So here we are in the Colchagua Valley, Central Chile. On Friday we left Vina (along with our certificates for having completed our Espanol classes) but perhaps unsurprisingly, we’re not fluent in Espanol yet. We are much much better than we were, to the point we can get by and have a conversation with someone but a lot of the time we have to pick out key words/phrases and try to figure out from that.

After a quick 1 night stopover in Santiago, we took a bus to Santa Cruz, a sleepy town 3 and a half hours south, in the Central Valley. This is famous wine country area and we were eager to get going!

After wandering around aimlessly looking for another bus (seemingly being the only tourists in town,) we eventually found a bus station with a bus that could take us to the tiny village of Chomadahue, where we’re staying in a lovely casa, with a pool and bbq. The owners don’t speak any Ingles, but luckily their daughter was nearby and could translate-ish. After some google translating, we managed to ask them where we could rent bikes to visit the vineyards in the area. Un problemo- no bike hire. Taxi then? Ah, no. Oh dear. But then…..the owner’s son offered to take us wherever we needed to go for half the price of a taxi. Yippee! The only reason we’ve come here is to visit the vineyards and so if we hadn’t have been able to go, we would have been gutted.

Visiting a vineyard here is much more of an event than in NZ. We had to reserve a week in advance and it’s also much pricier, but for that you do get a lot for your money.The vineyards are MASSIVE so getting from one to another would probably have been a bit of a nightmare on bikes in the heat.

First we visited ‘Montes,’ where we were taken on a private hike an hour and a half up through the vineyards to the top of a mountain. Well, almost. We realised quickly why noone else was on the hike with us. It was so hot we couldn’t make it to the top- around 37 degrees. Amazing views though.

Halfway up…..

The view from Montes looking out over its vineyards

We then had a visit to the barrel room, which was incredible. Weirdly, they play gregorian chanting constantly in there as Montes believes the vibrations ‘change the wine on a molecular level.’ Hhhmm. Really? Well whatever the reason, the wine was excellent and came with a cheeseboard- that’s a way to win us over for sure.

1st year French oak barrels.

We also took a trip to Clos Apalta, which was visually STUNNING. It’s owned by the same people who own Gran Marnier. The attention to detail on the architecture was amazing- everything had been built for a specific reason and had a function. It felt like something from 007.

Each level leads to a different part of the process- fermenting room, 1st year barrels, 2nd year barrels and tasting room/cellar at the bottom. The central staircase is supposed to resemble the swirling of wine in your glass!

The tour was excellent and we got to see exactly how they make their premium wine. I think for both of us though, the highlight here was the tasting room, which also doubles up as the second year barrel room. Once we got to the tasting table, we could see steps leading down under it. It turns out that this leads to the owner’s PRIVATE CELLAR- how cool is that?! Over 6000 bottles down there- unsurprisingly we weren’t allowed down to see it properly.

 

The final vineyard we went to was MontGras- one of the more well known in Chile. Here, we had a private tour of the vineyard followed by a trip into see how the wine is mass produced as well as tasting the wine straight from the vat- very cool. The only reason we got this private tour is because we seem to be some of the only people who need a Ingles speaking guide- all of the other tours in Espanol had at least 10 people on them!

 

We then got to the really fun part- making our own wine. As the Colchagua Valley has a very hot climate, every vineyard specialises in red wine so we were given the Reserve Merlot, Cabanet Sauvignon and a chilean special the Carmenere. We had to blend them together to create our own wine, which we then bottled, corked and brought home! At each vineyard, we could have as much wine as we wanted- we had to restrain ourselves for fear of keeling over mid afternoon!

Which blend will he go for?

Tomorrow we (begrudgingly) leave vino central to head down to San Clemente, another tiny town. We’re going to spend a couple days hiking in the Reserva Nacional Altos del Lircay (a big national park) before hopefully heading down to the Lakes District and onto Pucon, apparently the adventure capital of Chile. From there we’ll head down towards Puetro Montt to catch our flight to Patagonia (woohoooooo!) VERY VERY excited about this.

