Hotel Plaza San Francisco somehow thought that our reservation was for Saturday night when we arrived on Friday. Since our voucher clearly stated the Friday night, we still got a room, but not until after a slight scare that I had messed up the days.
We had planned to do laundry that evening and had asked ahead about self-service laundromats near the hotel. The concierge gave us a location and we walked to it, only to find out that they didn't have self service (despite what their web page said). They pointed us to another place, which also didn't have self service, but here the folks were very very very kind, and did an express job for us. They took all the stress out from us. We are so very appreciative to them.
No issues getting to the train station, except we forgot to check out of the hotel. The train is quite nice. I also forgot that we would be traveling over lunch and didn't pick up anything. The train has a food service, but of course there is absolutely nothing that is gluten free. I am surviving on potato chips!
From the looks of it, pretty much the entire 38 seats of Preferente class is used up by skiers going to Nevados de Chillan. There is over three feet of snow in the forecast, but also the forecast calls for some high winds, so it is unlikely that the upper lifts will be open much. However, when they do, it could be great!
The bus ride to the resort was interesting. The bus had chains on, but at one point up the (very snowy) road to Nevados de Chillan, a car tried to get past us on the way down and apparently hit us. It was not a major accident, but we had to stop for a while as the car got past us. When we started up again, perhaps due the length of time that we had been in the same place, or maybe it was just a bad area of the road, the bus slid into the ditch. We had to change busses (a new one appeared amazingly fast). They dug our bus out and brought our bags only a few minutes later.
But, on a plus side - it is dumping here! Now we just have to hope that the upper mountain lifts get opened soon to enjoy some of this powder. More pics from the resort in the next post...
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Valle Nevado, El Colorado and La Parva
A slight hiccup on Friday morning when our driver showed up at the originally scheduled 9am time instead of our rescheduled noon pickup to go to Valle Nevado. We weren't ready, but the issue was quickly settled, and we enjoyed a relaxing morning in the spacious room of the Hotel El Bosque.
The drive up to Valle Nevado seemed even more hair raising than the drive up to Portillo. Valle Nevado may be closer, but the road was something else. Valle Nevado likes to brag about how they just redid their road, but this is only the last section - after the split to go to either El Colorado/La Parva or to Valle Nevado. The first 40 or so hairpin turns before this (and countless of other "almost-hairpin" turns that don't get numbered) are on a fairly narrow road. All of us felt a little bit of motion sickness. Its quite amazing that there aren't more accidents. Uphill traffic gets "right of way" and there are some curves where really only one vehicle can be on it at once, and I don't know how you can see the vehicles coming the other way!!!
After the split, the next 20 hairpin turns are much wider but still just as steep. We arrived to the Hotel Puerta Del Sol a little worse for the wear, but all in one piece. Our room on the fifth floor was ready, and the view outside the balcony was incredible - overlooking both the slopes and the pool
We had been spoiled in Portillo. The rooms in Puerta Del Sol were nice, and maybe slightly larger. However, we had had two separate rooms in Portillo (thusly two bathrooms), and the "double-double" was only one bathroom with a shower that would spray all over if you weren't very very very careful! The restaurants were also nice, but something about the Portillo dining room with the service there was good.
They have three restaurants and we tried them all:
Mirador: buffet style with a cook for meat, and a pasta bar (where they would make whatever option you wanted). This was a hit with the girls!!! It was such a nice buffet, that near the end, we noticed one family video taping themselves go through the buffet :-)
Don Giovanni (italian). This was good, after they settled the issue where they lost ours (and at least two other) reservations. They claimed they couldn't seat us, but found a table.
La Fourchette (french). The adults liked this. The kids, not so much.
Lunch (which wasn't included in the Valle Nevado package), was quite expensive. I mean, normally ski lunches are expensive, but this was a step up. A coke for $5 is a little much for instance.
Despite the fact that Valle Nevado had receiver about three feet of snow within the last week or so, they were now dry and needing snow badly. The winds at Valle Nevado can be quite spectacular - even to the point where T-bars and Poma lifts had to stop to wait for the winds to subside. It is not very much fun to be stuck on a Poma lift while hurricane force winds sweeping across perpendicular to you. Skiing off the groomed trails was not very good, but there were plenty of groomed options, and the snow there was pretty good.
