The Valparaiso Adventure!

I am still really tired but have decided to blog about our day yesterday.  Mary and I are sitting in the AA Lounge at the airport in Santiago waiting for our flight to Buenos Aires...and REALLY looking forward to it.  Chile has been quite an experience...

Look at all of the confiscated scissors and knives at security...

Here are some photos of the apartment that we rented from Matt Craze here in Santiago!  We would recommend it to anyone.  Very cute, clean and located in a great neighbourhood.

So, we took our sweet time and just could not get going until well after noon yesterday.  To be fair, it was our first sleep in Chile and we were exhausted from a full day of travel, and a bit jetlagged.  We planned to rent a car and drive out to the coast - to Valparaiso.  Matt told us about a beautiful winery that we should stop at for great wine and great food.  It all sounded like such a great idea.

We wandered down and rented a white Hyundai Elantra from Hertz.  From Jorge.  We were strongly advised to get the GPS for the car, so we did.  I hate that woman.  I hate her voice.  I never want to talk to her again.  Not only did she take us down dead-end alleys, ask us to turn where there were no roads, took us off-roading where that really means off-road, but she then lost her mind and started yelling at us as we entered Valparaiso.  I guess we can't be too mad.  She did actually get us there and back in one piece.

The plan was to stop at Casas de Bosque winery just outside of Casablanca.  GPS 'Jill' took us on an off-road adventure that we can't really explain, so that we arrived at the winery too late for wine-tasting or for food.  And we were starving!  Mary actually said "I have ketones on my breath" at one point because we were so hungry.  I had ONE mint in my purse and we had about 200 ml of water between us.

We made it to Plaza Sotomayor where we had to park our car to avoid petty crime.  We then took an 'elevator' up to Concepcion.  A nice little town on a hill with a beautiful view.  I will have to post photos later that Mary and I took of that elevator and most of the view.  We were still starving so we ended up in Color Cafe - a little hippy bar that would fit in nicely in Victoria.  Very cute and very colourful with lots of knick knacks and things posted all over the walls.  We split a tortilla filled with potatoes and chorizo and a glass of red wine.  The tortilla was not quite what we expected...it seemed more like an omelette.  It was very good.  And really, we would have eaten anything by that point.  We were well beyond hungry.  We were actually feeling sick.  The meal made us feel a bit better.

We walked around and took some photos of this beautiful place.  Again, the photos will come soon.  There are multi-coloured houses and a lot of street art.  I think I may have seen a Banksy original, but who knows!

We wanted to have dinner at Cafe Turri so we could have some great seafood and a spectacular view.  We weren't very hungry so we decided to split an appetizer and a meal.  We have garlic and red chili prawns and tilapia with saffron sauce and rice with poppy seeds.  The food was all great, but we quickly realized that we couldn't really eat it.  It was hard to enjoy it because we just felt a bit sick from being too hungry.  Too bad.  And they wouldn't let us take the food with us...

The 'elevator' had stopped running by the time we were done so we had to take a long walking route around.  It was a really nice walk and we saw a lot of great street art and shops along the way.  We got our car and started to head back to Santiago at about 10 pm.  We had about 1.5 hours to drive.  We also still had to pack and shower and find a place to park our car for the night.  Not an easy thing to do in Chile apparently.

We have to leave for our flight to BA now. 

To be continued...with photos!