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Published: February 24th 2012
Santiago So, after a romantic valentine's day spent aboard a bus (see previous post), we made it safely into Santiago and settled into our hostel Rio Amazonas, a very cute and welcoming family-run hostel near Plaza Italia. We found the closest mini-market to buy a quick 'dinner' (meat and cheese, our staple) and some cheap Chilean wine. (A discovery: it is definitely cheaper to buy Chilean wine in Chile than it is to buy Argentinian wine in Argentina).
Santiago is a big city with lots of pollution and smog. It is surrounded by the beautiful Andes but unfortunately they are difficult to see through the haze. That said, there is lots to see and do here so we set out to explore a little bit. On our first full day we headed to the nearby Bellavista neighbourhood, which is full of cute cafes, restaurants and boutique shops. We started out by taking the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal, for a great view of the city and what would be a lovely view of the Andes were it not for the aforementioned smog. It was a gorgeous day and after seeing the statue of the virgin Mary and the beautifully
Pablo Neruda
Graffiti near La Chasconaunderstated chapel San Cristobal, we descended in search of lunch. We found a lovely little cafe where we enjoyed delicous pizza and salad made from the freshest ingredients, after which we paid a visit to La Chascona, one of Pablo Neruda's houses. (For those who don't know, Neruda was a very famous Chilean poet who even won the Nobel prize for literature). He has 3 houses in that you can visit, in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Isla Negra. The one in Santiago was built for his mistress (who became his third and final wife). He collected many odd things so the tour was interesting for not only the unique construction of the house, but for his eclectic collections as well. From here we walked towards the centre of downtown along Parque Forestal, a lovely green space in the centre of the main street that follows Rio Mapocho. The park goes on for several blocks and makes walking amongst traffic actually nice! We rounded out our first day with a visit to the Mercado Central, a huge market with lots of fresh fish, vegetables, etc. Unfortunately as it was near the end of the day we were greeted with that yucko fishy
smell and very few actual fish, so we didn't stay long. Following this we passed through the city's main square, the Plaza de Armas. Here we briefly toured the main Cathedral of Santiago, which is beautiful, huge and quite impressive. Exhausted after quite a full day, we hopped on the metro and headed back to the hostel.
Other sights that we managed to see in the city included Palacio de La Moneda (the president's palace - unfortunately we were not allowed inside, but the outside is most impressive in itself), Barrio Brasil (we went on a Saturday afternoon when everything seemed closed; perhaps it is better at a busier time but we were not overly impressed - although there were a few interesting and beautiful churches in the area) and Parque Quinta Normal (a large park with a generous splash pad for kids, some walking trails/picnic areas, and a museum - also closed).
Viñas Santiago actually has an amazing public transit system, including a modern metro (really, all of the metros we've been on in SA put Toronto's to shame) and many different types of buses. Thanks to this, we were able to spend a full day
in the famous Maipo Valley touring wineries on our own, which we prefer (rather than taking a pre-arranged tour with hordes of other tourists). Via the metro and a short taxi ride, we arrived at our first stop, Viña Aquitania, a small boutique winery about 40 minutes from Santiago in a town called Peñalolén. The location of the winery is gorgeous, with lush vineyards framed by the Andes on one side (albeit still somewhat obstructed by smog, but beautiful nonetheless) and a view back to Santiago on the other. Our tour guide Blanca was very knowledgeable, explaining their winemaking processes, including the hand-made labels! We had a nice relaxing tasting session on the lovely patio, where we enjoyed yet another pleasantly surprising rosé (this time a Cabernet Sauvignon variety). However it was the Syrah that won our hearts, and with a bottle in hand we headed back to the metro.
The metro station is in a large mall, so we enjoyed a quick lunch of Mexican fast food followed by some McCafé coffees before hopping back on the subway, this time taking it to the end of the line to a town called Pirque. From here we caught a
local bus to Viña Concha y Toro. If you like wine at all then you have probably heard of this place, as it is the second largest winery in the world! Their Casillero del Diablo line of wine is readily available in the LCBO, as well as all over Chile (which is great for us, as it is cheap here and quite good!). However we opted for the slightly more upscale "Marques Tour" (Marques de Casa Concha is another, slightly better line), and we were thankful that we did because while a group of 40 tourists went on the tour 10 minutes before us, our group comprised a total of 6 - phew! Our witty and knowledgeable guide Belen told us some history of the winery and its owners, as well as some information about the grape varietals and instructions on how to give a proper "cheers". We also learned the famous legend of Concha y Toro, about the Casillero del Diablo (Devil's Cellar) - apparently it is somewhat of a secret and you'll have to visit the winery yourself if you want to know what it is! Our tour concluded with a special sommelier-led tasting of 5 Marques wines,
accompanied by different carefully-selected cheeses (delish!). Oh, and of course we wandered around the gift shop like kids in a candy store... thankfully many of these wines are available at home so we didn't go too overboard!