A few random comments about Valle Nevado
We were blessed with mostly sunny days. When it fogged up one day, the place is pretty un-skiable.
We quickly learned that:
On the last day, we managed to demo some Burton boards. We should have planned better. They were open Thursday - Sunday, but I didn't figure out that the demo was free until too late the first weekend. The girls really enjoyed them, although Anna was not a fan of the board with "rocker" and preferred a flatter board. It was a nice bonus.
Since we were there on a seven day stay, we got a free massage (yay!), and a day pass to both La Parva and El Colorado.
La Parva:
We hit this on Monday, which in retrospect was probably the best day of all. The slopes were very uncrowded (a nice change from the Valle Nevado weekend crowds that we had just experienced), snow was good (even did some off-piste with Renee). There were also some good jumps set up on the sides of the trail and we did some photo sessions.
Lunch at La Parva (3100 restaurant) was really good.
As we found out later in the day, the ticket system at La Parva was the normal ticket that we are all used to, but we had to turn in our vouchers for one at the bottom lifts. Unfortunately (fortunately?), we never made it there. When we skied on to their main quad that didn't have a lift ticket sales because it wasn't all the way at the bottom, they would be fine with us just showing the voucher so we thought that this was the same as a day ticket. None of the upper mountain lifts checked a ticket. On our very last lift ride from mid-mountain, the employee explained that we had to go all the way down to the base to exchange for a "real" ticket. But he let us on in order to ride up to make this exchange. We still have the vouchers…
El Colorado:
An interesting mountain - unlike anything I've ever been on. The mountain looks like it was an old volcano (probably was), and from the top you have 360 degree views. But there is a side that is COMPLETELY snow-less. The runs tend to be indistinguishable from each other because you are skiing on a cone. Everything is the same steepness.
The passes are RFID, which we liked. No vouchers to turn in! As soon as you entered the El Colorado system, it debited the card for our day.
Except for the front side which have a few (slow) doubles and triples, everything is a T-bar. We rode what I think must be the longest and sustained-steepest T-bar I've ever seen on the back side. It gave quite the bruise to Sara...
A good snowboard park with some fun rails and boxes. We made the mistake of trying to enter it from the top (which was closed), and the ski patrol blew a whistle to make us stop. This was not the only time they used a whistle - at one point on a catwalk right above a T-bar, we made the "mistake" of stopping for a few minutes and we were "whistled" to move along…
We stopped for lunch at the "Mirador" restaurant that is mid-mountain in El Colorado (not to be mistaken with the Mirador restaurant in Valle Nevado's hotel). I ordered a kabob, and 30 minutes later (I kid you not), it was delivered to me!!!
Now back to Valle Nevado comments…
The sunsets around Valle Nevado are incredible. I was told that everything turns a shade of violet and I barely believed it, but it is true. Pictures probably don't do it justice.
We enjoyed the daily stretching class, at least except for the time that the instructor played a reggae version of the Dark Side of the Moon album (by a group named "Easy Stars All Stars" - I had to ask). There are songs that should not be covered reggae style, and this includes every single song on that album. The stretching instructor seemed to pick on our family a bit - for instance he believed that I was far more flexible than I really am! Anna also liked that she could use the room where they held yoga/stretching in for her dancing.
We made some good friends with other visitors there. Far more Americans than when we were at Portillo (July is mostly Chileans at Portillo, and Americans usually come in August).
Since I didn't do a very good job at imbedding pictures in this blog, I'll just summarize the pictures now…
View from our balcony:
On the slopes of Valle Nevado
A glacier on El Plomo mountain
In the "slowest lift in the world" lift line
After our short hike to La Parva (we chose the wrong way to get there). Amazing that they are still smiling!
Me on the jump in La Parva:
Anna choosing not to jump:
Renee on the jump in La Parva (the shot of my vacation - do I get advertising dollars from K2?)
