More in and around Santiago

Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile
On Sunday we decided to take the cable car, or Teleférico, up Cerro San Cristobal, a much bigger hill than Santa Lucia, but also right in the middle of Santiago.  It was about a one hour walk, mostly boring, around the hill to Oasis Station, at the bottom of the cable.  If I had read about the history of this cable car, I might have thought twice about taking it.  There were a couple of incidents with the original cable cars that left people stranded in the cars, which led to the scrapping of the original system and the building of an entirely new system that opened in 2016.  At the top of the 300m hill is a sanctuary dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, and a 22 meter statue of the Virgin Mary and great views of the city and surrounding mountains.  But, on this day, like most others, it was very hazy due to the smog which usually hangs over the city because of its location in the valley between the mountain ranges.
 After taking in the views from the top, we took the Funicular back down to the bottom.  It comes down the other side of the hill and ends in Barrio Bellavista, another lively neighbourhood, just across the river from Lastarria, where we are staying.  We grabbed a fish sandwich at an Italian joint along the main drag, Pio Nono.  We decided that Bellavista would be worth exploring, but not ‘till the next day.  So we went home and took it easy and ate our leftover gnocchi from the previous night for dinner (it re-heated very nicely in the microwave).
Monday morning, we did indeed head back over to Bellavista to check out the area and, in particular, the great street art that it is known for.  The street art was really good but the ‘hood was very, very quiet on a Monday morning and early afternoon.  There are just a ton of bars and clubs that were all closed up but I am sure that at night, particularly on weekends, the place is really jumping.  We stopped in for lunch at a nominally Columbian restaurant (we just had an assortment of empanadas) in the Patio Bellavista, a huge maze of restaurants and shopping tucked in off the street behind some very non-descript buildings on Pio Nono.
We chilled a bit in the afternoon, but headed back over to Patio Bellavista in the evening for some shrimp pasta at one of the Italian restaurants.  This was preceded by some Pisco Sours, since they were on for half price for happy hour, which was still on when we got there.  By the time we left, the area was starting to get a bit more lively, but it was a Monday night and we do turn into pumpkins at about 9:00, which is when most people here are just heading out to dinner (and when the younger people are just waking up from siesta).
Tuesday, we had a wine tour to the Maipo Valley.  We visited 3 wineries and a restaurant in the area around the town of Isla de Maipo, which isn’t really an island at all, but it used to be, before a couple of rivers were re-routed.   It was an all Canadian bunch (only 6 of us) in our van and there was another van of about a dozen people as part of the same tour that had a bunch of Canadians, too.  Our first stop, at La Quirinca, was different than any other wine tour that I have ever been on.  It was a farm visit, with chickens and ducks and turkeys, alpacas and sheep and horses, alfalfa fields and baby oak and cork and fruit trees, and various other oddities, some only vaguely related to the production of wine.  (The alfalfa is to improve the soil and feed the livestock, the livestock is to fertilize the soil, etc..)  It is a family operation and everything in their wine production is very manual and old-school.  The wine produced is manually pressed and unfiltered, and they don’t produce a lot.  But it was a very interesting visit and Juan, our narrator, was a lot of fun.  The wine, a Carménère, that we sampled was very interesting.  It was extremely strong when first poured (due to being unfiltered and being aged in the bottle a long time), but mellowed very quickly when allowed to breath and ended up being extremely good.  We also got to try a Cab Sauve from another winery, for comparison, and a shot of Pisco.
Our next stop was just a quick tasting at Santa Ema winery, a very modern facility nearby.  The sommelier poured us a rose and two reds and all were good.
Then on to Zinfandel restaurant for lunch.  I had some very good mussels (with beer for a change).  By the time we finished lunch the weather, which had been very cool and overcast all morning, had brightened and warmed considerably.
Our final stop was at Underraga, one of the oldest wineries in the region, dating from 1885, but now out of family hands and run by a corporation.  They have really impressive grounds and obviously do a lot of corporate events and weddings.  We got a brief tour of the vineyards and the production and storage facilities before our tasting of 2 whites (one a late harvest) and 2 reds.  Again, all very good.  We even bought a bottle, along with some other things from the gift shop.  Then about an hour drive home and we were back before 6:00 and had a quiet evening.
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