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.