Let me start out by saying that the four and a half days I spent in Chile were some of the most amazing I've spent in my time here in South America. Before actually going to Chile I had no idea what I was missing out on, and let me tell you, I was missing out on a lot. Chile will forever hold a special place in my heart. I hope I can go back someday soon!
My journey started out pretty great. Turns out, flying within South America is a whole lot easier than flying within the United States. Bottle of water? No problem! Hair products of any size? No problem! I kept waiting for someone to stop me and make me throw away all of my offending items, but it never happened.
And then, on the plane, on the less than 2 hour flight, I was pleasantly surprised by a very yummy (and healthy) gluten free dinner:
I arrived in Chile, and only had a slight snafu in the customs line, something about me getting the wrong line (opps) and needing to pay a hefty fee to enter the country ($140!!!) But after that was said and done, my dad's best friend Oscar was waiting for me right outside and after a few weeks of emails, I finally got to meet him. We had a pretty quiet evening, I got to meet his wife, Maria Louisa and we went to bed early because they had a lot on the agenda for the next four days.
First thing on the agenda? Shopping! Oscar took me to a true Chilean farmers market, and let me tell you, it was AMAZING. Honestly. The picture below does it no justice at all (you will probably find me saying this a lot throughout the course of describing this trip.) The produce was so beautiful, fresh and cheap. Everything cost between $1-2! And it tasted amazing as it looked.
After our shopping excursion, we met up with Maria Louisa, walked around a bit, and eventually headed to a little cafe for cappuccino. I'm not much of a coffee girl in the states, but down here it's different and I've really come to like it quite a bit:
That night we had a barbecue. It was fantastic. The food was amazing, the wine was great and the company was great. A lovely evening! A few of us around the dinner table:
The next day we went to a vineyard called Santa Rita. I was so amazed that one minute you could be driving along in Santiago, and the next you could be in what feels like the middle of nowhere. This vineyard was so close to Santiago, and yet so secluded. Oscar snapped a photo of me trying to explain just how beautiful I thought it was (yes, I really do talk with my hands that much):
There were butterflies everywhere! Flying all around the field of lavender you can see in the background of the above picture. They were so lovely!
We had to wait a little bit for our lunch reservations, so we busied ourselves by taking photos. Below is Oscar and I:
And then Maria Louisa and I tried to find some grapes that the harvesters had missed:
I was pretty excited to find a little bunch!
Then we found a walnut tree, and ate as many walnuts as we could crack open (wow do they taste amazing straight from the tree!) and put the rest in my purse for later.
My gracious hosts, love them:
We had a fantastic lunch, which I completely failed to take any photos of, and then took some more photos. The main building on the vineyard actually served as a hiding place for soldiers many many years ago. They had a reenactment in the basement:
The main building was really beautiful, and long:
On the edge of each row of grapes there was a rose bush. Apparently, they try to use as little pesticides as possible, so they put rose bushes at the end of each row to serve as a "warning." The rose bushes succumb to pests much earlier than the grapes, so if the rose bushes start to look bad, then they know they need to do something, I thought that was really neat! In the background are the Andes Mountains:
At the very end we found some grapes that hadn't been harvested yet. I was very very excited:
And then the below was my view the entire way home. The snow capped Andes. It was so beautiful I felt like they couldn't possibly be real:
And we ended the second day by having tea at a polo club. It was beautiful as well. You get the idea, everything in Chile is beautiful. Literally everything.
Next up? The beach and the mountains...
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