Coffee

Thursday, April 10 – Day 115

Of all the people that I’ve talked to over the last three months, very few have a good impression of Santiago. Most of them say its’ just another big city with a lot of noise and pollution. And that’s pretty true. It lacks the character of Buenos Aires’s neoclassical buildings, it doesn’t have all the nice street-corner cafés, and the people don’t tend to dress or carry themselves as well as the Portenos.

It’s seems to be a much more prosperous city, though. The cars are nicer, the buildings are much newer and nicer, and it’s not a cheap place. I had a great fish dinner and a couple glasses of wine the other night, but it cost me about US$50.00 – Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

My only real complaint is that they don’t seem to have much concern for their coffee drinks. Most places serve instant coffee. Or even worse, instant coffee with lots of sugar. Yuck! The one thing that kind of makes up for this is that they have these cool coffee bars downtown. They’re small and don’t have chairs, but there is a foot-wide bar that sort of surrounds the coffee equipment and service area, which is in the middle of the room and elevated about a foot above floor-level. They have hot chicks in mini-skirts selling the coffee, and this concept seems to work rather well.

Santiago - Cerro San Christobal

Santiago - Cerro San Christobal

Wednesday, April 9 – Day 114

Chile’s geography is very unique. The country’s length is about 3,000 miles, but it’s only an average of 115 miles wide. The distance from LA to New York is less than 2,500 miles. The estimated population of Chile is around 16 million, and about 5 million live here in Santiago. The city was founded in 1541, just a few years after Buenos Aires.

I’m in the center of the city in an area called Bellavista, and am just a few blocks from Cerro San Christobal. It’s a wonderful viewpoint that rises about 1,200 feet above the city. It has a big statue of the Virgin Mary, which is Santiago's equivalent of Christo Rentador in Rio. I found that visiting this spot was a much more powerful experience than Christo. Everyone has seen pictures of Christo and you expect it to be much larger and more impressive than it actually is. And once you get there, there are too many tourists, and not much else to do.

Atop San Christobal, the statue of Mary isn’t very big either – maybe 30 or 40 feet tall. But it has a small open-air theater for church services right at its base, and the view over the city is stunning, especially on days when the smog isn’t so bad and you can see how the foothills of the Andes surround the city. The coolest part, I think, is that off to one side there is a little prayer corner with racks of candles that people light when they are praying for a favor, and a bunch of thank you signs for the prayers that have been answered. One of the signs in these pictures says thanks for making our baby healthy again, and the other says thank you for giving me such a beautiful family. It’s attached to the fence with a little girl’s hair clip. There are hundreds of these.

Mendoza to Santiago, through the Andes

Wednesday, April 8 – Day 113

I took the bus to Santiago, which is an 8 to 10 hour ride. I chose to do this trip during the day because I wanted to see the Andes. The one way fare was about US$12.00.

It’s hard to get a sense of scale, but as you can imagine, everything here is huge. We drove by Cerro Aconcagua, which, at 7,000 meters (about 21,000 feet), is the highest peak outside of the Himalayas. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the bus, so I didn’t get a good picture of it.

We drove uphill for the first four hours, then downhill for the last four hours. Roughly half way through the trip, we made our way into Chile through a rather bleak and cold border crossing. I think that they just play with the tourists for entertainment as it took us about 2 hours to clear customs. The weirdest part was that the Chilean authorities videotaped everybody as we got back on the bus.

We went through a number of the yellow “tunnels” you see in one of the pictures. These protective structures were built many years ago, and only became tunnels after rock slides covered them over. If you look closely at some of the other pictures, you can get a sense of scale by noticing how small some of the roads and other vehicles are.

Vines of Mendoza

"The Vines" is a great wine bar in Mendoza where you can order by the glass or taste various flights of the local wines. They have guest speakers every Wednesday, and do other special tasting events throughout the week. I spent a lot of time here.

Second Wine Tour (pictures)

Second Wine Tour

Monday, April 7 – Day 112

Today is the second wine tour with Ampora. We went to Lujan de Cuyo, and toured three wineries, and had another fabulous lunch at a fourth. Bodega Sottano was started by an Italian immigrant in the 1890’s. It’s run by three brothers that are descendents of the founder, and the wife of one of the brothers hosted our tasting on the patio of the small rose-collered house.

Bodega Pulenta Estate is brand new. This family just sold their extensive holdings to one of the largest producers in Argentina, and besides getting a gazillion dollars; they carved out some of the best vines to keep for their own little project. We did this tasting in a beautiful room with glass walls, and it’s set right in the middle of the cellar.

Lunch was at Ruca Malen. We didn’t tour the facility, but tasted 6 different wines. One with each course of the meal.

We finished with Clos de Chacras, which was first built in 1921. The place is still family-run, and they have recently won several national and international awards.

All of these places were just gorgeous, and the wines were incredible. The best part is that none of them cost more that US$10.00 or $20.00. I bought a few bottles to drink along the way, but I’m not geared up to take anything back to the States. I’ve still got over a month of travelling to do, and it’s too expensive to ship.