What’s Important

We are in Chile under shelter in place or “Quedate En Casa” like most of the world. Most of Santiago is under quarantine and in our beach town, Matanzas, they are limiting access to only residents with temperature checks in and out. Luckily so far there hasn’t been any reported cases within an hour or so of us. Our town closed the beaches and specifically banned surfing and kitesurfing. I guess to keep visitors away, and they’ve actually fined local surfers for being in the water…. Everything else in our town is operating semi-normally. We are mostly staying on our property, getting caught up with little projects (like the blog 🙂 and spending this time together.

Like most people we are taking advantage of this time to focus on home and family. Zac is a big 8 month old and Rena turns 3 in a few days. Zac loves being with his sister and though he doesn’t crawl, he’s great at worming around the house on his belly. Even though it sucks Rena is out of school, it’s been really fun to have the kids at home and go for walks and play. We also got kittens! Cuckoo cat and Oscar cat. Brisa dog wasn’t thrilled but by now she has mostly accepted them. Rena is obsessed!

Brisa spent at least a week with her nose stuck in the cat door. The cats live in our bodega below our house.

Our big guest house is 99% done, and hopefully, one day we can start renting it out. It came over budget of course and with lots of drama dealing with suppliers. For instance the kitchen was installed 4 months late, the windows were mostly installed wrong and the wooden hot tub broke the first time we used it and then the company went out of business. But despite the drama, the house is beautiful. It wasn’t a small investment so I hope it works out and we enjoy renting it. [scroll through the pics below to check out the house]

One of the beautiful things about living down in South America is the cool places you can go on vacation. We love Brazil and last November we took an amazing trip to Florianópolis and the beaches just south: Praia do Rosa and Ibiraquera. It is just a 3 hour direct flight from Santiago and it is perfect for us. Praia do Rosa is a fantastic beach and Ibiraquera is the Meca for wave Kitesurfing in Brazil. We really hope we can return soon once things get better.

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Christmas in Chile was fantastic. My parents came again for the 4th year in a row, and this time they had a guest house to stay in, our first guests there! Also two groups of friends from San Francisco came to visit. Grace and Matt are traveling for a year+ with their two girls and they joined Rena’s preschool for a week. I got my friend Jon and Susanne on some horses for a ride on the beach when they visited.

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It was a kitesurfing season for the ages here in Matanzas. Wind constantly from Sept to March with plenty of big swells. I really improved and gained confidence this year and I’m dying for September to come back around to start the season again. I also hope to rent our guest house out to kiters and hopefully share my knowledge about the spots and waves with others.

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We are off the grid in Chile. We have our own well for water and electricity comes from solar paneles. But recently the electric company put up power lines about a 1/2 a mile from our house and I decided to try to connect to the company lines. This involved digging a 2.5 foot deep ditch from our house to the power post. This ditch runs along a road that also passes 25 other properties. Since I was contracting a team to dig the ditch and could only do it once, I organized the project so my neighbors could also connect and help with the costs. It’s been quite the project but we are almost ready. My electrician is installing the cables to my house next week. The cable alone is going to cost us more than $5,000! but we really needed the connection so we can have enough power for the new house. We will still use solar when we can and the company power is the back up.

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One nice thing about these times is that I’ve really had a chance to reflect and be grateful. We have an amazing property to spend time on. We even recently made 5 different nature trails from our house when we had the mini excavator here. When we take our daily walks both the cats and the dog follow along. We love all the time we can spend with our kids. And lately we’ve been on many Zoom calls with friends all over the world, which is helping us feel more connected. I can’t wait until schools can open and it’s legal to Surf again, but we are also trying to enjoy this time focused on our home and family.

I hope you all are safe and making the mostly of these trying times. We are planning to travel to the states Chicago/Wisconsin and Oregon end of June and we are optimistic it will still happen!