April 9, 2011

---

KF: After our wonderful Road Scholar tour of the Andes and Amazon, we spent our last night in Peru in a sketchy dive of a hotel near the airport. It was cheap, which is why we had booked it on line several months ago. The choice of rooms was between stinky (mildew, stale cigarettes, foul drains, & organic waste) and noisy (facing a street with honking cars, screaming sirens, raucous bars, & loud music). We chose noisy -- I should have brought ear plugs. But, there's a pharmacological solution to most problems so I took my first Ativan -- my GP kindly gave me a prescription for four tablets before we left Truro (in case of dire need, which I felt that evening). Slept like a top. Took plane to Santiago, Chile in the morning.

We had three days in Santiago. The city seemed to be modern, clean, sophisticated and well organized. We had a great warm welcome to Chile at dinner with Ximena and Manolo (he is a gynecologist and the brother of Nora Cunningham, a friend from Truro). We visited interesting museums and strolled around the neighborhoods of Santiago, trying out our Spanish from time to time (Chilean Spanish is harder for us to understand -- very fast and lots of incomprehensible slang).

We took a fantastic two day bicycling and wine tour in the Casa Blanca Valley which is located in the Coastal Mountains between Santiago and the Pacific. It is autumn here, so the vines were heavy with juicy ripe grapes. The mornings were misty with coastal fog from the cold Humbolt Current (like our Labrador Current) but by 11AM, the sky cleared to a brilliant blue, still with a cool breeze -- perfect for biking. We cycled -- just Tarjei and I, with our guide Leonardo, along winding country lanes and quiet paved side roads. There were fields of grapevines (rows neatly labelled: "Pinot Noir", "Merlot"), and orchards of peaches, pomegranates, high bush blueberries, and nut trees. We pedaled from one winery to the next, and had an official tour of each followed by an educational wine tasting session (five or six samples, some red, some white). Some of you know that for many years, Pinot Grigio has been my favorite wine -- but they don't grow those grapes here. My new love is Sauvignon Blanc (the sommeliers lyrically describe the "fresh burst of citrus followed by a hint of peach and melon"). It sounds so healthy, I felt quite virtuous swigging it down at 11AM!

When my energy started to flag (after 30 km and a couple of wine-tasting sessions), I bailed out by climbing into the support vehicle with Johan the driver, while Tarjei and Leo sprinted the last 10 km to the boutique hotel. We felt so pampered!

TT: "Sprinted" might be an exaggeration! What I want to add is that last weekend, we flew the from Peruvian Amazon and Lima to Santiago de Chile. I thought I had been teleported to France or maybe California. It's hard to get too much of that Mediterranean climate. In addition, Santiago is a very European city, with elegant outdoor cafes, museums, universities, statues, fountains and parks (as Katy has already told you).

Of our bicycle tour of vineyards, there were included two organic wineries. What fascinated me was that they used chickens, ducks and guinea fowl to control invertebrate pests and weeds around the grape plants. The Eliana winery alone had almost 400 chickens whose sole purpose was pest control. Portable night-time chicken coops were taken to areas of the vineyard that were experiencing problems and the commando birds were turned loose. It would be really interesting to experiment with that in Nova Scotia.

KF: Our last night was back in Santiago, where the streets are full of families, friends, lovers, and students -- music and wine -- until 3 or 4 AM. Lots of fun!

---

Photos

Santiago - a lovely and elegant city
It was lots of fun to walk through the parks and by the outdoor cafes of Santiago

Autumn in Santiago
Some of the trees show signs of fall colours

Pre-Colombian Museum
Bigger than life size carvings from the Mapuche culture of central and south Chile. The Mapuche fought with the Incas and held them to the north.

Overlooking the Casablanca Valley
Here is where our vineyard tour began - west of Santiago

Emiliana vineyard
Beautiful grounds were typical of all the wineries we visited. Notice the hen.

Mobile hen house
Chickens were used in the organic Emiliana viineyard, to control bugs and weeds around the grapewines.

Emiliana vineyard
Our first wine tasting: a sauvignon blanc, a chardonnay, a syrah (shiraz) and a pinot noir

Cycling in the Casablanca Valley
Tarjei and Leonardo on good paved roads with little traffic

Bosque vineyard
Katy biking down from our picnic ground at the top of the vineyard

Casablanca Valley
A view from above the beautiful Bosque Vineyard

Picnic above the vineyard
A fantastic picnic with Cabarnet Sauvignon and cheeses above the Bosque vineyard, with a view for miles around.

Inn at Matetic vineyard
They lit fires by the pool on a cool autumn night. Another spectacular place where we spent a night

Matetic vineyard
Another great day of cycling through vineyards and orchards

Almost there!
After a hard pedal of several kilometers

After cycling
We went for ceviche at a little place on the coast south of Valparaiso

Testing the water
Chile's coast is dominated by the Humbolt Current from the south (i.e. Antarctica).