Today it was in the mid 70s and really sunny so we decided to go visit Con Con. It's a beach town that's north of Viña del Mar. We originally went because we found out that they have a park full of dunes and we wanted to ride in a dune buggy. We ended up not being able to find where the dunes are or if they even offer dune buggy rides. We did however end up eating a huge 3 course meal that consisted all of seafood.Con Con is the gastronomical capital of the region, but they serve mostly seafood. The streets are lined with restaurants offering seafood specials and many varieties of empanadas. We decided to treat ourselves to a large lunch since we hadn't eaten anything. We sat down at one of the restaurants and ordered the lunch special which consisted of salad or rice, fish, and an empanada. We knew we were ordering seafood but didn't quite know what types of food we were getting. We both got a cheese empanada, reinata, and rice. Our cheese empanada was quite large for an appetizer. I thought that it tasted a bit like seafood then we discovered that it was a cheese empanada that was packed with mini shrimp. It actually tasted pretty good with the shrimp.
After our empanada they brought us out these huge bowls of soup called paila marina. It consisted of a bowl with a bunch of clams in the shell and out of it. We were both surprised because we thought we had ordered fish and we both aren't very keen on shellfish. We figured the reinata must be in the soup. The soup was actually pretty good and I drank a lot of the soup broth. I avoided eating most of the clams though. I did eat one whole clam which tasted like a rubbery chicken with a fishy aftertaste. There were also these little strips of white stuff in the soup that tasted like chicken. I decided I don't like eating clams because they're gritty and rubbery. Also, I don't find their black pouch of poo very appetizing. Jeff had a really difficult time eating the soup because he has phobia of all things from the sea. He did manage to eat some of the fish he had in his soup; sadly mine didn't have any fish only clams. Needless to say we did not finish all our our soup and we were a bit grossed out by it.My paila marina. I filled the huge clam up with all the clam bits in my soup then turned it upside down so it'd look like I ate it.
After they took our soup bowls we then found out that the next course was actually our reinata and rice. By this time I was pretty full already. They brought us a plate of fried reinata with rice. It was actually really good but I could barely eat half of it. The whole meal plus bebidas only costs about $9000 clp. They also gave us really good bread with a spicy sauce. We both ended up eating more seafood than we would have liked. I think we both had enough seafood to last us the rest of our trip.
After the seafood we went to check out the beach. It was a nice flat beach with really fine sand. The water was still freezing cold but there were some people boogie boarding. There was also a place where you could rent horses and ride them along the beach. It was all very scenic.
Before we left we got some churros, which were delicious! They weren't too sweet and they didn't overdo it on the powdered sugar so they weren't too messy. It was 8 churros for only $1000 clp. Overall, it was a fun day trip. We are going to do more research on where exactly the sand dunes are and if they have dune buggies. We would both like to go riding if it's even possible.
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