Having spent a boring day in grim, depressing Puerto Montt (after being rained out of the Chilean Lakes), we flew to Santiago on Saturday 26 November. We arrived in the mid-afternoon, took a bus to the city centre, found a cheap hotel with cable TV near the Plaza de Armas... and watched the dying minutes of the SA vs France rugby match on telly!
Afterwards (with the Boks having lost), at about 6pm, we set off to explore some of the city centre. Santiago is modern, clean and efficiently run; with its elegant buildings, wide avenues and extensive pedestrianised shopping area, it reminded us very much of European cities. We strolled around the Plaza, a bustle of families and canoodling young people in the early evening, with a great big plastic Christmas tree at its centre. Picked up a dinner of roast chicken at a supermarket and retreated to our hotel for a movie on cable TV... it was bliss vegging out in front of the telly after weeks of camping!
Sunday morning we hit the shopping precinct in search of some essential items - a new bikini and boots for me (my 6-year-old Hi Techs finally gave up on life). We marveled at the sophisticated, European-style department stores and fashion boutiques in the pedestrian streets around the Plaza de Armas. Got the bikini, but no boots - it seems that Chilean women are not encouraged to do physical exercise... even functional cross trainers for women are hard to find, let alone hiking boots! At noon, we returned to the hotel to get our bags and took a bus to the upmarket Providencia district, where Rich´s parents had booked two rooms in the posh, four-star Hotel Torremayor.
The parents arrived at Torremayor literally five minutes after us (they had flown from South Africa to Sao Paolo, and from there to Santiago). You can just imagine the squeals of delight, hugs and kisses that accompanied our reunion in the foyer!
In the afternoon, we took the funicular and cable car up Cerro San Cristobal, a big hill just to the north of the city centre, to get some bird's-eye views of the city and the snow-capped Andes in the distance.
We had booked a car for two days with the view to heading out to the surrounding wine regions, so on Monday morning 28 November we collected the little VW and headed out to Casablanca, after a visit to the tourist office. The tourist office was pretty insistent that we needed appointments to visit wineries, even just for a tasting, so we provisionally booked visits to two cellars in the Casablanca region.
The drive (with Rich at the wheel) took us north-east through a landscape of dramatic arid hills and into the green, irrigated valley of Casablanca, a fairly new wine growing region - established about 20 years ago - and renowned for its white wines, especially Sauvignon Blanc.
We arrived at Veramonte winery about one and a half hours early for our appointment, but managed to get a tasting anyway. Veramonte is a classy cellar with some delicious, award-winning and predictably pricey wines.
After the tasting we continued on to Valparaiso, another 45-minutes away, by the sea. This important and historic port city sprawls over several steep hills; the upper neighbourhoods are connected to the portside centre by a number of 'ascensors' or funiculars, built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We rode the ascensor El Peral from the central plaza up to a pretty square beside the art museum, and looked out over the vast city with its clusters of colourfully painted houses on the hillsides.
Valparaiso was once a properous and strategic port: during its heyday in the 1800s to early 1900s, American and British trading companies made it their base in South America. However, once grand mansions are now run-down and the streets are grimy. Despite this, one can still sense the former grandeur of the city.
At about 1pm we left Valparaiso and drove north up the coast on a lovely road that hugs the rocky costline. We spotted pelicans gliding overhead and stopped to look at a colony of sealions; then stopped for lunch in the seaside village of Concon, beyond Viña del Mar. Concon is renowned for its seafood... we took a table at 'La Gatita' and tucked into the most fabulous surf and turf lunch of abalone, clams, fish and a good rare steak. Our seaview table allowed us to watch pelicans' antics while munching and sipping our wine!
On the way back to Santiago, we stopped off at another winery in the Casablanca region. Indomita is an imposing glass and white-walled edifice on a hillside. Despite being 45 minutes late for our appointment, we received five-star service.
On Tuesday the 29th, we headed out south to the Colchagua Valley, a renowned red wine region. It took us quite a while to get there, as we missed the turn-off onto the PanAmerican highway out of Santiago (you would have thought it would be well signposted!) and ended up wasting time driving through the suburbs. Plus, we had to stop off in Rancagua, a large town nearby, to get some information and a map of the Colchagua region... what we got was next to useless, so we just drove up the Colchagua valley road in the direction of Santa Cruz, with the idea of stopping at cellars as and when we spotted them.
Colchagua is a beautifully fertile valley flanked by green mountainsides, with plenty of fruit cultivation along with vineyards. It´s an established region known predominantly for its red wines. Our first stop was Viu Manent, a lovely hacienda-style winery with pretty courtyard. We received excellent service and were rather impressed by the wines - as you can see from the photo, we bought quite a few bottles!
The staff at Viu Manent recommended that we visit Montes, a premier winery nearby. Nestled at the foot of the mountain, Montes boasts a brand new cellar building... not necessarily pleasing to the eye, but built according to Feng Shui and incorporating the latest 'gentle' cellar technology. On arrival, we were met by an Englishman who´d settled in Chile many years ago. He took us around the cellar (we´d planned to do only a tasting, not a cellar tour, as all four of us have seen the interior of many a wine cellar in our lives. But either way we would have paid for it). It turned out to be quite a drawn-out affair, though interesting. In a glass room inside the maturation cellar, we finally got down the business of tasting... lovely stuff, especially the top-range bordeaux blend. Ended up buying a bottle or two from their cheaper range.
By now it was past 3pm and we were starving, so we headed into Santa Cruz for a bite of lunch and to visit the excellent Colchagua Museum, which gives an informative overview of South American natural and cultural history from prehistoric times to the early 1900s. In particular, it boasts exceptional displays of Pre-Colombian ceramics from all over the continent. For anyone travelling in the Central Valley, this museum is really worth a visit.
So we returned to our suits in the Torremayor, tired yet contented with our purchases, and tackled the tricky task of packing at least a dozen bottles of wine into our luggage, to take to the Galapagos! Good thing the parents had brought roomy suitcases...
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