Franskes in Chile

Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año de Santiago!  The last two weeks have been a great time with family and friends.  It started on Thursday the 20th with our ChACE Christmas Party.  Sarah cooked a great dinner and we had a gift exchange and general hilarity.  Here's our Christmas tree with our presents underneath it.

The exchange was a huge hit.  Garrett had a rough time--I think he was stolen from maybe 4 times.  I ended up with a scale, a passport pouch, a few power converters, a pen-sized flashlight and a quick dry towel.  It was just what I wanted!  My gift of a "movie night", various drinks, snacks, and a gift card to get a movie, ended up (finally) in Garrett's hands.

Friday night we went to see the end-of-the-year show for Steve's salsa school.  It was great.  Steve can really move out there and we saw styles from several different Latin American countries.  And Zumba.  Of course there was Zumba.

On Sunday, the Franskes arrived in Chile!  This was the first time all 6 of us have been together since last Christmas.  After some rearranging of flights they actually got in 12 hours early.  Unfortunately their luggage was still flying a different route so we went to Costanera Center (gigantic new mall) to get some essentials, eat lunch, and marvel at the technological wonders inside.  Check out Dad's new shades!

Monday, Christmas Eve, started with a tour of Santiago.  It was very informative for all of us because I haven't been spending a whole lot of time in the city itself.  My school is on the outskirts and my host family's house is near the school so I'm only in Santiago on some weekends when things are going on.

This is Chris, our tour guide.  He has an English/Chilean background and was quite knowledgeable.  I think he looks a little like Father Mark Thesing from Notre Dame...

Plaza de Armas, where 13 flags fly for the 13 regions of Chile (it's really 15 now...they need to add a couple flags).  The big building is called the Presidential Palace but Piñera doesn't live there, it's all offices these days.

After the tour we went to mass then I grilled for my first asado!  It was great.  Choricillo, choripan, pulpa, and lomo vetado.  And pisco sour--dad had 3.

Christmas Day we spent with my host family.  There was good food, wonderful gifts, and lots of love and warmth.  The pictures from the asado and Christmas Day are all on other cameras--stay tuned!

On Wednesday we left Santiago for wine country.  Here's a map to follow along.  Our first stop was Concha y Toro, Chile's biggest winery and the second largest in the world.

I saw a lot of wine barrels last week.  Each vineyard has their own way of processing and storing the wine and the barrels are always stacked neatly for visitors to see.  Some of the rows seem to go on forever.

Concha y Toro's most famous wine label is Castillero de Diablo, or the Devil's Cellar.  Legend has it that thieves were stealing wine from Don Melchor (the founder) so he put a curse on the cellar that would keep thieves away.  The devil still lives down there daring anyone to try to steal the wine.  If you look closely you can see him at the end of this hallway where the family keeps their private stock.  Check out all the bottles!

Thursday we toured two vineyards starting with Lapostalle, a French winery.  I think I may have liked their cellar the best.  They call it The Planetarium because it looks like one.  There is a huge dome as the ceiling and soft lighting all around.  We learned a lot about how the wood is selected for the barrels.  Apparently the French are very particular regarding who gets barrels made from their trees.  There were several here from trees as old as 400 years.

For me the real gem in the Lapostalle cellar was the glass table in the center of the room.  This is where we had our tasting.  You can look down and see Madame Lapostalle's private store--three levels filled with bottles below the table.  It's really quite impressive.  Mom and Anna kept talking about how James Bond would have a field day in here shooting up all the glass.

In between our tours we went to the Colchagua Museum, named after the valley.  This place was incredible.  They have collections from every era in Chile and the audio guide was thorough and interesting.  We also found this gem--a threshing machine from Hopkins, Minnesota!

Montes was our vineyard tour in the afternoon.  This place was interesting.  Their owner is all about Feng Shui so everything in the winery is placed, colored, and shaped with purpose.  The barrels of their best wine here are wrapped in red--the color of success.  And get this: they were playing music for the wine.  Gregorian Chant, 24 hours a day.  I felt like it was rude to talk loudly in this room.  Then I remembered it was wine.  Seriously?

