaning their catch in the harbor each morning.  Many of the boats don't even have a cabin, so it's impressive imaging the fisherman steering their skiffs out each night into the deep, dark, and cold Pacific.

Reminders of tsunami zones and evacuation routes are all over the place.  This picture certainly is effective in capturing why you would want to heed any warnings:

A little way up the coast, a one-car, state-run, on-demand ferry service brought us over to a peninsula where we drove for about an hour and only passed 5 houses and not a single other car.  We did pass lots and lots of sheep though, plus a few oxen.

Just past the town of Esperanza on the road to Toltén we discovered this incredible, completely empty beach.  The sand looked like calligraphy, like black sand writing on a holographic bronze sand background - from certain angles it appeared green, and then it would shift to gold.  We just  had to bring some home for our sand-collecting niece, Maren.  And of course, Kaia and Niko, who never miss an opportunity to collect rocks, tried to sneak at least 50 lbs of stones into the back of the car. Something tells me making decisions around what can go to MN and what has to stay will be a very difficult process when it nears that time next year!

Luminous gold/green and black sand (hard to capture with the camera)

If the kids had their way, at least 287 of these would have ended up in our trunk.

Derk excited to show the rocks he wanted to add to the collection.

The only thing that got us to leave the beach at the end of the day was the rapidly setting sun.