Vacation to the beach

ok sooooo updates. here are pictures, by day and night, from our balcony in the beach town of Reñaca. It was super fun and relaxing (though, i am on vacation, so i´m not sure how much relaxing i really needed). The town was about an hour and 30 min outside of Santiago, and a world away. Tons of these tiny beach towns, Valpariso, Vina del Mar, and Con Con line the pacific coast of Chile and host a large quantity of summer vacationers from Argentina, Chile, and Europe. The beaches are long and clean, lined with shops and bars, game stations, and tons of people. Being well versed in nice beaches i was excited to see what the beaches of Reñaca had in to offer. I must say...it wasn´t what i expected. Though beautiful i was thrown a few curveballs in terms of beaching.

When i arrived at the apartment in the afternoon, i watched the crowds frolic on the beaches below. Surfers took on some decent sized waves crashing close to the shore, kids played in the sand and swam, and lifeguards watched from their tall chairs. The sun was hot, but unfortunately setting, so i couldn´t wait to get to the beach the next day. Well. It didn´t go quite as i had imagined. Firstly, there was a problem, a big white cold one, called Fog. Fog. Fog. Fog. It creeped up in the night, and did not disapear until 2pm. Not just once. EVERY DAY. every single day. We´d wake up in a foggy cloud, have breakfast, laze around until the fog began creeping out onto the ocean horizon, leaving the beaches finally visable. It would hoover there until about midnight, and then roll back in, sure to be in place in the morning when we woke up. Lovely. Aside from that, we faced the extremes of mind numbingly cold water (wtf, its the pacific! its not this cold in hawaii!) and raging, boiling hot sun and sand. I think i got heat stroke a couple of times. def was dehydrated of all water after about 10 min on the beach, and basically had to bathe in 50 plus sunscreen every half an hour. Apparently there is no ozone left in Chile, so you burn quickly and painfully.

Those facts set aside, it was an awesome week! The apt also had a pool that wasn´t quite as cold as the ocean, so we could get some beach time, and some pool time. Ate some great seafood, and basically realxed. Very awesome.

Christmas Eve 2007

It was so nice to have a hot Christmas!! Like in Hawaii, the weather here was wonderful. Very sunny and warm. The immediate family all came over for a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Traditionally, the bigger part of the celebration is on christmas eve, and nothing much happens on christmas day. Some of the family went to church before dinner. Then we sat down for drinks before dinner, and ate 11pm. The christmas trees i saw in santiago were fake, they´re not big into the pine smell i guess. After dinner, we all opened presents (yes, i got some too!). And then it was off to bed with dreams of santa in my head! Pictures to the right are of the apartment view, with xmas tree, and all the ladies sitting down for an xmas eve drink. No spiked egg nog for us, their traditional xmas drink is a creamy coffee flavored drink with cinnamon in it.

New Years 2007

New Years is a bit less formal than the crazy celebrations that we have in the states... Generally everyone spends time with their family until the new year has begun. Then they all go out afterwards (of course). So we sat down for a nice dinner and champange, watched the fireworks from the balcony. We had a few more drinks, and then us youngins headed out to a fiesta at 2am (i had lots of coffee too). We celebrated the new year at a party held by the Firemen of Santiago, in the fire house. Needless to say, it was super fun, and a very very late night, or very very early morning....
Pictured are me, Aunt Peacha, Aunt Andrea, and Grandmother Maru sitting down to New Years Eve dinner

Girls Night Out

After a lot of time with the family, us youngins decided we needed a night out, so Erin, her sister Isabel and I hit Santiago for a girls night out!! Much to my exaustion, we did not start getting ready until 11pm, as Isabel advised us it would be super lame to go out before 1am. Sweet. I´m officially an old woman! Isabel is a professional makeup artist, so i thought it would be best if she did my makeup for me, and yes, i some how agreed to let her put bright blue eyeshadow on me... hey, the 80´s are back here, so i was supporting the movement ;) Once the night did begin, we hit up an outdoor area with tons of bars and resturants. Had some sushi and beer, then hopped over to another resturant for some rum and coke ( a favorite of the chileans). A bit different than ordering a rum and coke in the states. basically, they bring you a glass full, seriously full, of rum, and a bottle of coke. Its up to you to figure out how to make room in the cup for the coke. Which generally means you end up doing a few shots of rum before you can mix a strong rum and coke. good times. then it was off to dance the night away!!!I think i got home at 7am, but details are a bit blurry.....

Concha y Toro Vineyard

In terms of the kinds of vineyards we visited, Erin and i tried to mix it up a bit. We hit up some of the bigger more well known vineyards, things we´ve seen here and in the states a bunch, like the Concha y Toro vineyard, and we also tried to visit a few botique wineries, live the Aquitania Vineyard that only produces a very small amount of highly specialized wine each year. I found that the difference between the two kinds of wineries is not neccesairily quality, but quantity. Concha y Toro has vineyards all over Chile, they produce a huge quantiy of red and white wines of every variety and flavor. They have tours about ever 30 minutes. Their wine ranges from cheap, not so great tasting wines, to well made reserve wines that aren´t too expensive. Smaller wineries like Aquitania produce less wine, they are more selective about the kind of wines they produce, and how much of each variety they will produce each year. Basically, once they´re out, they´re out. They have certain quotas that they ship abroad, mainly to russia, the states, and japan. They keep a very small quantitiy for select resturants in chile, and the remainder is saved for people who visit the vineyard, and want to purchase wine there. Of course, my favorite part of all of these visits is the tasting, but i certainly feel like i understand the fine art of wine making much much more now, and therefore am appreciating each and every bottle i drink :)

Vineyard- Aquitania

After we recovered from the holiday celebrations and family visiting, erin and i took some time to get to know Santiago. Aside from seeing the city and all its splendors, we focused particularly on the plethora of Chilean vineyards. A 30 minute bus ride took us to wine land. And we were able to visit quite a few vineyards in one day. You end up paying something like 6 USD to visit the vineyard and taste up to 3 different wines. I´ve learned quite a bit about grape growing, vineyards, wine making, and wine tasting.

Though many of the traditional wine growing principals are followed, chile is able to produce a unique product becuase of the properties of the regions where they grow the wine. A vine growing father up a hill on a vineyard will produce a comepletely different tasting grape than one grown lower on the hill. Traditionally, roses are planted at the end of each vineyard. This tradition coming from europe, is done becuase roses are the most succeptable to disease, so if any one rosebush got a pest, the growers would know that that particular vine was also about to be attacked by a pest. However, being a geographically protected place (desert in the north, andes mountains to the east, ocean to the west, and antartica to the south) chile does not have a pest problem, but they still do plant the rose bushes, to follow tradition.