Back in Santiago - again! Wine tasting on bikes.

I had a rough welcome back to Santiago with total chaos at the airport in the TransVIP airport shuttle queue. Although I was the third off the plane and my bag came out straight away, I didn’t get home until almost midnight. I said goodbye to my friends, the German girls at the airport. It was very sad!

When I was back at Susie’s flat, I talked to Josh until 2am. So I slept in late, until 10am. The time difference didn’t help between the island and city. Susie and Joao were moving apartments within the building, so they had gone out on a shopping trip to buy some house decorations. They got back around midday and we all went for lunch at Tea Connection, a cafe that served breakfast and brunch all day. Most people were on South American time, so it really was breakfast for them! I had waffles with dulce de leche and fruit.

Then Susie and Joao went to more homeware stores at the mall, I chose to relax at home instead. We went out for dinner at an American burger place called Streat Burger. It looked and smelled amazing, but as we walked up to the counter to order, the power went out in the whole block. It stayed out for almost two hours so we couldn’t eat there. Luckily, a nice Italian restaurant had a generator, so we ate calzones and red wine by candlelight there.

The next morning I had booked a biking wine tour inside the city. Santiago is in the Maipu Valley, a wine region. It was very strange getting the uber there, following a high concrete wall with graffiti and glass sticking out the top, only to realise that was the vineyard’s perimeter. My uber driver was this lovely young Uruguayan from Colonia. The first I’ve met that speaks English! Inside, it was a beautiful old vineyard with brick buildings and vines from as old as the 1930s. It was the second oldest vineyard in Chile, but unfortunately as the land is worth more as apartment blocks now they are selling off the land and ripping out the vines. We saw some very old ones go past on a truck.

It was winter so the vines were bare, but you could see snow on the Andes in the distance which was nice. It was me, a French family of 4 and a guide called Antonia who was really great. We biked around the vineyard, seeing different blocks, tasting a Sauvignon Gris blend under a willow tree.

Then we had tours of the really old cellar. They used a mixture of egg whites to hold the brick walls together and that mixture has withstood so many earthquakes. In the new part of the building, you can see the cracks in the cheaper but modern cement. We saw wines from the 1920s and 1930s but didn’t taste those. I bought a Cabernet Sauvignon to share with Susie and Joao.

On my way home I stopped at Streat Burger for an American BBQ burger I had wanted last night! Then I went for a walk through a huge, hazy park. I could see Susie’s suburb in the background. There were flamingos in part of the park.

For the last dinner in the flat, Susie made a chicken tomato pie with a salad. We drank the cabernet!