The remainder of my time in Valparaiso was phenomenal! On the day after my last post, I ventured out to wine country for a meeting with a potential employer, Vina Matetic, which is located somewhere between the towns of Casablanca and San Antonio. I had arranged with the winemaker to make my way to Casablanca by 10am, where I would be met by someone from the winery to take me the extra 30 minutes to get to Matetic.
A bit about the buses in Chile--
While I have yet to experience Chilean air travel, I have found that unlike in the states, air travel is not the method of travel chosen by the masses. Every town big and small has a bus terminal, and they range in size from very big (Santiago has probably 15 companies to choose from and at least 30 terminals from which the buses arrive and depart). These buses are very luxurious and range in size from your normal charter bus all the way to full on double decker buses with chairs that lean back at a 45 degree angle. The length of the trip dictates the size of the bus. So far I have made trips from Santiago to Valparaiso, a 120km trip that costs only about $6 US, Valparaiso to Casablanca 35 km for $3, and also a trip from San Antonio back to Valparaiso. This particular trip was interesting because I had yet to hop on the bus from a countryside bus stop, called a parada. All along the trip, the drivers are picking up passengers along the way and dropping them off if they ask the driver to do so. It is a very interesting system and also very efficient and practical. When I was done at Matetic, I was dropped off at a parada and hailed the bus from San Antonio, headed to Valparaiso via Casablanca. All in all I am very impressed with the efficiency and I certainly wish there were similar systems available in US cities.
Back to the winery visit. I still have some decisions to make as far as the job situation goes down here and I don't want to jump the gun or reveal any finalized decisions yet, so for now I will just treat my visit to Matetic as a winery tour!!! What a place it is! As this is my first winery visit in chile, I think it was a bit of a skewed reality at Matetic, in that they have imported the best practices in the winemaking business from America and France. The winery was built about 10 years ago, and is owned by a family with a very significant amount of land around Chile. They winery is situated in a beautiful valley that bears a lot of significance to the hills and valleys in Napa. The surprisingly cool valley plays host to sauvignon blanc, syrah, and a number of other varietals, and here they have built the winery, as well as a very nice hotel and restaurant, complete with a lucious yard with a fountain and all sorts of beautiful attractions everywhere you look. The winery itself is a very functionally designed piece of arcitecture, complete with a crush deck that has sliding doors which open up to the open top fermentors, and the sorting tables drop the fruit right into the tanks! No must lines, what a dream!! The barrel room and cellar are immaculately clean and the workflow leaves little to be desired! They make delicious wine and sell at a price point above any I have seen, though my exposure to Chilean wine prices is incomplete, since my basis relies on the selections available in grocery stores and botellerias. I picked up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah on my way out, and I have only tried the SB at this point. If you see a bottle at your local Total Wine or Bevmo, grab it! Its really good.
Check out the pictures and more to come on the job front as soon as everything is finalized!
I did extend my stay in Valpo by an extra night, which I spent cooking and relaxing, and I used my extra day to travel to the beach in a place called Concon. I jumped a local bus and expected the unexpected. Oftentimes the local buses are headed to places you have never heard of and it is a bit of a gamble to see where you will end up. In this case I caught one bus that eventually headed in the wrong direction, hopped on another bus, and rode that for almost an hour and 45 minutes to pass through Vina del Mar (resorty beach town) and all the traffic once we got to Concon. In concon, I bought some sunscreen and empenadas and walked through the local vendor shops to find a very very crowded and bustling beach scene. It reminded me a bit of the crowded beach in Los Cabos out in front of "the Office" if you have ever been there. The amount of people was unbelievable, but this was not a Cabo party scene, rather a ton of families with their umbrellas and children. The beach was fortunately very long, and I made my way past la gente loco and found a good quiet spot where I could read my book and take a swim without having to watch my backpack. The water was pretty cold, but was perfect because the intensity of the sun was unbearable! I spent a good 2 1/2 hours there and decided I would need to head back before too long to avoid another long trip through the busy beachgoer traffic.
All in all, this was a great sendoff from Valparaiso and I really really enjoyed my time there. A special thanks goes to Kent and Hostel Mariposas, this was a great place to stay and Kent had some craaaazy stores and great advice for me. Ask me about his Chilean Sea Bass fishing story sometime - this is a story for the ages! Also his hitchiking story from Iran and Kuwait... What a guy!!
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