I arrived at the Santiago airport at 6:30 a.m., wiped out and 1/2 asleep. I got off the plane and found myself in line with other folks from the U.S and Canada. Upon entering Chile, U.S. Citizens must pay a reciprocity fee if you enter via the internati0nal airport. $131 - yowza - there´s always an entry or exit tax of some sort, but this was mucho dinero! My recommendation, if you can help it, is to come into Chile via the bus, then you don´t have to pay this huge fee. Good thing they take visa! I took a shuttle to the hostel that Natasha had recommended and they were full. Boo! They walked me over to Hostel Forestal and they had a room for me. Yay! I napped for a while then headed out to walk around and plan the next day. I took a walk, walked and then, did some walking (just call me Kane from Kung Fu). I really liked Santiago. It´s a real city, reminds me of home. I booked my tour for the next day and I called it an early night.
Wine...ahhh...reminds me of home!
The next day took a wine tasting tour. We were picked up at our hostel and headed to wine country. It was rather funny, our first stop was a cosmetics company...huh? We were given a tour of a company that produces products from grapeseeds and rosehip blossums. Uh...why are we here? Oh, so you can try and sell us your products - next.
Our first winery stop was Viña Aquitania, a small boutique winery where they still put labels on their bottles by hand. We were educated on wine production in Chile. Approximately, 80% of Chilean wine is exported. Chileans don´t really drink wine as they are more into drinking Pisco Sours. We toured the cellar and production facility. Chile is the only country that has the carmenere grape which produces a wine similar to merlot. It was originally brought to Chile from France. In the 1870s, France suffered a plague of phylloxerae which virtually eliminated the grape in Europe. The carmenere grape is now the bordeaux of Chile. The Aquintania vineyard is small and relatively new with great charm. The founders consist of one Chilean wine maker and 3 wine makers from France.
After our first winery visit, we headed to a traditional Chilean BBQ restaurant for dinner. There, we encountered some really big steaks and very large portions - good stuff!
Our second winery visit was to Concha y Toro which is so different from Viña Aquitania. Concha y Toro is, what I would call, the Gallo of Chile - huge and mass produces it's wine. C&T is Chile´s oldest and largest winery. We toured the cellars, beautiful landscaped grounds, and the Casillero del Diablo (wine cave of the devil - named so to keep superstitious workers out of the high end wine cave). We tried a 2006 Chard and Cab Sav - both were ok, not great. Overall, it was a great tour.
I met some fun peeps on the tour and it is such a small world. When I got on the tour bus, I recognized a couple and their baby from the immigration line from when I was at the international airport in Mexico. They are from Venezuela and are traveling S. America now too. Who knows, maybe I'll visit Venezuela someday and get a tour from them...wouldn't that be quite a story?
After the tour, it was out to dinner with 4 peeps from the hostel, a girl from Switzerland, from Austrailia, and from the UK and a guy from Holland - 5 of us - similar to the U.N. I so enjoyed chatting with all of them!
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