We’re almost at the end of our week in Viña del Mar learning Spanish. We’re very tired, and somewhat surprisingly, we aren’t fluent in Spanish. We are certainly much better than we were at the start of the week though.

Classes are from 9 until 1 in the morning, although they were in the afternoon on the first day for some reason.  There are two lessons; 9-10:45 is the conversation lesson, and 11-12:45 is grammar.  We can’t really tell the difference, except that our first teacher rarely speaks any English. Otherwise we’re still conjugating verbs like in GCSE!

The classes are certainly interesting. There’s 4 of us in the class which is a nice number and there’s a good range of abilities.  We have a workbook which we sometimes go through, and there’s a lot of conversations where the teacher asks each of us a question in Spanish and we have to respond.  This is the part me and Laura really wanted from the course as we just need enough to survive around South America for our time here. One of the people in our class is here for 3 months just to learn Spanish which is very impressive!

All in all, I think we’d like to stay for another couple of weeks as we’re starting to get it now, but we haven’t got the time and need to get moving. We also wouldn’t want to stay in Viña for that long (let alone 3 months!) It’s a seaside town with very little going for it.  It has a few nice cafes and cake shops but really doesn’t feel like it has much soul.  We haven’t done much whilst we’re here; mostly study and nap (which has been nice.)

We did go out for one meal (we mostly cook to save money) which was great. I had steak which was delicious, and Laura ordered a Spanish style Tortilla which was approximately the size of her face and which we had to have most of it to take out.

We also walked along the beech today to the next town (6km away) which was lovely, although we did get sunburnt slightly.  We’ve not been getting any more tanned/burnt for the last few weeks so were caught by surprise by the suns strength.

After tomorrow we’re heading to the Central Valley and wine country, followed by some hiking. Sounds just like NZ all over again- Laura can’t wait!!

Hola from jet lag central!

My healthy Fiji glow has been replaced with exhaustion. Wine is helping.

On Friday we left the busyness of Santiago and took a bus 1.5 hrs towards the coast, to the vibrant UNESCO world heritage site of Valparaiso. I’m not sure what we were expecting with the scenery, and it was very nice (lots of mountains) but it doesn’t compare to travelling through NZ- at least not yet. We did pass through the vineyards of the Casablanca Valley wine region, which we’d absolutely love to visit, but we just don’t have time to do everything we’d like to. The bus was really nice- we were envisaging something similar to Laos/Vietnam, but the bus was super fancy, left on time and only cost 5000CLP each (around 5 gbp.)

We’re staying in a gorgeous street, next to one of the cerros (hills.) Everything around here is very mediterranean- lots of brightly coloured buildings, amazing artwork and cute little bars and cafes tucked away into tiny alleys. It’s a shame that some of the murals on the walls are now being graffitied over- this might be a sign of things to come as Valparaiso becomes even more popular than it already is.

We spent an afternoon wandering around, taking funiculars up the VERY steep hills and exploring the different areas. As the city is built on hills, funiculars are one of the main ways to get from the residential areas down into the town- I think there’s 15 in total. They’re very cheap, between 100 and 300 CLP per person and a really cool way to gain perspective over how sprawling the city is. Not the safest we’ve ever felt though. It felt like the ropes could snap any second.

We decided to take one of the trolley buses (Sam was very excited about these) and explore the new part of town.

There’s a huge contrast between the gorgeous rambling old calles (streets) of the old town and down here in the new part. It feels very run down, lots of poverty and there’s stray dogs everywhere! Not such a fan of this part. There’s also a few dodgy areas we’ve been told not to go to- there’s quite a lot of petty crime here, I guess because there’s a lot of tourists, both Chilean and foreign.

Today we took a boat tour around the bay- big mistake. It was like cattle being herded. Hated it. Was only 3000CLP each but would not advise anyone to do it. We did see some naval and container ships though, so at least someone was happy!.