Enjoying the sun at La Parva 3100 restaurant
Bar at 3100 restaurant
Family shot at 3100 restaurant
The sandwich guy called over for me to take his picture. I like how it turned out:
Paragliding at La Parva (not us of course)
Valle Nevado sunsets:
The helicopter at Valle Nevado:
A view of the switchbacks:
Family portrait on the slopes of El Colorado (taken by auto-timer on my camera)
A view (from El Colorado) of the back country runs at La Parva… "The Face" is to the left, the diagonal slash is the famous "La Chiminea" run, and then "McConkey" is the area just to the right of that.
A skier at the top of an El Colorado T-bar.
The drive up to Valle Nevado seemed even more hair raising than the drive up to Portillo. Valle Nevado may be closer, but the road was something else. Valle Nevado likes to brag about how they just redid their road, but this is only the last section - after the split to go to either El Colorado/La Parva or to Valle Nevado. The first 40 or so hairpin turns before this (and countless of other "almost-hairpin" turns that don't get numbered) are on a fairly narrow road. All of us felt a little bit of motion sickness. Its quite amazing that there aren't more accidents. Uphill traffic gets "right of way" and there are some curves where really only one vehicle can be on it at once, and I don't know how you can see the vehicles coming the other way!!!
After the split, the next 20 hairpin turns are much wider but still just as steep. We arrived to the Hotel Puerta Del Sol a little worse for the wear, but all in one piece. Our room on the fifth floor was ready, and the view outside the balcony was incredible - overlooking both the slopes and the pool
We had been spoiled in Portillo. The rooms in Puerta Del Sol were nice, and maybe slightly larger. However, we had had two separate rooms in Portillo (thusly two bathrooms), and the "double-double" was only one bathroom with a shower that would spray all over if you weren't very very very careful! The restaurants were also nice, but something about the Portillo dining room with the service there was good.
They have three restaurants and we tried them all:
Mirador: buffet style with a cook for meat, and a pasta bar (where they would make whatever option you wanted). This was a hit with the girls!!! It was such a nice buffet, that near the end, we noticed one family video taping themselves go through the buffet :-)
Don Giovanni (italian). This was good, after they settled the issue where they lost ours (and at least two other) reservations. They claimed they couldn't seat us, but found a table.
La Fourchette (french). The adults liked this. The kids, not so much.
Lunch (which wasn't included in the Valle Nevado package), was quite expensive. I mean, normally ski lunches are expensive, but this was a step up. A coke for $5 is a little much for instance.
Despite the fact that Valle Nevado had receiver about three feet of snow within the last week or so, they were now dry and needing snow badly. The winds at Valle Nevado can be quite spectacular - even to the point where T-bars and Poma lifts had to stop to wait for the winds to subside. It is not very much fun to be stuck on a Poma lift while hurricane force winds sweeping across perpendicular to you. Skiing off the groomed trails was not very good, but there were plenty of groomed options, and the snow there was pretty good.
A few random comments about Valle Nevado
- Weekend crowds… Wow! The place gets way more day visitors, of course, than Portillo - being closer to Santiago. Lots of beginners. Lots of people that have given up and are walking down. Some spectacular crashes.
- Slow lifts. While Portillo has no high speed lifts, and Valle Nevado has one (Andes Express), the other lifts at Valle Nevado are really slow. Mirador was long and deathly slow. They had a "new" double (bought used of course) on the backside which we dubbed the slowest lift in the world. Smuggs has a kids double that they run at half-speed ("Mogul Mouse lift") and we decided that this lift was slower than Mogul Mouse! The line up for this lift could reach 45 minutes at peak times because it was the most obvious route out of the "backside".
- Winds. Already mentioned…. This wasn't usually a problem. Just mostly at the end of the day.
We were blessed with mostly sunny days. When it fogged up one day, the place is pretty un-skiable.
We quickly learned that:
- The fastest way to get to mid-mountain was the gondola even though it was built with the intention mostly for day visitors to get from the parking lot
- The catwalk back from the backside is much better than the double, especially when there is any line at all. We measured 15 seconds between every chair and lots and lots of stoppages for people that fall off at the top (not a very good unloading).
