We boarded the bus for Viña del Mar early Saturday morning and endured the very curvy bus ride that took 6 hours. We arrived in Viña del Mar and quickly found a hotel. We walked around the town a bit, but weren't able to see too much due to the holiday weekend. There was a nice park where many people were lounging, and different teenagers were trying their luck at skateboarding and doing spinning tricks on their heads. We enjoyed watching them for awhile. We also enjoyed a beautiful sunset on the beach.

On Sunday, we wanted to try to find a church to go to an Easter service, but I was a little under the weather and stayed in almost the whole day. In the afternoon, we enjoyed a quick tour of a large mansion, now turned museum. It housed mostly paintings of people we've never heard of, but the architecture of the home was beautiful.

On Monday, we went to Valparaiso, just a 10 minute bus ride away and toured a bit of that town. It is known for it's many elevator lifts, which take you up quite a steep incline to another portion of the city. Once there, we had a nice view of the town, although it was a little hazy.

Tuesday morning we left for Santiago, to spend a few days in the capital before catching our flight to Quito, Ecuador on the 24th. We arrived in the early afternoon and went on a walking tour of the city. Unfortunately, most of our destinations were closed for the afternoon siesta!

Today we went to yet another park, which holds several museums, one of which was the Natural History Museum. A group of school children were on a field trip there and they were quite enamored with us, more than listening to what the teacher was describing. They kept coming up to us and asking all kinds of questions like where we were from and if we understood Spanish. Then different ones would come up later and ask the same questions all over again. One of the teachers got quite upset that they kept bothering us, but we didn't mind!

Tomorrow morning, we catch an early flight to Quito, and I am looking forward to this next portion of our adventure.