We spent 3 days in Santiago before arriving in Algarrobo, a small seaside resort about an hour and a half from Santiago. Our next workaway for the next three weeks is helping in a B and B overlooking the sea.

Algarrobo is very pretty bordering the coast with hills rising up from the sea. It has a beach that curves around the coastline with rocks offshore and a small harbour with sailing boats. There are lots of little seaside shops catering for the tourists and many restaurants overlooking the harbour.

At the moment it is low season and very quiet, except this weekend is Easter and everywhere is full. On Thursday when we arrived there was nobody on the beach, the next day, Good Friday everybody from Santiago descended on the town! All the shops opened, the beach was cleaned and the esplanade was packed. Luckily the weather is good, about 24° which is just right for us. It is Autumn here so the trees are losing their leaves and it gets very cool in the early hours of the morning and we feel very chilly, however by the afternoon the temperature rises and it is quite warm in the early evening.

The first week of three has flown past. It is very relaxed here and we feel as if we are on a seaside holiday. Chris has been drawing and providing sketches for our host and I have been playing house and cooking. In our spare time we walk along the beach and have visited a small town an hour down the coast called San Antonio. There is a small bus which takes the coast road past small coves. San Antonio, a major port in the area, also has a large shopping mall and casino. We watched an enormous cargo ship pulled out of the port by tugs, then disappear slowly out to sea. Along side the harbour there is a fish market that supplies local restaurants. The fisherman throw the fish guts into the harbour where sea lions are waiting to eat them. The sea lions are enormous and lounge in a group at the end of the beach waiting to be fed. On the way back on the bus we saw more of them on the rocks along the coast and sunning themselves on giant bouys floating in the harbour.

Chile's coast has a geographic fault that runs down the length of the coast a short distance out to sea. There are earthquakes fairly frequently in different parts of the country, most of them so small they are hardly noticed. The town has tsunami escape routes along the coast and they practice regularly.

We watched the waves on the beach and notice they never stay the same. The beach is on a slope and there is a steep shelf that the waves roll over near the shoreline. One moment the water is calm and laps gently on the shore and then from nowhere giant waves rear up from nothing and you think they will roll right up the beach but suddenly they collapse and disappear into nothing. It is a fun sport here to get as close as possible to these big waves and then run back before getting soaked.