One last time in Santiago...

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Hard to believe that I have been traveling for almost a month and here I find myself back in Santiago where I started my trip from. I am not making much progress, am I? The main reason for coming back this time was to visit the Concha y Toro winery and to look into the possibility of skiing in the surrounding mountains, things that I never got around to in my previous two visits to the city. It isn't that I don't like Santiago, but this is going to be the last time that I go to Santiago on this trip as long as I can help it because I need to get moving on.

One of my days was spent roaming around the city with my friend Beth, who I met in Valparaiso and out all of the coincidences in my life, happened to be in the same dorm room as me while staying in Santiago. We roamed around the hills of San Cristobál and Santa Lucía, had a coffee while watching life go by in the Plaza de Armas and had lunch in Providencia. In the evening, I met two other Canadians, from Québec, who were in the same dorm room as both Beth and I. They had just arrived in Santiago that morning and one of them was about to start a two month journey in South America, the other one only for one month. As an introduction to Chile, we went out to the store and bought 2L of Concha y Toro Carmenere wine for $3 and enjoyed it in the hostel. We decided the next day that we would go visit the Concha y Toro winery together, as we seem to enjoy the wine quite a bit.

Now Santiago has implemented a new mass-transit systems with brand new buses and extending the subway system so more people will use mass transit as the city has a lot of problems with smog. The initiative was taking by the federal government to do this, however, according to people from Santiago, the plan was very unorganized and is not working very well. I thought the system was fine until going to the Concha y Toro winery using local transportation. The subway trip was fine as you can pay in cash, however, for the buses in the city you need to buy a card for 1.900 pesos (about $4) and then put credit on it to take the bus. You can't just pay the bus driver... I am now understanding why the people are frustrated with the system. Anyhow, as the subway system in Santiago gets you to far off places in the city, it is good in that sense. Taking three subways, an hour of our time with no more than a minute of waiting time in between each train, we made it to the end of the line. From here, we decided to walk to the winery which only ended up being 30 minutes away. The tour of the winery has really good...of course, this time of year is not the right time of year to see the grapes as it is winter, but we did get to learn a bit about the wine making and aging process. At the vineyard we visited, only Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are grown... one of my favorites! We sampled a 2006 Castillero del Diablo Carmenere and a 1988 Cabernet Sauvignon. Both were great but the latter was probably the best wine I have ever made. The bottle was being sold for $66 in Chile, so I can just imagine how much this would be in Canada.

To wrap up my stay in Santiago, I met up with a friend who I met on Easter Island for coffee in the evening who studies in Santiago and originally from France. Feels strange to meet up with people I met on my travels, weeks apart from when I met them. I guess this is my life now as South America is really beginning to feel like home 😊

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