On the last day, we managed to demo some Burton boards. We should have planned better. They were open Thursday - Sunday, but I didn't figure out that the demo was free until too late the first weekend. The girls really enjoyed them, although Anna was not a fan of the board with "rocker" and preferred a flatter board. It was a nice bonus.
Since we were there on a seven day stay, we got a free massage (yay!), and a day pass to both La Parva and El Colorado.
La Parva:
We hit this on Monday, which in retrospect was probably the best day of all. The slopes were very uncrowded (a nice change from the Valle Nevado weekend crowds that we had just experienced), snow was good (even did some off-piste with Renee). There were also some good jumps set up on the sides of the trail and we did some photo sessions.
Lunch at La Parva (3100 restaurant) was really good.
As we found out later in the day, the ticket system at La Parva was the normal ticket that we are all used to, but we had to turn in our vouchers for one at the bottom lifts. Unfortunately (fortunately?), we never made it there. When we skied on to their main quad that didn't have a lift ticket sales because it wasn't all the way at the bottom, they would be fine with us just showing the voucher so we thought that this was the same as a day ticket. None of the upper mountain lifts checked a ticket. On our very last lift ride from mid-mountain, the employee explained that we had to go all the way down to the base to exchange for a "real" ticket. But he let us on in order to ride up to make this exchange. We still have the vouchers…
El Colorado:
An interesting mountain - unlike anything I've ever been on. The mountain looks like it was an old volcano (probably was), and from the top you have 360 degree views. But there is a side that is COMPLETELY snow-less. The runs tend to be indistinguishable from each other because you are skiing on a cone. Everything is the same steepness.
The passes are RFID, which we liked. No vouchers to turn in! As soon as you entered the El Colorado system, it debited the card for our day.
Except for the front side which have a few (slow) doubles and triples, everything is a T-bar. We rode what I think must be the longest and sustained-steepest T-bar I've ever seen on the back side. It gave quite the bruise to Sara...
A good snowboard park with some fun rails and boxes. We made the mistake of trying to enter it from the top (which was closed), and the ski patrol blew a whistle to make us stop. This was not the only time they used a whistle - at one point on a catwalk right above a T-bar, we made the "mistake" of stopping for a few minutes and we were "whistled" to move along…
We stopped for lunch at the "Mirador" restaurant that is mid-mountain in El Colorado (not to be mistaken with the Mirador restaurant in Valle Nevado's hotel). I ordered a kabob, and 30 minutes later (I kid you not), it was delivered to me!!!
Now back to Valle Nevado comments…
The sunsets around Valle Nevado are incredible. I was told that everything turns a shade of violet and I barely believed it, but it is true. Pictures probably don't do it justice.
We enjoyed the daily stretching class, at least except for the time that the instructor played a reggae version of the Dark Side of the Moon album (by a group named "Easy Stars All Stars" - I had to ask). There are songs that should not be covered reggae style, and this includes every single song on that album. The stretching instructor seemed to pick on our family a bit - for instance he believed that I was far more flexible than I really am! Anna also liked that she could use the room where they held yoga/stretching in for her dancing.
We made some good friends with other visitors there. Far more Americans than when we were at Portillo (July is mostly Chileans at Portillo, and Americans usually come in August).
Since I didn't do a very good job at imbedding pictures in this blog, I'll just summarize the pictures now…
View from our balcony:
On the slopes of Valle Nevado
A glacier on El Plomo mountain
In the "slowest lift in the world" lift line
After our short hike to La Parva (we chose the wrong way to get there). Amazing that they are still smiling!
Me on the jump in La Parva:
Anna choosing not to jump:
Renee on the jump in La Parva (the shot of my vacation - do I get advertising dollars from K2?)
Enjoying the sun at La Parva 3100 restaurant
Bar at 3100 restaurant
Family shot at 3100 restaurant
The sandwich guy called over for me to take his picture. I like how it turned out:
Paragliding at La Parva (not us of course)
Valle Nevado sunsets:
The helicopter at Valle Nevado:
A view of the switchbacks:
Family portrait on the slopes of El Colorado (taken by auto-timer on my camera)
A view (from El Colorado) of the back country runs at La Parva… "The Face" is to the left, the diagonal slash is the famous "La Chiminea" run, and then "McConkey" is the area just to the right of that.
