www.thegilmours.co.uk

It’s averaging 30C in Santiago at the moment, prompting the annual mass exodus to the Coast, just over an hour away, by car.

Every beach from which you can swim (apta para banar) and even those where you can’t (no apta para banar), becomes crammed with umbrellas and people, working on their tans. Perhaps its a status-thing, we don’t really know. They’re already tanned in our eyes!

In the narrow, choked, noisy streets of Valparaiso or Vina del Mar, the on-shore breezes cool shoppers by day and clubbers by night. Outside of the big towns, sleepy coastal towns also host a wide variety of attractions; small shops, amusement arcades, off-licences, bars, cottages for rent, exclusive condominiums, randomly placed night-clubs and Picadas (cheap and cheerful but very tasty meat restaurants).

All enjoy cooler temperatures and constant breezes. Sometimes, there is even cloud. In fact, often, the sun doesn’t come out until 2pm.

We’ve enjoyed two weekends by the sea since returning to Chile earlier this month. One with a more conventional “western” timetable, the other, utilising “Chilean hours”. The former, saw us enjoying a siesta on the beach or in the shade of the house in the afternoon, and rolling into bed at 1am, after a big meal, at around 9pm. The latter, saw us leaving to go to a BBQ at 10.45pm and returning to bed at 2.30am, and we were the first to leave! Indeed, many stayed on and watched a tennis match shown at 5.30am, before going to bed!

The combination of high temperatures during the day, late sleeping and late eating means the majority of Chileans become nocturnal… not something we are accustomed to.

But it has its advantages: if you’re on western hours, then you have the pool, the beach, the sun-loungers (yes, germans would thrive here) and the cafes to yourself until burning midday sun! Then you are replaced by those tan-seekers, who have braved the cold to move from bed to beach!

Last week we said a sad goodbye to one of our best friends in Chile to date, Dave Gordge. His posting overseas with the Australian Foreign Office as a Trade Affairs Secretary has come to an end and he is returning to a post in Canberra, in the area of Biodiversity and Endangered Species protection. He is also returning to his now-fiance, Jemima.

We wish them all the best as they are united again and as Dave settles into Canberra in the coming three weeks! And we’ll be praying for jobs for Jemima, an Occupational Therapist, who is seeking work in the same city.

We recently enjoyed a weekend with Dave and friends at the Australian Embassy’s vacation home on the coast at Cachagua, a picture of which is attached below.
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Dave is in the centre, wearing the green cap. It was a great weekend, filled with tennis, sun-bathing, swimming, wave-dodging and eating fine food! Thanks very much to all Australian tax-payers… and to Dave for inviting us!

We hope you like it. We took this photo of our car in front of Volcan Llaima, in the 8th Region, near Temuco, southern Chile, in November. The snow still covers this active volcano in November. There is a ski-centre on the south-side and a National Park, in which you can hike, camp, fish while wowing at the impressive peak.

Thats not all that’s changed on the website. I’ve finally upgraded to Wordpress 2.1. which includes a few security fixes, auto-saves for posts and other random stuff that I or the average blogger doesn’t really know much about. The upgrade process was surprisingly simple. We hope you find it easier to use, to comment, to track comments and discussions.

We’re back!
Back to smotheringly hot Santiago.
Back online.
Back to shifts, strawberries and (Pisco) sours.
Back to work.
Back to weekends at the beach or in the mountains.
Back to defrosting the fridge.
Back to cleaning.
Back to brushing the smog from the balcony.
Back to watering the plants.

We’ll blog some more about our UK trip in the coming days…. It was great to be back at our many “homes” in the UK and to catch up with soooooo many people. Thank you for your hospitality, generosity and beds if we visited or stayed with you!

If we didn’t see you or catch up by telephone, sorry! You can try to call us on 0131 208 0228 (thanks to Skype). Or you can fly to Chile and visit us instead!

Thank you for your prayers for safe flights, for sleep for Doug (who normally gets less than 4 hours and this time got 6), for catching our connection in Madrid (it was close… like 2 minutes between stepping on the plane and pushback) and for the protection of our home and car in Santiago.