We ate a lot of really good food and drank a lot of really good wine on this trip.  Wednesday night we ate at Casa Silva winery at the clubhouse in the middle of the vines on a terrace overlooking a polo field.  Does that even happen in real life?  Pictured here is our Thursday dinner at El Sauce in Lo Abarca.  This place is said to have the best pork in Chile.  It was quite good--great fries according to the rest of the family.  Both nights were accompanied by local Cabernet Sauvignon.

On our route North we stopped at Pablo Neruda's house in Isla Negra.  I learned a lot about the poet in high school Spanish class (gracias, Señor Diaz!) and it was cool to see the places he wrote so much about.  His house is a little odd.  He pretty much just builds and collects whatever strikes his fancy which makes for a very interesting finished product.  No pictures were allowed inside but parts are modeled after boats and others trains.

Neruda was a very interesting man.  He was very outspoken and popular in his political activities with the communist party.  He also loved his final wife Matilde very much.  They were both buried, at his request, at this Isla Negra location after the dictatorship ended.

Saturday we drove up to Los Molles so I could finish my dive certification and so Ben could dive for the first time in 10 years.  It was great!  I was able to take the whole family to Puquén.  We saw an interesting pair crossing the path.  Some sort of winged insect was dragging a dead tarantula across the trail.  Josie was uneasy.  We kept telling her not to worry, the spider is dead!  She was unconvinced, reminding us that the winged thing had probably killed the spider.  She had a good point.

I tested out my underwater camera, one of my Christmas gifts.  It's supposed to be good down to 200 feet!  I only got a few shots off on this dive, but here is Ben's back :)

And Ben on the boat ride back to shore!  We saw lots of sponges, starfish, shrimp, and an eel as we swam through the strong currents between the rocks.  It was a great dive.

We stayed three nights in Viña del Mar, a city right on the coast and just North of Valparaíso, a port city rich with history and colorful houses.  Chris, our guide from Santiago, met us here on Sunday and gave us a tour of Valpo and Viña along with a short drive up the coast to see Reñaca and Concon.

Guess who owned this multicolored house in Valpo?  Neruda had one of the best views of the sea in the city.  The house was once again very odd with collections of items from all around the world inside.  The space here was much more limited which made the audio tour a little cramped but I loved hearing about the poet.

Both of our tours with Chris were very fast-paced because of the many things to see in the cities on a tight schedule, so Ben and I went back to Valpo on Monday to walk through a little slower.  There are some very impressive feats of architecture here.  The city is comprised of some 43 hills and the houses are almost stacked on top of each other.  Seems interesting for a country prone to strong earthquakes, but many have stood the test of time.

There are many passages that can only be traversed by foot.  I told Ben that if you broke your leg you'd have to move.  There would literally be no way you could live in Valpo with any sort of a physical disability.  It was very fun for me to walk the narrow passages with high rises on both sides though.  It's quite beautiful.

Valpo is perhaps most famous for its Funiculars or very steep elevator-like rail cars that save you from walking up hundreds of steps.  There are maybe 5 of 20 funiculars operating today but they date back to the mid 1800s.  They use a counterweight system where one car descends pulling up the other one.  With proper weighting very little force is needed.  Ben and I rode 3 over the weekend to get around.  Check out this one with the Chilean flag theme.

Monday afternoon I walked the length of the beach in Viña with the siblings and came back to watch the sunset over Valpo.

The main attraction of celebrating the new year on the central coast is the fireworks display.  We got a good spot around 10 and waited until they started at midnight.  Ballpark estimates were 2 million people on the coast to watch.  There were dozens of these sky lanterns being lit too, quite the effect.

The fireworks display is set off from a series of maybe 15 barges out in the water along the coastline.  They're synchronized so you can look down the coast and see all the boats firing at the same time.  It's an amazing show.

I played around with the fireworks setting on my camera.  I was actually quite impressed, I've never had a camera that was very effective in capturing fireworks.  The show lasted about 30 minutes and was definitely one of the best I've ever seen.

It was great having my family here for the week.  They left Wednesday for Panama where they'll tour the canal and head back to the states for the weekend.

Hint time!  The first week of February I'll be going to the same place that my background picture was taken.  From what I've heard seeing it in person surpasses all expectations.

Heading on the joint San Nicolás/San Esteban mission trip tomorrow.  I'll be back Wednesday for a few days before the grand rounds begin.  I'll post before I leave with details of all my plans.  I can't wait to blog all my great adventures!