Headed To Valpo and Vina Del Mar

Hola!
As the title says, we are already leaving Santiago tomorrow. The city is nice, but its just a big city. Museums, nice Churches, tons of people and so on. Its too damn hot so we are headed to the beach! Valpariso and Vina Del Mar are two cities next to each other on the coast and look beautiful. We have arranged a couch surf with a crazy dude which should be awesome. Plan to stay in Vina for 2 or 3 days. Then we plan to start heading south (by bus). Next stop is a small rural town called Pichilemu, in the middle of nowhere. It is supposed to have a nice break, so we can get some surfing in! Our dream of surfing in warm water will have to wait as it seems that water will likely be as cold as home in the summer. So far our experiences have been great. I caught a pick pocketer mid pick yesterday, which was sketchy. Now we are super on edge, but have been prepared for that kind of stuff anyways. Biggest problem so far is our non-existent Spanish. This will definitely become even more of an issue as we leave the city. But we are working hard everyday to learn and we have technology on our side. Our little wonder machine (the ipod) has an app that I can speak or type English into and it will speak and write Spanish on the screen. Very very handy. Tonight is a big music jam at our Hostel (they have a multi-instrument music room!), which I am obviously very excited about. Lots of love to everyone. Please post comments about how things are going with you so this in not a one way conversation.
Love Tai & Kash