The last "viña" we visited is not a winery, but a town called Viña del Mar. On Sunday morning we took a bus from Santiago to Valparaiso, and after settling in at our amazing B&B (The Yellow House) in our fabulous "ocean view" room, we decided to explore the nearby beach town. Of course being Sunday not much was open, so we just strolled along the main strip and the beach for a while, which was pretty busy with Chileans (and probably Argentinians) on their last few days of summer vacation. Technically these are our last few days of vacation as well (*sniff*) but as we are saving the rest of our beaching for Curaçao, we said goodbye to the sand and headed back to Valpo.
Valparaiso Valparaiso is one of Chile's most important seaports, and is also another UNESCO World Heritage site (we really need to make a list of all such sites we've seen - it seems like
The port of Valparaiso by night
This was taken from the window of our room! everything is a UNESCO site!). The city is built on over 40 hills (cerros) and, similar to Rio, the poorest people live at the top (with the million $ views) while the rich live at the bottom. The construction of the Panama canal meant that this port is not what it used to be, but it still operates 24 hours a day, and as mentioned, we had a pretty fantastic view.
We allowed ourselves a few days in Valpo (as it's known) and so we did a few different things rather than the usual touristy stuff. On Monday we took a Chilean cooking class with our exuberant and enthusiastic teacher Boris. We could write pages and pages about how amazing the class was - we really had a blast, it was such a fun day and the food was absolutely delicious. The day began with menu selection, followed by a trip to the local market to buy all fresh ingredients, cooking, joking, laughing, and of course, enjoying the meal. We learned about a fabulous Chilean spice called merquén made from smoked red chile peppers and ground coriander seed. This spice was used to make a to die for fresh
salsa that we enjoyed with bread (and rice cakes for Liz). The rest of the menu included stuffed avocado (the stuffing was a chicken, onion, pepper and mayo concoction), small empanadas (empanaditas), and the main dish pastel de choclo (a corn pie with ground beef, chicken, hard boiled egg, raisins, and olives, cooked in individual traditional clay pots). Of course, we also enjoyed a few drinks - pisco sours (2 different flavours), white and red wine (William Cole), and a digestivo called Araucano (tasted a bit like a Jagr/Goldschlager combo). The class finished mid-afternoon and we needed a nap! We had dinner later on at a nearby restaurant, Cuatro Vientos, but nothing could live up to the food we prepared in cooking class.
The next day we opted to take a (somewhat) organized tour with "The German Pirate". It is much more difficult to get to places near Valpo using public transit, so Michael acted as our chauffer and guide, helping us get off the beaten track a little bit. On the way out of the city we stopped at the very top of the hills - not a place you'd want to go on your own (remember, this
is the poorest area) but a nice view for sure. We visited 2 more wineries, this time in the Casablanca Valley, which is known for its whites. However, neither Viña Indomita nor Viña Mar managed to impress us all that much with their wines (the scenery was beautiful though). Our next stop was Isla Negra, another of Pablo Neruda's homes and the one where he lived his last days. This one is quite interesting and showed an even more bizarre side of his collections - it was however, extremely overrun with tourists, which made our next stop a nice reprieve - the tiny fishing village of Quintay. This reminded us a lot of the California coast, and of Cinque Terre in Italy - a beautiful rocky coastline. We enjoyed some extremely fresh seafood here (literally - fish were being carried into the restaurant direct from the Pacific) - well, Chris enjoyed it, Liz tried (I just can't like crab, even if the creamy/cheesy dish did smell amazing). Our day ended with a side trip to visit a friend of the pirate's - an 85 year old man who built his own house (including observatory!) on a gorgeous plot of oceanfront
land. He proudly showed us his massive electric train set that he is in the process of completing, and we also got a tour of his own personal private museum, a very different, eclectic collection that was an extremely interesting contrast to Neruda's. There is way too much detail to discuss here, but suffice it to say he is truly an amazing man.
Our last day in Valpo was a nice lazy one. We walked around the main square (Plaza Sotomayor), took the ascensor to Cerro Concepción (to a special store to buy some merquén), relaxed at our lovely B&B, toured the Naval and Maritime Museum (a nice detour from normal museums; also, here we saw the contraption used to rescue the Chilean miners in 2010 - very cool, see pic), and watched the port activities from the top of Cerro Artillería ("our" hill).
We are now back in Santiago, which means that the blog has finally caught up to us! We can say in real time that we leave for Venezuela tomorrow morning!
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Cool!
Finally I actually recognize places I have been, in your blog! So cool!