More Valparaiso pics

Valparaiso

Tuesday, April 22 – Day 126

I took a bus to Valparaiso this afternoon. It’s a coastal city of about 200,000, and is home to the country’s largest port. It’s also the 2nd most popular tourist destination in the country.

This is a hard looking town. I know two people that have been mugged here. One girl actually got her camera stolen from her while she was taking a picture. The other, a guy, got knocked over as a kid tried to get his wallet while attacking him from behind. He ended up with a sprained ankle and couldn’t walk for 4 days. The problem here is that kids under 16 can’t be prosecuted. The police are only obligated to try and call their parents. The kids just make up a name and number, and when the police can’t get through, they just let them go.

My first impression was not very favorable. Every one of the buildings look like they should be condemned, and none of the people that live here look very happy. I really can’t imagine what the tourist draw is, but I did spend the first night a really cool hotel. It’s in a 100 year old building, but the inside is done in a very modern style, kind of like a W Hotel.

On the second day, I started to pay a little more attention to things. The whole city sits on big crescent-shaped hill with a very steep descent to the ocean. All of the building and houses are very old, but only about half of them really need to be condemned. The rest of them are really pretty cool. The colors and textures are amazing. And while some of the buildings are pretty simple, there’s a ton of neat architectural detail on most. By the end of the third day, I had probably taken over 200 pictures.

Maipu Valley - The Devil´s Cellar

Monday, April 21 – Day 125

The Maipu valley is right on the outskirts of Santiago, and a lot of really good wine is made here. I did a tour that covered 1) Vina Aquitana, an 18 year old winery that includes one of the principals of Chateau Margeaux as an owner, and 2) Concho y Toro, the largest winery in South America, and the 10th largest producer in the world.

Concho y Toro is about 150 years old, but it’s not the oldest winery in Chile. Don Melchor started the winery in 1853 by bringing in some grape vines from Bordeaux. He made some pretty good vino, but began to find that bottles started to go missing from his cellar. Suspecting that some of the locals were stealing from him, the legend has it that he began to tell everyone that the Devil himself lived there in the cellar, and after that, no more of the wine disappeared. Part of the tour takes you to the original cellar, and this is where the namesake barrels of “Don Melchor” cabernet are stored. It is regarded as perhaps the best wine in Chile, if not the world (#4 in Wine Spectator’s Top 100), and sells for US$120.00 here at the winery. And it does taste very good.

Clos Alpata Winery

Montes Winery

Friday, April 18 – Day 123

I visited two excellent wineries today. My taxi driver Alejandro picked me up at 11:30 (no need to rush into these things), and dropped me off at the front door of the Montes winery.

Montes is one of the larger wine producers in Chile and has been around for quite some time. This specific winery, however, is relatively new. They hired a feng shui expert to advise on the design, and play Gregorian chants to the wine barrels in the cellar. The wine was great, I got to meet one of the four owners, and there were only two other people on the tour. Pretty cool.

The B&B owner gave me a suggestion for lunch, but Alejandro said that it was a place for touristas. So I asked him, “Where do you have lunch, Alejandro?” He told me of a cafeteria that he likes, but said that it’s usually just full of locals. Perfect. I told him to take me there, and that I’d buy his lunch. He didn’t speak a word of English, but was patient enough with my Spanish that I was able to learn a lot about him and his city, and I thought was just as much fun as the wine tour.

My second winery was Clos Alpata, which is big, big money. It’s run by a lady that is a member of the Lapostolle family – the 2nd largest wine producer in the Chile. She married a guy that is part of the Mariner family from France. And that would be the Grand Mariner family. They spent an insane amount of money and dug a whole six stories down into a granite mountainside to build this winery. The design is stunning, but you see very little of it from the road.

The whole process is based upon using gravity to move the wine around – less mechanical pumping, less oxidation. You finish on the bottom floor were the barrels are kept at the perfect temperature and humidity by Mother Nature. There’s an altar-like table with a glass top in the middle of the room, and that’s where we did our tasting. It’s kind of dark, so you can’t see much. Then the guide turned on a light beneath us, and we could then see through the table, and down into the owner’s private cellar. One end of the table opens to reveal a staircase that leads down to 10,000 bottles of the world’s finest wines. Now that’s a nice touch.