A skier at the top of an El Colorado T-bar.
Train difficulties!
The Hotel El Bosque concierge ("Freddy") was very helpful in dealing with the train mess. We needed to book the train to Chillan for our fourth week coming up, and I had realized before the trip that they were not selling tickets for the dates we needed. A friend of Sara's who used to live in Valpo had called the train and they told her that it was because they were changing schedules and the new schedule would be up by now. However, the promised date had passed, so the concierge stepped in and called several times to figure out what was going on. Finally, the August 3rd dates went on sale and he bought our tickets to Chillan for us, but they still wouldn't sell tickets for August 11th (the return). This all happened while we were in Valpo.
This seemed to be business as usual for now, so we weren't too concerned. We were told that the return tickets would become available "soon" and we would just buy them then. However, we knew we had to be "fast" to get to them, as the August 3rd date sold out very quickly in the Preferente class. There are only 38 seats available in the only class that allows checked luggage and assigned seats.
So, every day as we were in Valle Nevado, we would check the website and there still were no tickets for the return date. Even worse, when the front desk of Valle Nevado would call them, they would either not answer the phone or would be very vague on why there were no tickets available. At one point, they started citing "internal problems" and "restructuring" and then mentioned that they might not even be able to honor the tickets that we had already bought!!! The website only mentioned that they would post new schedules on August 1st (which went by without any difference).
At some point, we found out from Freddy, the El Bosque concierge, that there was a possibility of a strike and they would not know until the day before we would leave if they would run trains at all. We started to look for alternatives to get to Chillan. A six hour drive was not very conducive to hiring a driver. The bus was the only other alternative, but they would not let non-Chilean citizens buy tickets online (a "RUT number" was required) and no tickets on the phone!!! Amazing. We wanted to buy tickets as a backup, but after this mess up we just decided to wait until the 8/2 morning and find out if there really was going to be a strike. The meeting was set for 8pm on 8/1, and shortly after that, without any "news" posted on their website, they quietly began to allow you to buy tickets again. I took that as good news, and this was confirmed the next morning by calling them - no strike! Our 8/3 tickets would be honored.
At this point, we also realized that our return was somewhat complicated because the train that we wanted didn't offer any preferente class! We had wanted to leave Chillan about noon so that we wouldn't be running to the train station early in the morning, nor arriving in Santiago very very late at night. As a result, we went to the bus station and bought return tickets through them. We get to try the train down to Chillan and the bus back up to Santiago. I am writing this on the train down, which left promptly at 8:50am with no difficulties!!!
This seemed to be business as usual for now, so we weren't too concerned. We were told that the return tickets would become available "soon" and we would just buy them then. However, we knew we had to be "fast" to get to them, as the August 3rd date sold out very quickly in the Preferente class. There are only 38 seats available in the only class that allows checked luggage and assigned seats.
So, every day as we were in Valle Nevado, we would check the website and there still were no tickets for the return date. Even worse, when the front desk of Valle Nevado would call them, they would either not answer the phone or would be very vague on why there were no tickets available. At one point, they started citing "internal problems" and "restructuring" and then mentioned that they might not even be able to honor the tickets that we had already bought!!! The website only mentioned that they would post new schedules on August 1st (which went by without any difference).
At some point, we found out from Freddy, the El Bosque concierge, that there was a possibility of a strike and they would not know until the day before we would leave if they would run trains at all. We started to look for alternatives to get to Chillan. A six hour drive was not very conducive to hiring a driver. The bus was the only other alternative, but they would not let non-Chilean citizens buy tickets online (a "RUT number" was required) and no tickets on the phone!!! Amazing. We wanted to buy tickets as a backup, but after this mess up we just decided to wait until the 8/2 morning and find out if there really was going to be a strike. The meeting was set for 8pm on 8/1, and shortly after that, without any "news" posted on their website, they quietly began to allow you to buy tickets again. I took that as good news, and this was confirmed the next morning by calling them - no strike! Our 8/3 tickets would be honored.
