It was a sad moment, boarding the bus and heading back to Casablanca, where I would eventually be picked up and transported to my new home in the Rosario Valley, at Vina Matetic. The source of sadness was not the work that inevitably lied ahead of me at my new winery, but rather from a sense that my journey was essentially over, and that my neverending streak of vacation destinations had finally been broken. With the sadness came a very real sense of excitement and wonder - I had accepted the job at Matetic without knowing where I would be living, how much I would be paid, what my job would entail, and a number of questions filled my brain as I embarked on another bus journey into the unknown. My travels had shown me time and time again that the "chilean way" was to go with the flow and trust that things will work out, and by this time I was perfectly comfortable with this concept.
When I did finally get to Matetic, I was greeted by so many different people and introduced to so many different members of different departments within the winery, I was very overwhelmed and it took a while for me to get my bearings and begin to find my place in the winery. Who would I be taking orders from? Who would I be living with in the house I would be calling home (all I knew is that there would be 5 women and myself)? How would I get to work and back? What things did I need that I inevitably did not bring with me, fresh from the world of hostels and tour buses? There were an insurmountable number of questions, but I was very excited to accept that I was in for an adventure and let the questions answer themselves. Immediately, I grew fond of my new place of work and my new pueblo, Lagunillas.
It took no time at all to find my niche and settle in with my new coworkers, all of whom could not be an more welcoming. I was very excited to jump right in, taking charge of a pre-bottling filtration project and getting used to a new work environment. There were some stark differences in the work environment - things were much more relaxed and the work flow not nearly as regimented as I had been used to at Stag's Leap. Conversing with coworkers was very commonplace, and I immediately established a repoire with two of the girls I would be living with in Lagunillas - Rosario and Soledad. Thankfully they both spoke English, so I knew I would always have someone to turn to if I needed an emergency translation, and they had both worked in Northern California for a harvest - it turns out we had a lot in common!
Towards the end of my first week, Soledad mentioned that two of her friends from California would be visiting our house that night, and that I was invited to drink wine and enjoy appetizers with them. I was very stoked to speak some english and to try some wine from Matetic, all while getting to know my new roomies and making some new friends. We had a very eventful night, and I felt right at home with these three girls, who had all met at Flowers Winery on the Sonoma Coast, where they had all worked together. Soledad was an intern there, along with Gianna, and Jennifer was the enologist, and they had a ton of stories to share about their time at Flowers and crazy stories about their time together. By the time the night was over, we had already made plans to go to Soledad's house in Los Condes, Santiago, where we would enjoy our last full weekend before harvest interrupted our social lives.
We left after work on Friday, and Jennifer and Soledad and I headed to Sole's house in Los Condes, where we would be treated to a Chilean Asado (BBQ) as soon as we arrived. Sole's family was more than kind, and immediately upon our arrival, we were trying chori-pan and sparkling wine, as we waited for the delicious pork tenderloin to finish cooking. As I have learned during my time here in Chile, every proper meal entails at least 4 courses - appetizers, salad, entrees and dessert, all served in succession. My fondness for Chilean food has seen its highs and lows, but nothing can beat a well cooked meal prepared in a Chilean home - and the asado that Friday night was no exception. Sole's parents and two sisters, along with her sister's boyfriends, welcomed us as part of their family and we went to bed with full stomachs and happy hearts. Little did we know that the party would continue.
The next day, we woke up late and all of us pulled out our electronic devices to connect with the world, since our house at Matetic has no internet and the opportunities to sneak away for meaningful wifi time at the winery are few and far between. I called my loved ones and checked on the status of my NCAA bracket, and I struggled to come to grips with the fact that I would not watch a single second of the tournament (not televised in Chile, and NCAA app not available through chilean IP addresses). When we emerged from the cyber world, we went out by the pool in the back yard, where we were greeted by freshly steamed mussels and some delicious porter, Cerveza Austral Yagan. It was another first time for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed eating mussels, and repeatedly turned down offers to enjoy leftovers from the asado, as I shared the concept of a new years' resolution and explained that I no longer say no to any kind of food. Lunch followed the appetizers once Gianna arrived from her work at Veramonte Winery, and we enjoyed another full on meal with Salmon followed by some delicious fruits that none of us Americans had ever heard of. After lunch, we jumped into the car and headed to a great artisanal crafts fair in the Los Dominicanos area of Santiago, where the girls shopped for clothing and a rare chilean stone called lapiz, and we all enjoyed a late afternoon stroll before we got ready to party later that night.
