Santiago de Chile

“Getting there is half the fun” is perhaps the most asinine adage ever expressed.  We left Antigonish at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, drove to Halifax, flew to Toronto, had a 7- hour layover before flying overnight to Bogota.  After a three-hour layover we flew to Santiago, arriving mid-afternoon on Tuesday.  

 

The temperature in Santiago was 32 degrees. We were met by a Regent representative who drove us to our hotel.  Quick showers and a change of clothes prepared us for a pleasant evening at the hotel.  After a cocktail

reception we had a nice meal with other guests who will be on our cruise.  We sat with a couple from New York City.  He is a recently retired homicide detective.  I made sure his glass was constantly refilled and he regaled us with tales of various “murder-for-hire" thugs who he had managed to eventually arrest. 

We began Wednesday with a tour of the old part of Santiago prior to our driving into the countryside to visit the Santa Rita Winery.  We had visited Santa Rita in 2008 and were just as impressed this time. 

After a brief tour of the museum (new since 2008) we had a very leisurely lunch in the winery restaurant.  We were served Chardonnay with our tuna tartare, and then switched to a magnificent Carmenere Reserva to accompany our beef short ribs.  The waiter kept re-filling my glass and Betty’s claims I had 5 glasses of this great tannic wine.  I don’t remember the number being that big. 

Lunch was to be followed by a tour of the winery.  We managed to skip that tour and sat in the beautiful garden until it was time for the official wine-tasting.  No wonder we slept on the bus back to the city. 

I wouldn’t have believed I could eat in a Chilean restaurant without a bottle of wine.  However, in the evening we ate at a pleasant sidewalk café and neither of us could face even a small glass. 

We spent all day Thursday in the Andes.  Spectacular but so different from the Rockies; little vegetation, just rocks and more rocks.  The drive up to Portillo and back down was interesting if not plain scary with 27 switchbacks and no guard rails. 

In Portillo the temperature was in the mid-teens; wheras when we got off the bus back in Santiago we faced the low thirties.