Feb 6 Santiago Winery Tour

 Today's activity was an optional Globus tour to a nearby winery.  Our preferred choice was unavailable since wildfires in the Valparaiso area made the all day tour there impossible.  Rather than sit around the hotel room, we signed up for this tour.

One unexpected development in taking this tour was that Globus in Santiago ran a cash only business.  While every shop and restaurant had the hand held terminal to accept your credit or debit card, Globus wanted cash. They accepted either Chilean Pesos or US $.  With the CLP trading at about 1000:1 to the USD, it was easy to convert. But the ATMs in Santiago limited withdrawals to $200 per day. Some planning was required.

Also unexpected was the level of service. We had a driver and a guide for the two of us, taking us to and from the winery. At the winery, we joined  the standard tour of about 20 people.  Thankfully the winery groups people according to language.

Underraga was the winery in the Maipo valley we toured.  Very pretty.  They previously had hosted weddings and other events, but a recent earthquake had destroyed the event building.  They were rebuilding it, but it wasn't available yet.

Our tour guide.

The reason for everything

They plant these flowering bushes at the end of some rows.  They serve as the "canary in the coal mine" for fungus and other blights that can affect the grapevines. 

On to the barrel storage.  This one looked to be sampled quite a lot.

A cool and dry basement.

They had a small museum of pre-Columbian items.

Some sort of field hockey?

Definitely post-Columbian, located the area where we had the tastings. The wines were highly rated, but I have no taste for wine.  They seemed OK.

On the return trip, some of the wiring in the remote areas gave me flashbacks to Vietnam.

A small fire broke out near the road we were driving on.  The fire wasn't there when we drove to the winery. We heard nothing about it later, so it must have been dispatched quickly.

Along the road there were a number of communities of buildings thrown up with blankets and pieces of plywood.  In response the government has started a program of building homes for these people.  Definitely small homes, but a large step up from the slapdash places they lived in previously (and the trash that they threw down the hill behind their "homes".

Feb 5 Santiago

 We started a 2 month vacation by flying overnight to Santiago Chile. We spent the first day napping and finding our way around the Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center. 

The hotel is next to the River Mapocho, separated by 8 lanes of traffic on 3 different roads.  It can be a challenge to get to the river, and the parks that line it.

Here's the view from our room, a "city view" although the actual downtown is about 2 miles east.

We are sharing the hotel with a convention.  The signs all say "Green Impact Business Pulse" and the participants are all wearing green lanyards with that legend on them.  They all get on tour buses and leave at dinner time, so I guess they're having a good time.  Their meetings don't seem to start until 10am, so late evenings are a possibility.

Breakfast is included.  We are here for the first week on a Globus independent tour, which will include a trip to Easter Island.  Globus always provides a hot breakfast if at all possible.

A nice swimming pool, with the breakfast area in the covered area beyond.

On our first "official" day in Santiago (we had arrived a day early to sleep off the long trip) we took the Globus included half-day tour of the city.  We were expecting a busload of people, but it was the two of us, the driver and our guide, Carolina. Our first stop was the Parque Bicentenario created to celebrate the 200th anniversary of their independence. 

 There were walking trails and dog parks and exercise areas, but we wandered mostly among the ponds dedicated to waterfowl.

Spot-flanked gallinule.  We have the red beaked version in Florida.

Snowy Egret, also in Florida

And here we have murderer's row, a pigeon lineup, we also have pigeons in Florida.  This fence enclosed a family of black-necked swans.  When the swans were fed, the pigeons swept in to gather up whatever was available.

The father of the family

Most of the swan family with the freeloading pigeons.

At an area where you could purchase bird food and feed the ducks and geese and others, someone is very interested in the proceedings.

Back in the car, and very near the park is the ALMA center. ALMA = Atacama Large Millimeter Array, an observatory located in the northern desert.  In today's interconnected world, the scientists don't have to be on site to look through the telescope (impossible in any event since ALMA is a collection of radio telescopes).  They can live in the big city and do their work here.

A sign on the fence at ALMA center.  Here an optical telescope is using lasers to create an artificial star for focusing.

We drove up into an exclusive neighborhood to see how the 1% lived in Santiago, as well as get a view of the city.  The wildfires in Valparaiso made it pretty smoggy and difficult to see much.  But I thought a climbing wall was a nice touch.

We drove back into downtown Santiago to the Plaza de Armas, the center of the city. That's the Cathedral, which was not open on this Monday.

The obligatory sign of the city.

Since petty theft is a problem in the crowded downtown area, they have extra security roaming about. I held on the big camera all the time.

One of several bronze plaques in the park showing  different times of the city. The first one was from 1520.

The post office.

We walked along Bandera street which is pedestrian only, and has a 3km long mural painted along the street. Here a busker is making music and money.

Santiago's Wall Street, and it looks like the Flatiron building in NY.

The plaque on the building.  (1893 for non-Romans)

Street vendors

The presidential palace, back side.  The roads were closed on the front side because of a national security meeting about the wildfires in Valparaiso. There are demonstrators out here, complaining that the government should be doing more about the fires. They are attempting to disrupt the meeting where the government is figuring out what to do. Let me know if you understand it.

A huge national flag. Looks like Texas, but is slightly different.  Chile's flag is from 1817, Texas 1839. Draw your own conclusions.  Me, with a flag that big I was looking for the auto dealership displaying it.

And underneath the plaza below that huge flag in the crypt of General O'Higgins, one of the founders of democratic Chile.

Nearby there are bullet holes in the buildings from the coup 'de etat that brought Pinochet to power in 1973.

The day ends in the Sheraton Lobby Lounge where food and drink is available and futbol is ALWAYS on the big screen.

Dec 26 Tortola, British Virgin Islands

 From the French to the British.  And on a very British sort of day, Boxing Day. We just walked around at this port.

We did get to dock right across from a behemoth, Disney Fantasy. It can hold 4000 passengers and we saw many family units leaving the ship with Mom, Dad and 2-3 children. Great time for a Disney cruise, during the Christmas break. With 4 or 5 in a room, the ship was probably at the 4K mark.

Disney on the right, our rowboat is on the left.

Due to my mistake in locating a craft market, we walked a couple of miles out of the way.  We got back to the waterfront area and shared a Coke in what looked like a Red Bull can.  But it was a very refreshing Coke.

This is a prison dating back to the 18th century.  The notes say that it's still a working jail, although they do have tours of the old part.  But not today.  Boxing Day and all.

We didn't stop

Like all of these ports, you have to build in the hills.  But you get good views.  Just a tough trip to the grocery store.

But you can be assured that there's a Diamonds International, marking this as a true Caribbean cruise port.  Take that, St. Barts.

A nice trip.  We enjoyed it enough that we've booked a cruise again for 2024 in December, although to the Western Caribbean this time.  

Next up, Easter Island and a cruise around South America.  This is our attempt to finish where we were in March 2020 when the cruise was cancelled for some reason.  See you then.