At this point, we also realized that our return was somewhat complicated because the train that we wanted didn't offer any preferente class! We had wanted to leave Chillan about noon so that we wouldn't be running to the train station early in the morning, nor arriving in Santiago very very late at night. As a result, we went to the bus station and bought return tickets through them. We get to try the train down to Chillan and the bus back up to Santiago. I am writing this on the train down, which left promptly at 8:50am with no difficulties!!!
Drive back to Santiago
Pedro picked us up promptly at the scheduled time of 11am. Breakfast was significantly more crowded but also meant a few more options.
We got a great tour of the Vino de Mar city that is just north of Valpo. Quite a different feel to that city, and it changes on a dime as you cross the city line. He showed us a museum where they had an authentic Easter Island statue.
After heading inland and then back down to the coastal area, we stopped at the world's largest swimming pool and walked on the beach.
Apparently the area is quite the resort town for the Chileans, but the Pacific ocean isn't ideal to swim in there due to swift currents and sharp drop-offs, so they built a large swimming pool. It is so large, that you can see it in satellite photos and apparently you can rent sailboats! As this was winter and mid-week, the place was deserted. There were about eight large buildings filled with condos, so it appeared that there could be thousands of people there when it was filled.
We bypassed poet Pablo Neruda's Isla Negro home and decided that it was a bit too grey of a day to visit, so we continued on to the village of Pomaire, known for its pottery. As we walked the streets, we saw some pottery making (lots of piggy banks), bread baking, some relatively poor copyright infringements of Disney stuff, and Anna found a beautiful scarf for her souvenir.
We drove back to Santiago and checked back in to the hotel El Bosque where all of our ski luggage had been stored for the trip.
Chilean Cooking Lesson
We went to the restaurant where we met Gonzalo, who put us to work chopping vegetables and preparing several dishes. It was a lot of fun.
The restaurant was full of records, but not in great shape (lots of skips and scratches). We put on some Bob Marley (who appears to be quite popular in Chile) and the girls actually figured out how to use the old style telephone without having to be told.
As we enjoyed the fruits of our labor, Gonzalo skyped with his girlfriend and was showing her the restaurant. For some reason, this reminded me of John Cusack the movie "Say Anything"
We had a great coffee and dessert afterwards and Anna was very satisfied
After the cooking class, the girls went back to the hotel to relax and I went around taking more pictures around Valpo - definitely a photographer's dream area
I finally boarded an ascension and they were steeper than I thought.
For dinner, we took a short walk down some stairs and relatively steep streets and ended up at the bottom of Ascension Concepción and took that up to a restaurant at the top of this ascension where we enjoyed a nice bottle of Pinot Noir (which they usually serve chilled). After the short walk back to the hotel, we found that today the hotel was practically full. Quite a change from yesterday when we were the only ones in it. It appeared to be two separate groups, and one had the patio set up for a patio complete with a jazz band. The patio was directly over the hot tub/pool area (the hotel was set up into the hill, somewhat reminiscent of the Austin "Oasis" is set up against the cliffs of Lake Austin). Sara and I spent the evening in the hot tub as the band serenaded us overhead. A very romantic evening.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Casablanca and Valparaiso
On Tuesday, our driver Pedro picked us up at the hotel at 10am and we headed out to the coast. Originally our plan was to rent a car, as it had been difficult to find a tour that did exactly what we wanted to do. However, we had met Pedro since he drove us up to Portillo. His English and guiding was excellent and he offered to do a private tour just for us - take us up the one highway to Valparaiso stopping at some wineries, and then two days later pick us up and take us down the coast and back through Pomaire. The price was almost the same as what we would have spent on the rental, insurance and gas, so it was a no-brainer.
We were glad we did as everything turned out so much nicer to do the wine tastings without having to worry about driving!
A completely different climate exists as soon as you go through the tunnel to get you out of the Santiago valley. The smog disappears and you see sprawling farms. It was explained that most of these farms provide food for Santiago - the export farms are further north and south. The amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in Santiago is nice, although the diet is still very meat based.
