Viña del Mar, Chile

The best part of a ship-sponsored transfer at the end of the trip is the certainty it provides.

You will be led off as part of a herd to gather your luggage and get on the right bus.

As we disembarked in San Antonio, Chile, we found our luggage before Mike and Linda made it through a random debarkation search.

Apparently they had not secreted any sacred artifacts, explosives, conflict diamonds or ship's cutlery in their carry-off bags, and we were soon dragging our rolling suitcases to join hundreds of others among the hubbub of taxis and tour guides hustling passengers.

We'd scheduled a private excursion with drop-off at Santiago International Airport through Viator, so we brushed confidently past, constantly watching for an appropriate Chile Vivo Tours sign featuring our names.

Our confidence waned as the minutes ticked away, but a young man eventually approached us and whisked us to his van a couple of blocks from the port where our driver awaited.

Jaime began by telling us about the area, including how labor disputes had resulted in the port of Valparaiso being replaced by the new terminal in San Antonio.

Jaime said we would start our tour in Viña del Mar rather than Valparaiso as indicated in the itinerary.  He said something about morning demonstrations scheduled in the bigger city.

We stopped first at Museo Fonck to see an authentic Moai Statue from Rapa Nui, which stands outside the museum.

The Fonck houses other artifacts from Easter Island as well as ancient ruins from throughout Chile.  The museum itself has free admission, but it was closed that day.

I don't think the interior was supposed to be part of our tour, but it had been touted as a clean restroom stop.

Around the corner was a distinctly different sculpture by famed French artist Auguste Rodin in front of Palacio Carasco.  Rodin submitted the work to the City of Valparaiso for a contest dedicated to Heroes of Iquique.

Rodin had entered the same stature in a different contest in France with a different theme, so apparently like many writers and artists, he re-purposed his work to submit to contests for which it might fit the parameters.

He lost both contests, but nonetheless "La Defense" remains a powerful work by one of my favorite sculptors.

With the museum bathrooms locked, we walked around the corner to a small café where we bought coffee and used their restrooms.

Back on the road, we stopped to stroll along the rugged, scenic coastline of Viña del Mar.

Terraced apartment buildings across the street in various states of beauty and disrepair were perched to take advantage of panoramic seaside views past craggy outcroppings similar to Laguna Beach or Malibu.

Our van met us further down the beach and took us to the fresh fish market near a pier.  There were so many seagulls and pelicans that the ladies were quite concerned about being dive bombed or some other kind of aerial assault to their hair and clothes.

We went past a large clock made with flowers and hedges, but Jaime pointed out that vandals had stolen then clock's hands, bringing the old Bob Dylan line about "the pump don't work 'cuz the vandals took the handle."

We stopped for lunch at a lovely seaside restaurant, Club Union Arabe.

The views were excellent from our window table in this elegant restaurant perched across the street from the beach.

The stately building was apparently at one time a stately private club.

I had a local fish and chips dish.  It later turned out the fish was some kind of ugly conger eel, but it tasted great.  Julie said her lasagna was also tasty.


Cristal Beer was so-so at best, and Julie's Diet Coke was probably a better choice with a full afternoon ahead of us.  Our next stop was the big city of Valparaiso.

It is more than a bit disconcerting that there seems to be an anarchist revolutionary movement just below the surface in most South America cities we visited as evidenced by graffiti of an A in a circle that we saw many places in South America, although it might be more a sign of permissiveness of government for misguided students defacing buildings to release political steam.

We would see more graffiti as we drove through downtown Valparaiso, but we didn't stop until we reached a hilltop famed for beautiful murals painted on the side of buildings.

Graffiti pissers have respect for the real artists apparently, as they didn't deface too many.

The buildings on the hilltop reminded me somewhat of San Francisco's older neighborhoods back in the 1970's when I visited my friend Pete, who over the years has tended to live not exactly in but near that kind of artsy neighborhood.

There's a kind of hippie chic vibe, though what should be brighter colors seemed a bit faded from a few sunny summers between paint jobs.

We took the historic funicular train down to the city, where our van picked us up to drive to the Indomita Winery.  On the way, we learned that the winery had been owned by three women, who were powerful industrialists with fingers in many business pies, including horse racing.

In recent years, these ladies, now all well into retirement years, had sold the winery to a Chinese businessman in order to focus on their 700 thoroughbred racers.

When Mike and Linda lived in Orange County, we would sometimes meet them over in Temecula Wine Country, so in a way this was like flashing back to those wine tasting days.  After moving to Seattle, they became regulars attending concerts and tastings in Washington wine country, with Linda now storing over 300 bottles of wine, according to Mike.

Chile's wine region's claim to fame came in 1994, when a French wine expert drank what at first seemed to be of an odd-tasting Merlot.

It turns out the wine had actually been a Carmenere, which is lighter than Merlot or even Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Carmenere grape had been one of six from the Bordeaux region, but an aphid infestation had wiped out all Carmenere vines in Europe in 1863.

The best Bordeaux grapevines had been previously brought for cultivation to wine regions in the Americas, including California's Napa Valley and Chile's Casablanca Valley near Santiago.

For whatever reason, the Carmenere grape assumed to be extinct somehow maintained its exclusive qualities only in Chile.

Indomita proved to be pretty good wine, and our server gave generous pours.

So generous, in fact, that we all became quite relaxed.  Our guide and driver wanted to beat the traffic to the airport, but in retrospect, we should have given them an extra $100 or so to let us stay at the winery until it closed and then find a restaurant for dinner.

Instead, we were dropped at the airport with four hours to spare.  In this long ago age (two months ago) before COVID-19 had killed international air travel, we found a long, long line waiting for literally every counter for every airline to open.  It was absurd.

We must have been in line for two or three days.  Okay, maybe not that long, but way too long.

Unexpectedly, our jumbo jet was actually parked in Peru, or so it seemed, as we must have literally walked a couple of miles through tunnels without benefit of moving sidewalks to get to our gate.

There was also a long, long line for customs to enhance our experience.

Then again, we've become accustomed to the fact that air travel is always the worst part of travel, and it does make traveling to distant places possible.

And this had been another amazing vacation, including our wonderful tour that brought us to the airport.