After spending such an enjoyable time in northern Patagonia in Argentina, I decided to head over to investigate the northern side in Chile and spent 2 days in Pucon. This entailed a 10 hour bus journey by day which was extended even further due to the rigorous Chilean border control. So far all border crossings have been fairly relaxed and quick with minimal checking of bags, not this time around! The ordeal began with getting off the bus on the Argentinean side, getting passports stamped to record exit out of Argentina, to then get back on the bus and drive for half an hour, to then get off the bus on the Chilean side and have your passports stamped for entry into Chile, and then all bags needed to be offloaded from the bus and put through x-ray machines whcih didn´t seem to serve much purpose as they tend to choose people from random selection to be interrogated about the contents. It doesn´t help that Chile have very strict rules about what items can be brought into their country, going as far as to ban fruit that you are carrying on you for a snack. As you can imagine, with 50 people on the bus this took an extremely long and painful time to say the least!
Pucon is a lovely small town situated on a lake with also one of the top 10 active volcanoes in the world, Villarrica, only located half an hour away. It is a very popular tourist destination, both in winter and summer, particularly for hiking, watersports and skiing. However its main attraction is the volcano and thousands visit each year with the united mission to climb to the crater. Unfortunately for me, bad weather during my visit meant I could not complete this feat. I did however manage to hire a bike and cycle around the area for an afternoon before the heay rain set in. The surrounding landscape was stunning, especially views of Villarrica with its snow capped peak set against the blue backdrop.
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| Pucon with view of Villarrica volcano |
After a rather wet couple of days in Pucon I then headed for sunny Santiago to meet my friend Hannah who was joining me for the remainder of my trip. We spent a day walking pretty much from one end of the city to the other visiting two beautiful parks and enjoying the relaxed ambience of the city.
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| View of Santiago from San Cristobel park |
Chile is a country well known for its production of wine so we thought it an obvious opportunity to sample some by visiting one of the world´s most famous and largest wineries, Concha y Toro. This winery is the largest producer of wine in Latin America founded by Don Melchor de Santiago Concha y Toro in 1883. He started his first vineyard by bringing over grapes from France (Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Merlot, and Carmenère) and planting them in Chile. The company grew from there, particularly through the export business to Holland. Through the acquistion of more vineyards it built up its success and reputation and now exports wines all over the world, with England being its biggest export at 55%, no surprises there!
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| Original house of Concha y Toro family |
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| Concha y Toro vineyard |
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| Wine cellar of Casillero del Diablo |
We got taken on a half an hour tour of the vineyard to learn about the family history and the different varieties of wines they produce. The vineyard is in a beautiful location with lovely gardens surrounding the original family house where Don Melchor lived with his family. After our excursion of the grounds we then indulged is some very delicious cheese and wine tasting, the definite highlight of the tour! We sampled 4 different red wines and were taught the various steps of how to identify the different aromas and flavours of each varietal. We were also given 4 different types of cheese to taste along with each wine and taught how each can compliment the wine. Sounds easy but actually we found it pretty confusing at the time, however both Hannah and I felt we did pick up a few key things during our tasting session - definitely on our way to becoming wine connoisseurs for our return to England!
We had such a lovely group of people during our tasting session and as we bonded so well from our mutual love of red wine, we all decided it would be a great idea to continue our own wine tasting session in the outdoor bar area. So with a few bottles of Casillero del Diablo we all sat out on the terrace and shared stories of our travels so far. Two American guys in our group alleged to be working for the US secret accompanying Obama on his visit to Santiago the next day. They indulged us with many stories about working with Bush and Blair but to this day we will never know just how much was fact or fiction! We then wobbled back ever so elegantly to our lovely hostel pleased with our hard day´s work!
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| Wine tasting with our group |
