? South America Trip 2023 – Christmas!

South America Trip 2023 – Christmas!

This year we took Christmas on the road - which was not without challenges – everyone was excited to celebrate the holidays in the summer! We enjoyed two Christmases in Australia a decade ago, so we were happy to be heading to the southern hemisphere again for everyone to experience.

The biggest surprise was the Coca-Cola caravan! After a full day of exploring Vina Del Mar on Tuesday (our first full day there), we returned to our apartment and noticed a high volume of people milling around the square in front of our building. There was nothing obvious going on and it was only Tuesday, but I asked the concierge in our building what was going on (this was in an awkward Spanish-English conversation with some google translator help!) Basically he said “everyone is waiting for the Coca-Cola Christmas trucks” – so a quick google search showed me a couple photos of Coca-Cola trucks decorated with lights (I was thinking similar to the fire trucks that ride through neighborhoods with Santa – and our town in MD has a Hanukkah fire truck as well). A quick family vote kept us down at the beach waiting to find out more – of course, kids were playing in the sand while we watched the sunset! Then, we moved up to the square closer to the roads and squeezed in among groups of families and friends chatting and kids playing while everyone waited. We started to talk to a dad who was there with his 3 kids, who quickly started running around with our kids. The dad spoke some English, so it was nice to get some local advice about Vina Del Mar – this was their first time to come see the Coca-Cola trucks, but they are a long time tradition in Vina. The kids all loved running around together despite the language differences, and this certainly helped pass the time. However, after 10pm there was still no sign of the trucks and we were all starting to tire out – our friends decided to head back to their car and hope to see the trucks on the way. We decided to retreat up to our apartment – the great view meant we could keep an eye on things if needed. Turned out, our apartment balcony was the perfect spot – about 10:30 we heard a lot of commotion in the square and ran to the windows to enjoy the caravan of trucks!

It was delightful to walk around the towns we explored and find Christmas decorations – Feliz Navidad! We were in a beach town – so a lot of high rises – and you could see lights, trees, and inflatables up on the balconies. Our youngest is rather obsessed with Christmas trees and “blow ups”, so he was fun to observe as he located these throughout our daily adventures – we took many photos with the trees we found! Our building even had a lovely nativity scene on the outside as well as a musical nativity inside and a couple Christmas trees set up with a sax playing Santa (we saw some life-sized versions of this Santa at restaurants in both Chile and Argentina).

One of our traditions we altered to fit our Christmas adventure this year was Secret Santa – the last few years we have drawn names between the six of us – and this year the twist was that we were to pick out souvenirs for the person whose name we drew (we did have a $ limit). This meant that everyone was more aware of what others were interested in as we perused the outdoor markets around town. We even did a couple check ins around the dinner table to share what everyone spotted that day. Everyone put a lot of thought into what a good souvenir gift would be and we decided to do the Secret Santa exchange on Christmas Eve (to stick with our tradition). As the sunset late on Christmas Eve, there were squeals of delight as fuzzy llamas, cozy socks, beloved penguins, and other goodies to remind us of our fun week in Chile for Christmas were unwrapped! We also took along some Christmas crackers – one of those traditions we brought back from Australia – and this particular set had a great Pictionary type game that proved to be loads of fun to top off the festivities!

Turns out Santa can find the McEachens in Chile, and the kids were thrilled to discover their make-shift stockings full of goodies along with Santa gifts under the tree for all on Christmas morning! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that our youngest insisted we bring our small, inflatable rainbow Christmas tree – it didn’t take up much space in his luggage, so we agreed and it was fun to have this piece of home with us, even in Chile! There was also a Charlie Brown type Christmas tree already in the apartment

Our Christmas morning clean up was part of a larger clean up because we had to be out of our Airbnb by noon, so Christmas gifts were either put on or found a spot in our luggage and after a last trip down to the play at the beach, we loaded up in a van and rode to Santiago…

Our main goal in Santiago for Christmas Day was a Christmas Swim! I found an airbnb in downtown Santiago with a pool on the roof, so we had a plan! We were able to do some sightseeing (more in next post) and ice cream with the Webers (see previous post), and then the kids went straight up to the pool for a beautiful rooftop sunset and Christmas swim. The girls were able to test out their new mermaid tails (thanks Santa!) and my kids would swim all day, every day if they could.

Mission accomplished: a memorable Christmas adventure in Chile!