South America - March 4th and 5th - Santiago

The entire time I was in South America I kept a notepad close at hand and would write an experience in one or two words so that I could later bring all my readers (the 6 of you) an accurate summary of the highlights of my trip.

The flight from DFW to Santiago was a pretty simple nine hour overnight flight. Well, as simple as any flight is. You get on the airplane, they close the doors, you sit around for 45 minutes, you take-off, land in a foreign country, and go on your way. I had two forms of entertainment to help me cope. The first was this really crappy Steve Carell movie (Dan in Real Life) and this really uncrappy John Grisham book (The Appeal). I chose the John Grisham book and sleep after watching about 15 minutes of the movie. John Grisham books are all pretty similar in that there is some social injustice in Mississippi and a lawyer of some type is going to fix it. But they are all really entertaining and easy to read. His books are my number one for reading when traveling.

So yea, we touch down in Santiago and the immigration officers are like, “Welcome to Chile!!!” And I was like, “THANKS.” And they say, I see you’re from Estados Unidos.” And I’m like, “Yes ma’am. These colors don’t run.” And they’re like, “That will be $131.” So apparently if you’re from America it is $131. If you’re from Canada or the UK it’s $50, and if you’re from anywhere else it’s free. That doesn’t seem very fair. I mean all I wanted to do was plunder their natural resources and deface their national parks.

The tour guide meets outside of customs (I pulled a quick one on the agriculture officials when they wanted to search my bag by just walking away, “No hablo espanol.”……HA, I had a bunch of fruit and some cow parts infected with hoof and mouth disease in my carry-on). We walk outside to the bus and already I’m a fan of Chile. Remember, the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite those in the Northern Hemisphere and March is the beginning of fall. The weather was just about perfect. We leave the airport and drive through the obligatory slums located near the airport into the city. The roads into the city are interesting in that the major ones are actually tunnels that go under the city. Everyone knows that in the movies the major catastrophes happen in the tunnels, so I’m sure how safe it is to have tunnels in the country with the most tremors in the world (I may have made this up, but they do have A LOT of tremors and earthquakes), but hey, they were a quick way to get around the city.

We check into our hotel with 90 minutes before we’re supposed to be ready for our trip to the winery. The question is, do we eat or do we sleep? Sleep it is. We’ll just set the alarm clock and…….wait a minute, where is the alarm clock? We were soon to find out that alarm clocks do not come standard in hotels across Chile and Argentina. Luckily we had the cell phone. Then we turned on the TV, oh good the first channel I turn to is GREY’S ANATOMY…..IN ENGLISH.
The Concha Y Toro winery is what you would expect a winery to be. A bunch of grapes, a bunch of barrels of fermenting grapes, and a bunch of bottles of finished fermenting grapes. All set to beautiful scenery and old, well kept building. As previously stated, I’m not big on the wine. But wine is good for the heart, and well you’ve gotta keep that heart strong so I might as well try it. Well, I tried. Disgusting probably isn’t the right word, but they definitely weren’t good. Or maybe they just weren’t for me. Concha Y Toro is Chile’s most popular wine though.

After the winery, it was late afternoon and almost dinner time. A group of people were walking across the city to this “artsy” part of town. After a day of travel I didn’t feel like doing anything, but Sara wanted to go and she is really cranky after a day of traveling (apparently I should have given her more wine). Anyway, most of the walk was through this park that follows the river (or more accurately, riverbed…..drought) through the city. Apparently, Chilean’s like to make-out in parks. Good for them. I think that (along with wine) makes you live longer. Our walk eventually turned into the Bataan Death March until out of nowhere we showed up in this really dirty party of town. As we all know, dirty parts of town equal the artsy (often referred to as bohemian (often referred to as hippie)) parts of towns. I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t really happy when we were told this was the place. Especially when I could feel the local “artists” staring holes into my blond head. I just told myself that it was because the ladies wanted me so bad.

In actuality, the trip was well worth it because we went to this AWESOME restaurant. It had ivy growing up stone walls inside and concrete benches and great food. I think I might have eaten intestines though. I’m not sure. It was gross, whatever it was. We took a “taxi” back to hotel. I used the quotation marks because I’m pretty sure it was just this guy’s Jetta. Since there were 12 of us, we took 3 taxis back to the hotel. Our driver had to get out of his vehicle to ask another taxi what the fare was. Also, when you have 3 taxis all going from the same point A to the same point B you get some racing. That was fun.

Then it was time for bed.