Well, as we mentioned in our last post, we took a trip just outside Santiago to see the Concha y Toro winery. Check out that post to learn about how we got there, and our… eh… travails doing so. But as I’d said there, we had a lovely time at the winery.

Concha y Toro is a huge winery. They’re the largest wine producer in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world. You can find their wines pretty much anywhere–I remember seeing them at the little wine store near our house back in Maryland. They also have vineyards in California, and sell the wines made from those grapes under the brand Fetzer.

Getting there (logistically) was easy, if you’re okay with a somewhat lengthy trip, about 1.5 hours each way. All days are Saturdays, so this was no problem for us. On the winery shuttle from the metro stop, we struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler (well, he struck one up with us when he sussed out that we were English speakers). He’s a retired man from Idaho, who’s in the midst of about three months of travel. He spent a large amount of it in Mexico, then came down to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. He talked up Uruguay and kept the streak alive: everyone we’ve talked to about Uruguay has given only glowing reviews. We can’t wait to go there!

Anyway, we got to the winery and signed up for an English language tour (they also have them in Spanish and Portuguese).

This makes me think, so I’ll mention it here, but we’ve enjoyed hearing where various locals think we’re from. We’ve had guesses of various spots in Europe, and most frequently Brazil. I’m not sure why Brazil… the broken Spanish? The fact that we’re darker from our tans now? At any rate, very few have guessed the states.

So we did the tour, and it was a lot of fun. It was expensive, overpriced really (it was about $50 USD for the two of us… oof), but we still enjoyed it a lot. We got a nice walk of the grounds, got to go pick and sample various varietals of grapes, and of course sampled 3 wines. It finishes up in their cellar, the Casillero del Diablo, with a hilarious and hokey, but fun, audio and visual presentation.

Cerro San Cristobal

The next day we woke up at, let’s say, Sturm-White casual time? We took our time with breakfast, then spent a while at the pool in our building. Finally, we actually got out of the house, with plans to walk over to Cerro San Cristobal, and make our way to the top to check out the views of the city.

One of the things we’ve gotten endless entertainment from in Chile is the dogs. I don’t know if they’re stray, or they’re just loose; maybe some of both. But they very casually go about their days in town. They run down the sidewalks through crowds; they wait for cars to pass to cross streets; they sleep on the sidewalks (or the streets) and do not pay one bit of attention to you passing. But our favorite so far, we saw on our walk to Cerro San Cristobal. As we were coming down the main avenue, we approached a bus stop, where a few people waited. And, a dog waited. As we watched, a bus pulled up, opened its doors, and the dog jumped aboard. We stood amazed as he so casually boarded the bus, tongue wagging as he went about his journey. Did he know what he was doing? Is he commuting for work or pleasure? Did he know the 15 was an express bus at that time of day? We had so many questions.

Anyway, god knows where that dog is now, but we kept on to the hill. We’d hoped to walk to the top of it, but apparently there was recently a fire of some sort? So the way we were going to go… we couldn’t go. We thought we could go the other way, and eventually make our way up to the top, but like 2 miles later and no closer to the top, it wasn’t happening. But it turns out there is a cable car that goes to the top of the hill, and we came around to the station for it. And thus our dream to walk to the top ended.

The cable car was… well it was terrifyingly high in parts. But it was a beautiful ride!

At the top of the hill is a monument and shrine to Mother Mary. For the non-Catholics, there are beautiful views of Santiago to take in.

Oh, All the Pisco

After another traditionally slow start, and even longer at the pool, we made our way out the next day to explore the neighborhood of Lastarria. It’s an adorable neighborhood, with plenty of nice restaurants and bars. We’d had a few recommendations of places to go here, so we had our sights set on Chipe Libre, a restaurant that focuses on pisco. We had a delicious ceviche, as well as a flight of piscos. And, of course, multiple pisco sours!

La Chascona

On our last full day in Santiago, we wanted to get over to see another of Pablo Neruda’s houses. We’d actually kind of intended to go there each of the past two days, but… traditionally slow starts, followed up by long times at the pool, led to us getting too close to closing time each day.

The house is called ‘La Chascona’, which was the nickname that Neruda had for his mistress that he built the house for. Isn’t that nice? To be fair, he did end up marrying her and spending the rest of his life with her, but still.

Erika had visited this house and museum before, but we wanted to go and compare it with the one we’d just seen in Valparaiso recently. This one probably has more focus on history than the one in Valparaiso, but that one is far more beautiful. It’s definitely worth the visit though, it’s a lovely house with an engaging audio guide that describes much of what you’re seeing.

What’s Next

We left our “home” in Santiago to head south to Santa Cruz, in the middle of the Colchagua Valley wine country! Thanks for coming by, check in soon to read about our time in Santa Cruz!