Today was the Playas del Norte excursion. In spanish, "playas del norte" literally translates to "beaches of the north". We went to three different beaches today. The first one was Roca Oceánica. It is also known as "Sanctuario de la Naturaleza" or "Sanctuary of the Nature". This is the beach immediately adjacent to the sand dunes of Concón. From here you can see a profound difference in the landscapes in Viña del Mar where the sand dunes abut the city.
Later, we went to two more beaches. The intent of seeing these two beaches was to show the vast difference in the social classes of the people of Chile. We first went to Horcón. Horcón is a very poor beach. It is a little town where the people are fisherman or handicraft manufacturers. It is sad to see that there are many people there who clearly didn't have a stable place to sleep. Despite all of this, the beach is beautiful. It also has a small bridge with a bunch of ribbons tied to it. I believe people buy ribbons and write something on it (like the date or something important to them) and tie it to the bridge. This was definitely my favorite beach.
Finally, we went to Zapallar. This was a very high class beach. It is clear that the local inhabitants were all from high socio-economic classes. The bathrooms were about 3 times more expensive to use there than any other place I saw in Chile. Everything else, including food, was also much more expensive. If you look away from the beach, you see a hill of very expensive houses. A vast majority of the houses are vacation houses. The beach was very calm and the sand was very pure. Even though it was a very nice beach, this was my least favorite beach I have been to in all of Chile. I end with a couple pictures from Zapallar.