So far on our trip we’ve had some awesome local food and Chilean wine- it’s SOOOOO much cheaper than NZ. We’re paying 2000CLP for a glass of excellent locally made wine and there’s some amazing set menu deals. Last night we ended up going to a fantastic restaurant and having 3 courses and 3 drinks each for under 30 gbp. This was unheard of for us in Fiji and NZ!

We’re off to Vina del Mar tomorrow, a short metro ride down the road, where we’ll be doing a language course for the next week. Then the journey south towards Patagonia begins with wine tasting and hiking in the central valley (if we can ever figure out how to get there.)

We’re in South America!

We’re over half way through our travels! How did that happen?

First things first; we’re massively jetlagged. There’s a 16 hour time difference with NZ, and we got to travel over the dateline which was very exciting; we landed in Santiago before our flight even took off.  Doctor Who has nothing on us.  Either way, the time difference has hit us hard. We tend to be ok falling asleep but wake up again at 1:30am, and can’t normally sleep till 5am or so.  It hasn’t been conductive to long days of exploration (we wake up about 11 normally.)  On the plus side, we’re in an AirBnB apartment which has been amazing. We’ve been able to cook (cheap and means we can stay in on an evening) as there’s a kitchen, and it’s a lovely little place which has been nice to chill so we’ve been here a fair amount.

Santiago itself is lovely.  It has a very European feel about it and is quite similar to Barcalona.  It’s in a grid system like NY which makes it easy to navigate around, and it does have an underground system although we’ve only had to use it once as pretty much everything is walking distance.  The weather is consistently in the high 20s and I don’t think we’ve seen a single cloud whilst we’ve been here.

Nice juxtaposition of new and old at the Plaza Del Armas, the main square

One of the main areas we’ve had issues is language. Almost no one speaks English here, which is a brand new concept on our travels.  We’ve managed to struggle through with a mixture of google translate, talking loudly and slowly, and applying the little Spanish we know, but we really need to get better.  Fortunately we’re taking a week to go on a language course next week.  Laura was surprisingly unimpressed that I managed a full conversation with a shopkeeper to get our phones topped up, including real Spanish phrases such as “Quieren Recargas” and managing to say my phone number in Spanish.

The architecture is particularly nice. There’s a wide mix of stuff; a lot of very old church architecture, some very British buildings, and a smattering of brand new skyscrapers.  There’s lots of cobble roads and pedestrian only areas.  There’s also a lot of graffiti, varying from lovely art to ugly tags.  Each road is interesting and different though.

Food has been good so far. We’ve been eating the South American special of Empadanas every day, which are effectively a variation on cornish pasties. They’re delicious, and they only cost 1 pound.  There’s 1000 Chilean Pesos to the pound which makes conversion nice and easy.  Wine is super cheap (3-4 quid a bottle) as is most supermarket food.  Nothing has seemed too pricey yet other than accommodation which bodes well.

Very Jetlagged but happily with Cheese and Pastry

We spent yesterday at the museum of memories, dedicated to remembering what happened during the regime of Augusto Pinochet.  Some terrible atrocities occurred, but it was a very interesting museum and even managed to keep Laura engaged for 4 hours.

Laura in the lovely Bella Vista area of Santiago, full of nice restaurants and coffee places

Today we went up Cerro San Cristobal (literally, San Cristobal Hill.) Most of Santiago is flat, except for a couple of big hills (outcrops of the near by Andes.) At the top of the hill (a 300m climb) is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which looks out over the city.  It was a hard slog as we had to go during the peak heat of the day (damn jetlag!) but there were incredible views all around the city. It’s absolutely massive!

It’s only half 6 but we’re already in Pyjamas ready to fall asleep, hopefully.  Tomorrow we must leave the Sanctuary of our flat to go to Valparaiso, about an hour and a half west of Santiago on the coast.  May the adventure continue!