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Our adventure continued, as we tried to claim the UPS package which contained the polarizing filter I had lost in Panama. The package was at the airport, being held by customs for me, but the documentation was downtown Santiago (go figure). After an interesting discussion with the UPS people (all in Spanish - which is why it was so interesting :), we were able to convince their main office to send the papers to the airport, so we didn't need to find their main office downtown (wow - what a brilliant idea - have the papers where the package is?). :). After wasting 45 minutes, we went to pick up our Dollar car. Go figure, it was the only major car company that didn't have a counter (odd at that, because the only car company on Orbitz and Expedia was Dollar, while Budget/Avis/Hertz all had rental counters there). We finally found a guy who was holding a sign with our name (it was 11 am by then, so he had been holding it there for an hour!). One more odd thing after another, he had no map of the area or Santiago (how do you expect someone renting a car to get around without a map!). Luckily, one of the other rental agencies had a map (but that was difficult, as most didn't!).
Chilean wineries want you to make a reservation in advance of your arrival (pretty difficult to do I think - who's following a schedule when their on vacation?). We had emailed the winery the day before for a 3 pm tour - and luckily arrived at 2:30 pm. Unfortunately, they had a restaurant there (one of the very few restaurants in the area) - so we were instantly regretting the McDonalds :). We purchased a bottle of Malbec (a variety which Viu Manent is known for), and had a glass each as we awaited our tour.
We moved on to their bottling section - it looked like a scene from Laverne and Shirley. We had seen wine bottling in the US in Napa, but I guess because labor is so cheap in Chile, they had a lot more hands-on workers then simply machines.
As we were paying for our tour, we asked one of the workers how to get to Santa Cruz (our hotel), and as we did, a couple from the Netherlands that we had been talking to asked us if we had a car (yes), and if they could catch a ride into town. So we hopped back in the car with this couple who were too young to rent a car (we had forgotten about this population and their car rental challenges :)). After getting lost for only a few minutes, we found ourselves at our hotel - dropped the couple off, and check-in to the Santa Cruz Plaza Hotel. This is the only real hotel there is for miles (strange once again - as you think the Chilean wineries would have guests). As it's the only hotel around, it's ridiculously priced. They have actually raised their prices 20% then their internet prices say (she said their internet rate was "antique" :) So we decided we were going to enjoy a taste of luxury for two days, and recover from our hike. What was weird about the hotel was it seems like a lot of "Hamptons-like" people were here - very nicely dressed and we received more then one stare for wearing our "hiking" clothes :). We headed to the pool at about 6pm. What's weird about Chile, is that their about the same Longitude as New York, but they're 2 hours ahead (1 because of Daylight savings time, and another because of ??????). And - it's summer - so the sun doesn't set until about 9 pm!! We relaxed at the pool and soaked up some sun over some well needed bottles of water :). We had some food at the hotel for dinner - and brought the laptop to work on the endless amounts of Inca trail pics (~500 in all). After dinner - we looked forward to a long long sleep in the next day and some more winery visits :). Day 28 - Wrapping up Peru < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 30 - Santa Cruz © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
Wow - we awoke today still with sore muscles - how long will we pay for the 3 day hike :). Since we had gotten to the hotel the night before at 3 am - we "slept in" until 9:30 am. We were running kind of late, since we wanted to pickup the car at 10 am - so we skipped breakfast and caught a cab. We actually shared a cab with a fellow from Paris. He told us he was just hiking Mt. Aconcagua - a mountain at 22,851 feet - and he was telling us how when he got there, 2 body bags were being taken off the mountain, as they had just had -30 degree weather which didn't result in good hiking conditions. Scary (scarier that he continued to climb the mountain after 2 body bags were taken off of it). 
Once we got in the car, it was even funnier. We had a faint idea where we were going (towards the Cholchagua Wine valley) - but the road signs had city names, instead of the route #'s. It sort of felt like the amazing race, but better - since we were so tired, we didn't really care how lost we got - since we weren't in a race, and had no time pressure. We ended up making only one U-turn, and were back on track. At 2 pm, we decided we couldn't go any longer without food, and when we passed a McDonald's sign, we gave in :). My first McDonald's on the trip :). It was more out of necessity to eat, then eating at McDonald's :). We continued on, and after our 2.5 drive ended up at the Viu Manent vineyard. 
Our vineyard tour started off in a horse carriage ride around the vineyard. It was exciting to see 80 year old very thick grape vines compared to the ~15-20 year old ones in Napa and Sonoma (Napa and Sonoma suffered pest infection and had to replant most of the vines (i believe :)). We then moved into the production area. We actually got to see the wine maker testing the unaged wines and the laboratory next door performing experiments - the first time we had seen any winery's lab in real use. Unfortunately, they didn't like photos taken of their "secret" lab, so none to show - but it was an interesting sight. 
We rounded out the tour with another horse carriage ride to the tasting section (always the favorite part :)). We sampled a few of their reserves and then paid for the tour. This was definetly the shocking part - it was $15 per person for the tour and sampling 3 wines (we had known the price in advance though - it was just weird to pay that much). Chile is definitely not, on average, a very rich country, but the wineries here haven't figured out the wine touring industry yet. All of the wineries overcharge for their tour - around $14-$18 (and all prefer a reservation in advance!). 