Day 21 - Off to the coast for a field trip

Well we slept in until 8:30. Sleepy heads again. Today we head to Santa Cruz, and Llico at the coast. It is Saturday so the four of us are heading out of town for a getaway. Rick has booked us into a wonderful cabin about a 5 hour drive south of Santiago. We will be passing through an area known as the Central Valley, which is wine country providing a perfect lunch spot. We stop a the Viu Manent Winery which is just outside of the town of Santa Cruz for lunch and a bit of a tour about. The lunch spot is beautiful. As we dine amongst the grape vines, there is a horse jumping course to watch, and a few dogs (which look like big dogs until they stand up and then they look funny as they have short legs). The food is good as is a nice glass of white wine with lunch. We then went to the winery to do a bit of tasting. We like a cabernet savagnion and a Camamere. Interesting story about the Camamere as the grapes had been a very popular grape in Europe and North America, but a bug had killed all the vines, It was thought that all the grape plants had become extinct until the plant was rediscovered in Chile where it had been mistaken for Merlot grapes until 1992 when it was realized that they were the Camamere grape plant. The price ranged on this type of grape was a little more then the cab sauvignon (7,000 vs 10,000 ($12 vs $20) but we thought it would be excellent for at the cottage so decided to purchase. After Dawson got through the lineup he realized it was 39,000 pesos which is about a $90 bottle of wine. Most expensive wine we have ever bought. We decided to keep it as a treat. Hopefully it is good.

After leaving the winery we continued to drive along. Rick pointed out some of the damage from the 2010, 8.8 ricter scale earthquake that had damaged this area SW of Santiago quite badly (in addition to shaking Santiago up quite a bit but no major damage due to good construction and it happened at night when building debris did not hit people on the sidewalks). Finally at around 6 pm we reach our destination. The cottage is on a small hobby farm with an olive grove, 5 llamas and beautiful flowers. We "check in" which consists of saying hi to the owners Sully and Charles and head out for a walk along the beach to appreciate the sunset on the Pacific. Quite a lovely orange site. Pink sky afterwards which is not surprising as it sounds like there is hardly ever any rain here.

The cabin is near a fresh water lagoon that has black necked swans which is quite unique. We head up to the main house to have a few beers with our hosts. Sully is Chilean and Charles is English. They are also past sailors so regale us with a few stories. They had returned to land about 7 years ago and have had this property for about 6. They have a couple of cabins they rent out along with producing olive oil. Rick has stayed here a couple time before and has brought Charles 6 bottles of English beer, Fullers London Pride. But before we have a beer we are introduced to the world of olive oil tasting. Something none of us have ever heard of. As we are tasting 3 oils we also get educated on the olive oil market. Olive oil tasting is similar to wine tasting, and requires you to hold the oil in your mouth and then airate by sucking air through your teeth, a very interesting experience. Once we are finished the oil tasting Charles serves us all London Pride. After a few beers Sully serves some Empanada's which are meat pastries made by Sully's mother. They are delicious with her homemade salsa which has some zing to it.

Off to bed for 11 so we can get an early start to our next day adventures.

Photo Notes
1) Dawson with Viu Manent's graphs
2) Julie and Rick at Viu Manent
3) Short legged dog
4) Julie in front of Viu Manent wine store
5) Earth quake damage to church en route to Llico
6) Flowers at Sully and Charle's Olive farm
7) Sunset over the Pacific at Llico

Cheers Julie and Dawson