The last stop on our journey was in Chile's capital of Santiago. Everything went so smoothly on the rest of the trip that we ended up having an extra couple of days there, which turned out to be a very good thing.
This city of five million, by far Chile's largest city, is set in a dramatic basin below the Andes to the east and a coastal range to the west. Well, it would be dramatic if you could see the mountains, but there is an awful smog problem and visibility usually isn't much over a couple of miles.
That's about the only bad thing we can say about Santiago, however. The city turned out to be wonderful: beautiful, leafy neighborhoods that felt like Greenwich Village; historic center of town with grand old buildings and museums; amazing restaurants and sidewalk cafes everywhere we went; live music, dance and theater in the outdoor plazas, wineries nearby and fine wine and drink flowing. Basically, it was summer in a very vibrant capital city. We felt like all of a sudden we had been transported to Spain for almost a week.
And it was hot! Blessedly so, given the chills of Patagonia and the damp winter awaiting us back home. We slept with the windows open and bemoaned the lack of ice in our cold drinks, a problem that seems to inflict every city outside of the U.S.
In the lobby of our colorful, funky, art-bedecked hostel in Santiago.
We stayed in the Bella Vista neighborhood, which was full of wonderful sidewalk cafes and bordered on a large park (the hill in the background), from which a large white statue of the virgin Mary always signaled which direction our neighborhood was in.
This little plaza was two blocks from our place. There was live music / theater / dance in the plaza every night.
There are several beautiful parks in Santiago, but this one, Cerro Santa Lucia, was our favorite. Set in the middle of downtown, it is a complete world unto itself. Crazy pathways, stairs, plazas, statutes and flowering vegetation spill into more pathways in a never ending spiral of exploration, like a living Escher painting.
Rosemary stands on a bridge of the fanciful architecture of the park, with modern downtown Santiago as a backdrop.
This is taken from the big park right behind out hostel. The green hump just off Rosemary's left shoulder is Cerro Santa Lucia, the park from the previous pictures. Note the smog!
On our last day, before our 11:30pm red-eye, we went on a winery tour! Perfect. Chile is well known for its wines and we learned a little of the lore of the country's vineyards. This one is Concha y Toro, the largest winery in Latin America. The tour was at the original family estate, where we got to taste a couple of vintages, tour the orchards, and even go underground into the wine cellar. There's an old legend about the cellars being haunted by the devil -- a rumor started by the winery's founder to supposedly keep the locals from stealing his bottles. Nothing scary happened to us, except perhaps for me two-fisting the booze.
Rosemary checks out the cabernet grapes. There's only one harvest a year, usually around April (their fall). Concha y Toro sells wines ranging from cheap boxed wines, to special reserve wine that goes for $100 a bottle. Sadly, the USA's fixation on terrorist liquids kept us from bringing home a stash to share.
We took a day trip from Santiago to the port city of Valporaiso, about an hour to the west. Valpo, as it's known, was the most important city in Chile for quite sometime as it served as critical port stop servicing ships going up the coast during the California gold rush. It was declared a UN World Heritage Site a few years back, due to its history and it's fascinating human and physical geography. Much of the city is built on very steep hillsides, with brightly painted houses and winding streets. Old cable cars, or funiculars, ply the hillsides to deposit people in various neighborhoods.
I consult our bible in a futile attempt to make sense of the crazy streets in Valparaiso.
Good company.
Back in Marblemount at last! Almost exactly 24 hrs of travel later, suffering through the airline losing our bags and a rude reacquaintance with this thing called "winter," we are met by our Baby Kitten. She shows her excitement at our return by turning her nose up at the stuffed Patagonian sheep we bought her for her amusement.
