Santiago: Day 2 (Wineries and the Ocean)

For our second day in Chile, we actually decided to take a trip out to wine country. Wanting to see some of the more boutique wineries instead of the more tourist wineries, we decided to rent a car and drive out to the Casablanca Valley appellation to the West of Santiago (known for their Chardonnay and Sav. Blanc.).

When it rains it pours

As we wake up in the morning, we see that it’s raining a little bit out, but decide to not let that spoil a day of wineries. Walking out through the rain,  we get a little bit wet walking to grab some breakfast and notice that it’s starting to pick up as we’re heading to the metro station. At this point, we know we only have six blocks to walk on the other side of the metro, so we decide to go ahead with the metro and walk the last six blocks.  Somewhere inside the metro ride, the rain went from “moderate sprinkle” to “start building an ark” territory, so that when we get to the other side, there are small lakes of water across every road between the metro and the car rental agency. Seeing this, and still a little damp from the first part of the journey, we decide to hail a cab for the last six blocks. Even just standing to hail the cab, I can feel the water soaking into my shoes and soaks, approaching the point of full saturation. BUT, we get a cab and he sets off while I pull up the address. It takes a block or two to pull up the address on my phone, and when I show it to him, he realizes it’s on the other side of the road and in the other direction, and then HE REFUSES TO GO THERE. WTF?!?! You just drove us two blocks in the wrong direction and now you won’t even go there? That’s messed up. So now we’re two MORE from our destination in rains that belong in the bible, and we’re on a side of the road where cabs won’t actually go to our destination. Great. Walking the two blocks back to the metro station, I reach my full on “fuck it” point (or saturation point, so to speak) of wetness, where I realize, that I’m so saturated that the water trapped between my clothes and me is actually protecting me from the coldness of the new water. Kinda like a wet suit? Giving up on the taxi idea, we decide to just walk it.

So at this point, I’m as bold as a motherfucker: lake-like puddles no longer matter; torrential rain no longer matters; I start to laugh at people with umbrellas; if I can cross a street without getting hit by a car I’m going to do it; there may have been some smiling and maniacal laughter. With this attitude, we eventually made it to the car rental agency and filled out all of the paperwork, being careful not to drip on anything.

Wine Country

After a pit stop at the apartment to do some drying, we were on our way to wineries for some lovely wine and food. After the first winery (Quintay, great wines!) everybody’s spirits were lifted and we made the most of the day, fitting in three wineries in the late morning and afternoon. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

A Fortunate Mistake

After our last winery (Bodega RE, HIGHLY recommended: doing really interesting blends), I take my turn at the wheel with Sabrina on navigation. I’m getting the grasp of driving manual for the first time since last August and second time in probably 10 years. The way back should literally be a straight shot on 68 back to Santiago, all we have to do is make the right turn out of the winery. So, of course, we get about 20 minutes out and I realize that I haven’t seen a sign for Santiago. Rut Roah, Scooby. Checking the map, we’ve now gone 20 minutes further West and are about 20 minutes outside of the oceanfront town of Viña del Mar; so we make an executive decision to just drive to the coast, walk around and have dinner, and then head back! Yay for adventures!

Reaching the coast, we park, cross the little beachfront road, and in a fit of craziness, I make a made dash for the ocean. Color me weird, but I have a thing about liking to touch the ocean in different places, and my shoes/socks are still wet from the morning so there’s not much to lose. So after a brief stint at the beach (at 7 at night, completely dark), we crash another Italian restaurant for some coffee, to steal their wifi, and figure out some good places to eat. Joey, our connoisseur of everything food and drink, comes up with an amazing and cheap place just 15minutes up the coast from Viña del Mar in Concon and we decide to make the trek. Why not? We’re already off track, might as well give it another 15 minutes

With the ocean at our left and some small towns to our right, we trek up the coastline and find a nice little seafood restaurant on the water (the one Joey had picked out was closed, but there was one right next door that had a fire and looked decent). We order more than our fill of great seafood and are the only people there with the exception of one large table, which seems to be a birthday part of some sort for a local family. So with the sounds of children’s laughter, a crackling fire, and the ocean, we enjoyed a lovely and fresh seafood smorgasbord.

Sleep is for the weak

Now that we’re a significant distance out from Santiago, we leave Concon, and get back on the road to Santiago at 10:30 or so. We get going on the right track (after one or two errant turns), and make it back to Santiago at about 12:20am. Knowing that I haven’t packed and that I have a 6am flight out to Venezuela, I decide to just push through, catch a 4am cab to the airport, and sleep on the plane. So, I say good night to Sabrina and Joey (who were staying in Santiago), and get to work packing and catching up on emails and future hotel bookings to keep me up until my next flight.

On some level, I’m a little worried about just how long it’s going to take me to catch a cab at 4am. So I finish up packing at 3:30 and head down with my trusty backpack. In my 3hours of planning since getting back from wine country and the ocean, I had managed to find a site where you can “reserve” a taxi to the airport, but somewhere in the translation of the page and the dodginess of the site, I’m still not sure my reservation went through. I walk out, stand on the corner and wait. I swear, not 20 seconds after I started standing on that corner, a normal cab pulls up AND LETS SOMEBODY OUT GOING INTO MY ADDRESS. What are the odds that somebody would be getting dropped off at my address at 3:30 in the morning, freeing up a taxi for me to take to the airport?!?! I mean really, I’d like to figure that one out. Not only that, but the cabbie quotes me 600 pesos less than I was going to pay for booked cab; thank you trip karma (although my shoes are still damp).

Half asleep, being kept awake by the threat of imminent death from the way the cabbie is driving, I make it to the airport in plenty of time to sail through immigration and security. Needless to say, I passed out before we were wheels up, and woke up in Lima. Who says that teleportation doesn’t exist?