First stop was Emiliana winery. We had sampled these wines in the US. They are organic and have a nice balanced wine. The samplings were very generous (thank goodness I wasn't driving)
We then went to Casa del Bosque and stopped to eat. A wonderful sunny patio with good food and a cool white wine to go with our lunch made us all a little sleepy.
While Sara took a short nap and the girls played in the yard, I had a private sampling from someone who used to live in Burlington VT! After the four wines on the sampling, he decided to let me sample a Syrah that was from Casablanca and was absolutely wonderful. I ended up buying two.
We then headed into Valparaiso - a coastal city. I had read about this place and knew we were going to enjoy it. The hotel turned out to be even more than expected. We could not place the hotel in Google Maps and was really unclear what it was going to be like, other than the excellent reviews. But the place was lovely. Casa Higueras is a small hotel (20 rooms) and, as it turned out, we were the only guests on the first night!
Our balcony overlooked the harbor, and our two interconnecting rooms were spacious with beautiful bathrooms.
We went out and explored the city, the architecture, and the graffiti art.
Being on the Pacific coast, the precautions for Tsunamis were very present
One thing I would not want to be in Valparaiso is an electrician
We got ourselves lost several times on the tour. Plenty of streets that weren't on the map and plenty of streets that were on the map but weren't marked. The only ascensore that we found was closed. We were so close to finding another ascensore but the street wasn't marked so we didn't follow it far enough. So we got our exercise going up and down stairs in what was an indirect path to an area that we never did find (at least that day). The closed ascensore made us give up finding the area with the "nice" street art, and we had seen plenty already anyway so we headed back.
Dinner was at Cafe del Pintor, which is a very small (cash-only) place where they basically have two things on the menu for you to choose from. Excellent food.
Tomorrow we do our Chilean cooking class, so it will be a long day. Valparaiso has been fun so far. But we had a chance to relax in a hot tub and sauna while watching the sun go over the hills creating an indescribable color.
We were glad we did as everything turned out so much nicer to do the wine tastings without having to worry about driving!
A completely different climate exists as soon as you go through the tunnel to get you out of the Santiago valley. The smog disappears and you see sprawling farms. It was explained that most of these farms provide food for Santiago - the export farms are further north and south. The amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in Santiago is nice, although the diet is still very meat based.
First stop was Emiliana winery. We had sampled these wines in the US. They are organic and have a nice balanced wine. The samplings were very generous (thank goodness I wasn't driving)
We then went to Casa del Bosque and stopped to eat. A wonderful sunny patio with good food and a cool white wine to go with our lunch made us all a little sleepy.
While Sara took a short nap and the girls played in the yard, I had a private sampling from someone who used to live in Burlington VT! After the four wines on the sampling, he decided to let me sample a Syrah that was from Casablanca and was absolutely wonderful. I ended up buying two.
We then headed into Valparaiso - a coastal city. I had read about this place and knew we were going to enjoy it. The hotel turned out to be even more than expected. We could not place the hotel in Google Maps and was really unclear what it was going to be like, other than the excellent reviews. But the place was lovely. Casa Higueras is a small hotel (20 rooms) and, as it turned out, we were the only guests on the first night!
Our balcony overlooked the harbor, and our two interconnecting rooms were spacious with beautiful bathrooms.
We went out and explored the city, the architecture, and the graffiti art.
Being on the Pacific coast, the precautions for Tsunamis were very present
One thing I would not want to be in Valparaiso is an electrician
We got ourselves lost several times on the tour. Plenty of streets that weren't on the map and plenty of streets that were on the map but weren't marked. The only ascensore that we found was closed. We were so close to finding another ascensore but the street wasn't marked so we didn't follow it far enough. So we got our exercise going up and down stairs in what was an indirect path to an area that we never did find (at least that day). The closed ascensore made us give up finding the area with the "nice" street art, and we had seen plenty already anyway so we headed back.
Dinner was at Cafe del Pintor, which is a very small (cash-only) place where they basically have two things on the menu for you to choose from. Excellent food.
Tomorrow we do our Chilean cooking class, so it will be a long day. Valparaiso has been fun so far. But we had a chance to relax in a hot tub and sauna while watching the sun go over the hills creating an indescribable color.
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