Chile is a land of epic proportions. It is roughly as long top-to-bottom as Canada is broad side-to-side. And, just like Canada, Chile offers up grand variances in temperature, landscape, geography, topography, and more. About the only constant here are the 5 standard items on offer at the bodegas, snack bars, restaurants, cafés, and street kiosks – Pastel de Choclo, Papas Fritas, Hambergueses, Completos, y Empenadas.
Flying into Santiago from Punta Arenas in the far South takes about 3.5 hours thanks to the devilishly efficient folks at SKY Airlines. But it is a world away in more ways than I can describe.
Arriving in Santiago, we proceeded confidently past the official and vulture taxi drivers to the bank of rental car companies. Howard had recently booked our rental vehicle for the last part of our trip with a kind of leasing/discount broker. When we went to the broker’s usual carrier of choice, Europcar, there was no record of a reservation for us. Several calls and reassurances later, “Don’t panic”, we collected our rental vehicle from a very friendly young guy named Fabian who had been wandering around the International Arrivals terminal (we were flying Domestic) with a “Howard Frank” sign, while we had exited the terminal and were waiting outside the building.
Fabian walked us to our Suzuki SUV in the terminal parking garage. The rental transaction was completed on the hood of our car using a portable payment device, and a pre-agreed upon wad of Howie’s American Greenbacks. Looking for a cash discount? Chile is the place for you. We filled the beast with all of our baggage – roughly an amount equal to what Hannibal took along when he crossed the Alps, and all four of us piled in. Fabian, our best friend del dia drove us out of the airport and explained what direction to follow to get to Wine Country, about 3 hrs drive southwest of Santiago. In Spanish, he explained some things about the vehicle and answered our questions. He also said, while driving on the highway, that he would be leaving the vehicle soon, when he got close to his office in Santiago. Less than a minute later, we came to a red light (you get that here, when the highway passes through a residential area) and he jumped out of the vehicle with a cheery “Ciao” and “Have a good trip”. After a moment of shocked hesitation, Howie scrambled to run around the front of the vehicle before the light turned green, and Truus ran in the opposite direction to take the co-pilot seat and help Howie navigate. It looked something like one of the ubiquitous street performances that happen like clockwork in Chile at traffic signals, so no one in the surrounding vehicles was taken aback in the slightest.
With Santiago in our rear view mirror, the dry and dusty mountains gradually gave way to lush rolling hills. In place of urban sprawl, there were orchards and fields, and roadside vendors selling nature’s abundance for pennies on the peso. The daylight faded before we arrived in Santa Cruz. We crept through another new city in darkness, and somehow Truus navigated us old-school sans GPS to an inauspicious turnoff nearly beyond the end of the zona urbano. The entrance to our lodging, Refugio Nativa, was lightly marked. We stood parked outside a 7 foot metal wall wondering how to get in. Suddenly, the barrier slid open like the entrance to the Bat Cave and we were welcomed in like distant family members returning to the fold.
It really wan’t until the following morning that we got a sense of the place. The compound had 6 or 7 units surrounding a central area that was filled with an oasis of native trees, grapevines, herbs, flowers and fruit trees. In the middle of the square was a small swimming pool with lounge chairs. Each house was named, and had its own BBQ and outdoor seating area. No detail had been overlooked. We hung out by the pool in the morning, exchanging more war stories from Torres Del Paine, and then saddled up for our self-directed bicycle tour of a few wineries in the neighbouring area. The whiplash from where we had been a short while previous – trudging through a hellscape in hurricane winds, to eating fresh figs and merlot grapes off of the vine next to a sun soaked swimming pool – was nearly too much for our brains to process.
The two wineries that we visited were unknown to us, but quite famous in Chile. Their product is not exported to Canada in any significant volume. The wines we tasted were excellent, and far better than anything I’ve ever had on offer at Canadian wineries. But the thing that impressed more than the wines was the beauty and peacefulness of the wineries themselves. We basically had the entire wineries to ourselves. We were virtually the only visitors in these places, and were treated like valued guests. In each of the wineries that we visited, we had a young guide who stayed with us for well in excess of 30 minutes, and engaged us in broad ranging conversations that were instructive and personalized. No tour buses, no mass merchandizing, no hawking of sub-par Ontario red wines at inflated LCBO prices. This was a different experience than what I was expecting.
The next morning, we headed back to the pool. None of us was really in any hurry to leave our warm horticultural cocoon and drive North to Vina del Mar. Finally, being the insufferable practical fool that I am, I rose from the pool deck to pack up the SUV. Howie and Truus looked at each other wearily (the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-this-guy look that I’m very familiar with), and reluctantly conceded that we needed to head out.
We decided to take extend our time in wine country by taking a detour to the Santa Cruz Winery along the way. Santa Cruz Winery is the grandaddy of Chilean wineries. It’s one of the oldest and most prestigious players. The drive to Santa Cruz Wineries carried us through beautiful countryside, acres of vineyards, picturesque haciendas, and small tidy villages. This setting looked like The Shire from the Lord of the Rings lore. All that was missing was Irish pipe melodies and small people with oversized feet (present company excepted).
The site of the Santa Cruz winery is epic. The main buildings are built on two hills that overlook the winery’s vineyards. A sky of azul blankets a rolling sea of green. This place is a testament to human ingenuity and dedication. The chemistry of wine-making was first discovered 3000 years BC. The Santa Cruz winery melds the cumulative technical understanding of oenology to date, with an old world respect for tradition. Besides making some of the best wine on the planet, Santa Cruz is 100% solar powered. The Spanish-style architecture fits seamlessly into the hillsides as though the buildings were ordained to be there by a higher order. It could easily be mistaken for a monastery – thick stone walls, bricked stairs, and oak beams.
Yet another magical chapter to add to our trip diary. The layers of joy and pain that you get with this kind of travel are nearly overwhelming. It’s such a dense experience, filled with things we’re seeing and experiencing every day that are each in themselves so unique.
We’re feeling the window closing now. We head to Valparisso/Vina Del Mar, then La Serena, and end out trip in Vicuna. Still time for a few more posts, and, hopefully, a few more pleasant surprises along the way to the finish line next week.
Chilean Adventure 2020 