A Family Getaway to Playa el Canelillo, Algarrobo, Chile

Have you seen the viral video of the comic, Robyn Schall, who pours herself a glass of wine and cry-laughs as she reads her goal list for 2020? Clearly we can all relate. Let’s take a moment to laugh at the fact that you are reading a travel blog that I started in 2020 – hah! In this space where I was to be journaling about new adventures you will find posts about homeschooling and monthly updates on life in the same place. But in an attempt to uphold the original spirit of my blog, I thought I would document the only trip that we’ve taken since arriving in Chile. We escaped to Algarrobo in December of 2019, before the pandemic started and before I had even started this blog.

Algarrobo is a beach town just a one hour and 15 minute drive from Viña del Mar and about 45 minutes from our current country home. Its proximity made it easy to slip away for a few days between Christmas and New Year and its beauty made us wish we had planned for more time there. The trip was a spur of the moment idea, and with the recommendation from my sister-in-law who has an apartment in Algarrobo, I quickly found an Airbnb next to her favorite beach called Playa el Canelillo. Even though I made the reservation myself, I was not prepared for this view!

The beach was a 10 minute walk from the condo on a private path lined with beautiful gardens and a choice of 3 pools to wet your feet in if you (or your children) just can’t wait to get to the ocean.

A short walk and a few pools stops later, we arrived at this lovely little beach. At the bottom of the path, a condo employee gave us a wristband to identify that we came from the condos and could therefore freely return to them, the pools and the bathrooms at our leisure. Playa el Canelillo boasts calm, clear waters (always a bit cold because it’s the west coast) that are perfect for a family day at the beach.

The only thing we chose to leave the condominiums for were a couple of meals out. The centro of Algarrobo is just a 10 minute drive from the condos and has plenty of restaurants to choose from, many of which you will find right next to the beach. Our favorite was Cafe Mandrake, which you can see in the photo below with the green umbrellas. We enjoyed a delicious, healthy oceanside breakfast AND coffee ground from Brazilian coffee beans (which is important to note, because most coffee in Chile is of the instant variety).

Not knowing this would be our only trip for the year, I’d say we made a good choice.

One year later, and after almost 8 months of mandatory lockdown, we are preparing for our second trip in Chile. It will be very different this time. We will be following all of the necessary protocols here including mandatory masking, social distancing and taking out a health passport to drive 10 hours south for a once in a lifetime kind of experience!