back for our final leg of south america! and what more could we ask for than awesome wines, art, and incredible landscapes in chile and argentina?! our last couple weeks have been amazing...taking us from central chile and argentina, all the way down to valdivia, chile, where the "lakes district" of chile and argentina end and the infamous patagonia begins. although we're not going to be venturing any further south (the weather is just getting wayyyy too unpredictable there now), we've seen some beautiful places and expect to see more as we spend a couple weeks in the lakes district of argentina. now, we're remembering the great times we've had in chile as we spend our remaining time in south america in argentina...
recent / total STEPS: 350,000 / over 4 million
recent / total MILES: 1,100 / nearly 38,000
recent / total BUSES/BOATS: 6 / 180
first night in santiago and our couchsurfing hosts take us out for some ridiculous drinks - the "terremoto:" bottom barrel wine, fernet, and pineapple ice cream. looks disgusting but tastes quite good. you could tell that this was the only drink people ordered in this bar because people didn't tell the bartender what they wanted but rather how many they wanted. terremotos for all!
wine time once again! while in santiago, we made it to concha y toro, now the second biggest winery in the world. you would recognize one of their brands in the states - casillero del diablo.
starting out our tour right with a nice glass of red...
the beautiful grounds of concha y toro. check out the sweet monkey puzzle trees in the middle.
vineyards and the andes
just one of concha y toro's huge cellars
the creeepy cellar of concha y toro. the story goes that back in the day the owner noticed that the people of the village had been sneaking in and stealing barrels. so, in order to stop them, he took advantage of their superstitious ways and spread rumors that the devil lived the the cellar, hence the name casillero del diablo (the devil's cellar). thus, no more stolen wine :)
we saw the devil in the cellar!
en route to lollapalooza (after learning that there is no alcohol sold at the festival), we decide to class it up a bit and buy wine "juice boxes" and drink them hiding behind a bus stop :)
lollapalooza chile!!!!!!!!! enjoyed seeing 311, sublime with rome, the flaming lips, and jane's addiction - great shows!
wayne coyne of the flaming lips arriving on stage (and into the audience) in a hamster ball - his usual entrance :)
confetti, balloons, blue sky, and good music make a good day :)
the curtain drops for the beginning of the jane's addiction show and there are two women hanging above the band on big cables... attached to their skin! whoa!
we got our live music fix of the year and it was wonderful....
santiago's awesome fish market
some of the fish we sampled over the next couple weeks...
on our walking tour of santiago with one of our awesome couchsurfer hosts, jordan. checking out the presidential palace where former president salvador allende allegedly committed suicide during the 1973 coup (or did he?!...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Salvador_Allende
santiaaago!
onto the super colorful, artsy city of valparaiso. what we would call a chilean version of a dirty san francisco (if that even makes any sense at all :) this super hilly city is covered in amazing graffiti and is one of the most interesting cities we've ever been in. who needs to pay for an art museum when you can just come to valpo?
because the city is so hilly the city has a series of "ascensors," aka elevators, to bring people up the hills. it's definitely quicker to walk, but this was way more fun!
definitely an old-school feeling to this city
super colorful...
and the graffiti begins... (bear in mind that this is just a sampling of all the graffiti we actually saw in one day)
graffiti #2
graffiti #3 - one of our favorites, down by the harbor with the boats in the background
graffiti #4 - at the top of one of the ascensors
graffiti #5 - down a stairway alley
graffiti #6
graffiti #7
graffiti #8 - joe's favorite
graffiti #9 - lauren's favorite
and finally, graffiti #10. ciao valpo!
after valpo, we crossed the border into mendoza, argentina to check out the wine scene there. and, surprise surprise, we drank more good wine and saw some beautiful vineyards :)
dad, you'll appreciate this old bottling technique :)
along with an old corker
and a few old wine presses!
but enough of all that old stuff, onto the beauty of the maipu/mendoza wine area. we grabbed a couple of bikes with some friends and headed out to explore ...
this sign says it all
you can just make out the snowy andes in the background of the vineyards
biking break!
it's prime harvest season which means that it smells like grapes and fermentation along the whole trail. our first stop was carinae winery, a great, small winery in maipu.
