Blogs from Chile, South America - page 7

Monday. We sailed from Punto Arenas down to the Beagle Channel with its fjords and Glacier Alley. It was even more spectacular than I remembered from sailing there with Simon, with the mountains, some jagged peaks and glacier after glacier, some high, some reaching down to the water. It was cloudy with occasional patches of blue sky. Nathan and I spent hours on deck, taking photographs and just enjoying the amazing beauty.... read more

Interesting about Chile, where Mr. Mike and I did some serious wine tasting a few years back. Chile is the only major wine country in the world where no phylloxera exists. A lethal insect, phylloxera devastated most of the world’s vineyards in the 19th century, after which vines were necessarily grafted onto resistant rootstock. But most of the vines in Chile today remain ungrafted. Phylloxera’s curious absence is not fully understood.More zin than cab?? Cabernet Sauvignon plantings superseded Zinfandel way back in 1998. Today there are 94,854 acres of Cabernet; but just 40,061 acres of Zinfandel. Most of the Cabernet is planted in Napa and San Luis Obispo counties. Most of the Zinfandel is planted in San Joaquin and Sonoma counties. (Winespeed) PS, I am not a big fan of most zinfandel.... read more

This post is coming months late, because it's about summer, and summer ended here about 3 months ago, but I did really mean to post about our COVID-y Chilean summer vacation because well, it's all been part of this experience of being an expat, but mainly being in a pandemic wherein not everything fundamentally, makes sense, or goes even remotely as expected. I think when I last left you, we'd recently spent Christmas semi-locked in our house, after a return to weekend quarantines left us without the ability to leave Santiago. Well, a little after New Year's the government decided it would institute a "permiso de vacaciones", wherein regardless of your fase, it gave people the ability to travel to a single destination during the summer within the country. You had to stay in that region, ... read more

http://www.heygo.com 3rd February- Santiago - Chile We started our virtual tour today in front of the Palacio de La Mineda (Palace of Mint) The seat of the President Chile. It also houses the offices of three cabinet ministers: It occupies an entire block in the area known as Civic District. We heard how Chile’s armed forces stage a coup d’état on 9/11 1973 against the government of President Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist leader in Latin America. Allende retreated with his supporters to La Moneda, this fortress-like presidential palace which was surrounded by tanks and infantry and bombed by air force jets. Allende survived the aerial attack but then apparently shot himself to death as troops stormed the burning palace, reportedly using an automatic rifle given to him as a gift by Cuban dictator Fidel ... read more

So I started writing an entry a few weeks ago, as I really feel this whole COVID situation deserves an entry, but I think I was in a dark place, so when I reread it after writing about 1,000 words I decided that you know, it wasn't really in the spirit of what I had been writing in here...not to say I'm in a "bright" place right now (well it is very sunny outside), but it's less dark, and maybe this will be a bit on the lighter side. Well really, there's not a lot to say on the travel side since my last entry...mainly just travel cancellations...we did get squirrely after spending about 3.5 straight months in the house in a government mandated quarantine (minus a few days in April), and traveled back to Canada ... read more