Road Trip: Quintay Chile

While Santiago is a lovely metropolitan city, packed with people and highrises, sweetened with history and mountain views and the metro, getting outside of the city becomes paramount on the weekends (especially when the smog takes over the sun for weeks on end).

One of our favorite spots to escape is the sweet fishing village of Quintay, on the Pacific Coast and just outside of Valparaiso. Quintay is slow, but the views of the ocean are amazing. There are two lovely restaurants right on the beach, and there seems to be a big draw for scuba divers (although the water is icy cold). 

The touristy part of the town is at the bottom of a hill (I would call it a mountain), and except for a public parking lot along the beach that quickly fills up, most visitors and residents of the village have to park their cars at the top of said mountain and walk down. This seems pleasant as you descend into the town and the views of the water take your breath away, but after a big meal and pisco sours (or gasp! carrying your luggage from a long weekend), the climb back up to reality seems a little unbearable. 

Quintay was a major whaling community back in the day, and there is now a very informative whaling museum there that tells of the trade. Chileans say that the waters of the cove used to wash red on the Quintay coast due to over-harvesting the whales. Fittingly, even though they stopped hunting the whales a long time ago, the whales no longer grace the Quintay cove with their presence. I wouldn't go there either if I was a whale. 

Long before the sun rises, brightly painted fishing boats head out to take local fisherman to their days tasks, and as we sipped our coffees in the mid-morning sun, the fisherman returned with their catch. Then the boats start taking out the scuba divers, some to have fun and some to dive for crabs and mussels and urchin to sell to the restaurants and at the fish markets. 

The fisherman then stand on the beach and clean their catch, much to the delight of all the beach dogs who take the skins and bones and tails to their little corners of the world to munch on. (True helpers, the puppies also curl up in their respective fishing nets at night, cleaning the lines of their smaller captives.)

To say the least, the restaurants serve amazingly fresh fish. We tried the congrio frito (fried white fish), marchas a la parmesan (mussels in parmesan cream goodness) and grilled salmon (with lots of butter). 

Not a fish fan? The fresh air and views of the sun setting on the water are worth the trip.