Yesterday I got a quick text from some friends, inviting me to join them for a trip to the beach in a place called “Dichato”. I had not been up there before and the weather was decent (oscillating between cool overcast and warm in the sun). I met Woody and Deborah near my apartment and we hoped to catch a bus from Concepción. We waited for fifteen or twenty minutes, with no signs of buses going all the way to our destination. So we decided on an intermediate option: a bus to Tomé (which seemed to appear every few minutes), where we would see if we could find another bus to take us the rest of the way to Dichato.

The trip to Tomé was uneventful and we arrived in the main plaza, with growling stomachs, so we set off in search of food. Along the way we wandered over to the beach where we saw a sea lion lounging around on the sand (and another floating in the water). I had previously seen sea lions in San Francisco, and the ones down here have just as pungent an order. We watched them for a bit before continuing on to a nice seafood lunch at a restaurant across the street from the beach.

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After lunch we returned to the main square in Tomé to locate transportation to Dichato. Our first glimpse was a collectivo (shared taxis running a set route) headed to Dichato, but already full. We walked around the corner it had appeared around to try and catch the next one before it filled up. We found one parked at the side of the road and ready to go, so the three of us (plus another bystander) piled in—filling it up—and were on our way to Dichato.

After the quick ride to Dichato, we headed for the beach, only a block or two from where the collectivo dropped us off. After arriving on the beach, we began walking South, back towards the way we came, and towards our destination beach.

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When we had gotten ten or twenty minutes walk away from Dichato we started seeing some wildlife, mostly birds. I do not know much about birds, so I could not identity most, but we did see some pelicans.

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We eventually reached a small stream which was feeding into the bay and followed it upstream to the road.

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After a kilometer or so on the road, we turned uphill on a dirt road to cross over a ridge to the object of our hike – a quiet beach, mostly inaccessible to vehicles. The hike up was reasonably steep as we passed houses and a few small farms. We eventually crested the hill and began losing all that elevation we had worked to gain.

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The dirt road got more and more narrow as we dropped down to the beach, eventually becoming a narrow footpath on the hillside. But then things opened up and we were greeted with a wide, sandy beach. We spent a half hour or so, wandering around the beach, checking out the various bits of nature and enjoying being outside.

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We eventually reversed our path in order to get to the main road while the buses back to Concepción were still running. One bus back to Tomé, and then a standing-room-only bus for the rest of the ride back to town.