Saturday, April 19 – Day 124

The History Museum in Santa Cruz is owned by a local guy that is reported to be a former arms dealer. He has the most stunning collection of pre-Columbian artifacts in Chile, and just about everything else he could find. Dinosaur bones and mastodon teeth, war artifacts, typewriters cameras and printing presses, 400 year old religious decrees from the Vatican and King of Spain, horse-drawn carriages, and steam engines. It’s a really odd collection of stuff, but very impressive.

Santa Cruz Lodging

Thursday, April 17 – Day 122

A lot of great wines are made in the Maipu valley, which is just on the outskirts of Santiago. Santa Cruz, however, about 140 km south, is regarded as the “Napa Valley” of Chile. The bus ride takes about two hours, and costs $2,000 pesos (US$5.00). Both Mendoza and Santa Cruz are said to be like Napa and Sonoma used to be in the 1970’s – less crowded, less commercial, and less expensive.

There is only one hotel, which is a tourist magnet, so I’m stayed in a small B&B that is 2 km out of town and surrounded by a vineyard. This is by far, the nicest accommodation I’ve had. With help from the owner, I rented a taxi driver for my excursion tomorrow. At $US50.00 for the entire day, it’s cheaper than renting a car, and he knows where he’s going.

A Day of Culture

Friday, April 11 – Day 116

I went to “La Chascona” today with a couple of girls that I met in Bariloche. It’s the house of Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for literature. Though I didn’t know it, he is apparently regarded as one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. Most of his work is romantic – again, who knew? As a communist sympathizer, he was a rather controversial figure. This became a problem when President Gonzales Videla outlawed communism and issued a warrant for his arrest. He died of “cancer” in 1973, 12 days after Pinochet’s coup d’état. Pinochet denied a public funeral, but thousands disobeyed the curfew and filled the streets, marking the first public protest against the new military dictatorship.

Later in the evening, I went to see the national symphony. The concert hall is at Plaza Italia, and it’s only a block from where I’m staying. They are playing short piece from Tchaikovsky, a concerto for piano and orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens, and then Beethoven’s 4th symphony. The pianist for the middle piece was a Korean lady, and guess what, she studied at Indiana University! How small is this world? Anyway, the concert was great, and not a single person clapped at the wrong time.

Saturday, April 12 – Day 117

There’s a big soccer game today, Colo Colo vs. Universidad de Chile, which are the two largest teams in Chile. Like the general population, Chilean futbol teams are stratified along class lines, with U de Chile having a wealthy fan base and Colo Colo being the symbol of the Mapuche and the working class. This makes for an intense rivalry and symbolizes the massive problem of inequality in this country.

Regardless of who wins, the knuckle-headed fans of both teams have a tradition of gathering in Plaza Italia after the match to “show support for their team”. Plaza Italia is a block from where I’m staying, and the manager of the hostel said that I shouldn’t go out into that mess because as an obvious foreigner, there is a good chance that I’d get mugged just for sport.

Well, who could resist a chance like that? About a half hour after the match, I could hear the crowd start to gather. Since it still seemed early enough, I thought I’d go ahead and have a look. I needed to find some dinner anyway, so I didn’t plan to stick around long.

There were bunches of riot police in full regalia. Helmets, shields, batons, and lots of body armor. They looked like a pure military force. The motorcycle cops use dirt bikes so they can hop curbs and chase people up stairs and over rough terrain. I also noticed that a lot of the businesses along the square had closed early and shut their steel garage doors to cover their storefronts. Hmmm…..

One guy got a little confrontational with a policeman and was quickly surrounded. These cops don’t look like the kind of guys that are going to take a lot of shit from a drunken futbol hooligan, and he quickly changed his manner. I would have loved to taken some pictures, but I didn’t take my camera because I thought that would only invite the mugging that the hostel manager had suggested. Anyway, that was all that I needed to see, so I left the area in search of more friendly company.