biking on the road, covered in beautiful shady trees
one of the tasty, young malbecs that we shared in with our biking pals
a great example of the very common error in translation from spanish to english. it's usually easier, but less entertaining, to get the normal spanish menu. here, gaseosa (soda) is translated to "gassy" - awesome. better still, agua mineral (mineral water) is translated to "it dilutes mineral" - your guess is as good as ours...
our red meat fix - a super huge bife chorizo in mendoza. good thing we split this meal...
cool sculpture and tile work in plaza espana in mendoza
ok, we've spent a few days in argentina... back to chile! we headed to pucon, adventure capital of chile. our second night in town, our hostel organized a wine tasting for the guests. (thank goodness - we hadn't had any wine in two whole days...) we all chipped in and bought 12 bottles to sample, then finished them off. the one we all agreed we liked the least turned out to be the most expensive! this demonstrates one or both of these things: 1) you can get quality wine without spending much money and 2) we are so used to drinking cheaper wines that we tend to dislike the more expensive ones :)
the town of pucon is located on a beautiful lake, with a huge, smoking, snow covered volcano nearby
rafting rio trancura, typically a class IV stretch of the river. due to the (very) heavy rainfall of the previous few days, it was mostly class V the day we did it...
here we are, hitting some bad-ass rapids - there are 8 of us on the raft including the guide, but you wouldn't know it from this picture
we mentioned that there is a huge volcano right outside of pucon... so why not climb it? we opted to take a chair lift up the first bit, skipping about an hour of steep climbing. but first, they gotta bang all the ice off the chairs
the climb up took us four grueling hours (usually taking people 5 hours...take that volcano!). we would constantly be fooled into thinking we're getting really close, but then we would look closely and see people the size of ants up ahead of us (look closely)... we still had a ways to go...
finally, with help from our crampons and pick-axes, we made it to the crater at the summit, continuously emitting sulphuric gases burning our throats - yummy...
the view from the summit was breathtaking
such a rugged adventurer
"no more climbing - yahoo!"
another from the summit
the way down was a bit easier (although way scarier) - we sledded part of the way on small plastics discs - soooo much fun. you would get to the end of one run and immediately hop onto the next
mountain-climber lauren checking out the ridiculous view of the lake from halfway down the volcano
although it looks just like a mound of snow here, trust us, it's MUCH MORE than that. so glad to be off that damn volcano here :)
the first day we could actually see the volcano from town was after we returned from our climb. had we known it appeared so daunting would we have done it? (probably;)
next, a quick stop in valdivia, home to a really cool fish market along the river and some of the best fish and chips we've ever had
biggest mushrooms ever... ever
quite a process at this market. first, fish gutted/de-boned/beheaded. second, fish heads thrown to these guys....
dozens of sea lions hang out in the river surrounded by an abundance of fish heads and other assorted guts for the taking. whenever they head away from the fish heads, the birds dive in for their chance to take in some leftovers...
this guy gobbled down a huge backbone in a matter of seconds
sea lions lounging around on a lazy sunday afternoon...
this old dock right next to the boardwalk has been completely taken over by the sea lions. they sit here after a 'hard' day of eating fish heads, sunning themselves, barking, growling, and playing with each other
awwwwww
our last chilean meal - chilean sea bass...yummmmers. although in chile it's called corvina, it's known in the US as chilean sea bass (and it's also about triple the price in the states). so, we indulged at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in valdivia for this amazing fish
onto beautiful bariloche. we just arrived so we're now scoping out what hikes to do, what chocolates to eat, and...
what beers to drink :) yummmmmers. we are in heaven here at antares brewery. the barleywine reminded us of home :)
we've now made our last border crossing in south america...back into argentina for our last few weeks of living the latin american lifestyle, indulging in amazing steaks, and finally... our last weeks of speaking spanish! although the language is beautiful, we are more than ready to be done racking our brains trying to communicate. so, for now, we'll be enjoying the lakes district towns of bariloche and el bolson, getting in some good hiking, chocolate, and beers ...
ciao!
tallyho, lauren and joe
“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.” -Helen Keller
