Equipo Williams

We’re back in Santiago after twelve days in central Chile with my parents.  We spent a week on near Santa Cruz in the Colchagua valley wine country and a few days at the beach in Pichelemu before putting them on a plane last night.  The kids had fun on their “winter break:” time with grandparents, no schoolwork, and the relative luxury of Airbnbs over camping.  It should be an interesting week getting them used to life on the road again.

The Colchagua valley and central Chile in general reminded us a lot of southern California.  There are predominantly red wine vineyards all around the town of Santa Cruz, and our house was situated in the middle of vineyards just outside of town.  We did a few day excursions from the house up in to the mountains and to the Colchagua museum in town as well as spending a few days at the house. We went on a tour of a winery on the first full day there, and evenings were spent drinking the local wines and telling my parents about the trip so far. 

The kids spent time with their grandparents (they were grateful to have other people to talk to), played games, swam in the pool, and snuck off to look at screens. They had a good time, but I made mental notes about all the things I want them to write about and we’ll be starting homeschool up again on Monday morning. 

It was also a mail-call for Jessie and me: my parents brought the interesting bits of our accumulated mail, including the renewed registration for our car and a bunch of tax documents. While the kids were playing, Jessie and I spent the day getting things squared away on the tax front.

Jessie had the biggest adventure of the week: on the last full day in Pichelemu, she went for a walk on the beach while Sydney, Audrey, and I played in the sand. After ten minutes of walking in the surf, she discovered that her cell phone had fallen out of her pocket and was now the property of the South Pacific Ocean. This earned us the bonus adventure of buying a new phone in Santiago and sitting in a Starbucks activating it on our normal carrier. I still hold a commanding lead in bone-headed things done during our relationship, though.

So now we’re back on the road again. We had lunch in Santiago this afternoon before leaving and Jessie and I both felt that we had the Sundays: it was a nice vacation from our life, but it is time to get back to work. We have about 8000 kilometers to cover between Santiago and Cartagena and about 80 days to cover that distance. Doable, but some choices will have to be made about what we want to see and do. 

The kids are starting to draft their next few posts, and I should get several up this week.