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Published: April 2nd 2009
Hi Everyone!
It's our second day at sea with the new passengers that boarded in Valparaiso, Chile. The ocean is so calm and peaceful showing no signs that the 30-40 foot waves will return. Everyone that was here to witness the havoc, including the crew, are still talking about it. The ship even made CNN news - I guess they thought we possibly wouldn't return. LOL
I can't believe how empty the ship feels now that we are missing about 800 people. There are so many vacant rooms and people are being upgraded to other parts of the ship so they can close down certain areas. There are about 1800 passengers as opposed to the maximum of 2600 that we had the last two weeks. Good news though, there are more passengers travelling solo - a little younger crowd too :- )
Valparaiso was a beautiful and bustling port known for having a landscape very similar to San Francisco and is one of Chile's largest most metropoliton cities. Chile has recently become well known for producing excellent wines but Princess didn't offer any wine tours because most of the large wineries are located in Santiago two hours away
and they could not guarantee us to return on time, however I was lucky enough to find a group of people on board that had booked a private tour to the much closer Casablanca Valleyand and was able to join them.
Casablanca Valley is cooler and is well known for their excellent Chardonnay, Savingnon Blanc and Pinot Noir. The Pinot Noir grown here is said to be similar to the Oregon coast vineyards and according to my taste buds was indeed fabulous. I'm not sure if it was the excellent wine or just that my camera was having a bad day, but I was not successful in getting many decent pictures to share. I was however able to buy quite a few bottles of wine that I will share with everyone once I get home :-)
On the way back from Casablanca Valley, the tour guide made a detour and took us through a beautiful resort town called Vina Del Mar. This charming seaside town reminded me much of San Diego and we all wished we were able to see more of it. According to our guide, this is where the rich and famous go in South America
and condo's sell on average for $400,000 USD. It really was something to see....This is one city I will put on my list to return.
Today will be very relaxing, not much on the itinerary and due to the fact I am boycotting the spa because of a stupid $10 credit owed to me, I am going to hang out at the pool, broken nails and all! I only hope I can find an Asian nail technician in Peru....
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