Around 8pm we headed to dinner, and the four of us met up with a friend of Gianna's as well as Soledad's sister Coti and her boyfriend Martin, and we had a few pisco sours and Churrascos as we got ready to go out on the town for what we knew would be a long night. During dinner, Gianna's friend Sebastian Montes told us that his boss had recently been divorced and that he was having a pool party at his house. Under normal circumstances we would have thought twice about the idea, but when he showed us photos of the house and told us about the location of the home, we did not hesitate to head to the pool party right after we finished dinner.
WHAT A HOUSE! That was our immediate reaction as soon as we set foot on property, and we were ushered out to the backyard, which offered a nightscape view of the entire city of Santiago, as well as a huge big screen on the outdoor patio, along with an open bar and a youtube DJ. What a house! The homeowner and his friends were more than generous, and they welcomed us with whatever drinks we could want (I was so happy to enjoy my first Whisky drink in months, Chivas Regal) and we spent a good couple of hours practicing our latin dance moves. Soledad taught me some basic pointers for latin-american dancing, and I was definitely a far cry from the tango dancing I had seen at the club in Valparaiso, but I was still happy to be getting dance lessons from a beautiful Chilean girl, with scotch in my hand and the entire city of Santiago in plain sight below us. Life is good.
Eventually the party moved from the house to a underground club called Candelaria, and all of us from the pool party arrived there around 2am. I think I can say without bragging that we were having the most fun of anyone in the club, and we spent a good 3 hours there, dancing to every kind of music imaginable. Eventually we all knew it was time to head home, and we were thankful that Jennifer had been kind enough to DD for us, as we headed back to Soledad's home around 5am. I assure you (Mom and Dad), this is a very normal time to end your night in Chile, as dinners are enjoyed late in the evening, and clubs and bars dont begin to fill up until well after midnight.
The next morning (or rather that same morning), we jumped into the car around 11am, and we headed out of Santiago into the Andes, where we would be heading to enjoy lunch at Soledad's family's home in the mountains, in a place called Farralones. After climbing something like 3 kilometers in elevation and carving a whole bunch of switchbacks, our two car caravan arrived at the mountainside cabin, situated just below two ski resorts with a spectacular view. Once again Sole's family treated us like royalty, and this time we ate some freshly made empanadas along with some Argentine Malbec and water - tons of water!! We dined outside on the porch (after battling a beehive), and couldn't believe the view from the cabin, and it was especially nice because the house so close to Santiago but yet so isolated from all the things happening at any given time in Chile's capital city. After lunch, Sole took us three americans on a hike down into the mountain valley, where we saw some crazy rock formations, waterfalls, an abandoned home, and even learned about the mummy that had been left behind by some early settlers in the area - a young child that had been sacrificed by his people and was fed too many coca leaves, and whose body was perfectly preserved in the cold weather of the mountains. After our hike we drove up the mountain to check out the eerily quiet ski resort town, and we checked out some views from the mountain and posed for some funny photos before we headed down from Farralones and back into our normal lives to resume our lives back in reality.
Its hard to beleive that such a great weekend could follow my first week of work at Matetic, and even harder to beleive how quickly we had been made to feel right at home with Soledad's family. When we got into the car to return to Lagunillas, it was unfathomable that it had really only been 48 hours since we left, and yet we had managed to enjoy such a wide variety of activities. It had seemed like a weeks worth of time, and I was very happy to have spent this time with my new friends Gianna and Jennifer, and I was especially happy to establish such a connection with Soledad and her family. Having been on the road for so long and travelling so far on my own, I cannot express how good it was to feel like I was back at home with family, eating delicious food and laughing, telling stories and sleeping like I had never slept before. During the span of the week, all of the confusion and bewliderment had been eradicated, and I couldn't have dreamed of a better ending to the story of my first week in the wine industry in Chile. And the cherry on top was a kiss from my new favorite coworker!
