Santiago, Take 2

We have come full circle. Two months ago, we arrived in Santiago where we stayed in a wonderful hostel called Don Santiago. Now, here we are again. But this time, we are not looking forward to our South American adventures; we are reflecting on them. And, of course, we are still taking advantage of our time here.

We arrived late Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, after another great breakfast, we made our way out of the city by metro (their subway system) to the second largest vineyard in the world. Actually, where we were was only one piece of an international system of vineyards, all owned and run by Concha y Toro. There are wine tours through agencies, but our hostel guy says they are no good because they rip off the tourists. They charge $35.000 pesos per person. But if you go straight to the place, they only charge $9.000 pesos. So that plus a couple metro tickets (which is super cheap) and a $3.000 taxi ride each way, we definitely saved money. Our tour guide was hilarious. We learned a lot about wine, and we got to taste some pretty delicious reds. She gave us a taste of their newest collection, Devil's Collection, which of course it's delicious. One of the wines we tried they sell in Costco, so we'll be taking advantage of that. But it's probably cheaper here. The only downside was that it is winter here, so no grapes to try. Some other time.

For dinner, we were craving pasta, so we went to a highly recommended spot for some delicious lasagna and spaghetti. Yum.

Friday was our last day in Chile. We got up early for our last shower before being home (in 2 days) and to pack our stuff with the wine we bought. After breakfast we headed out to the market for the last time. We didn't find a guitar, but we did get a couple of other things. A friend told us that his biggest regret about his visit to South America was not getting the souvenirs that he wanted. We will not make that mistake. We then headed over to meet our friend Fran for lunch. We ate at a Peruvian place. Delicious food. Tanya and Karis accidentally ate each other's meals, but they still enjoyed it. The pisco sours helped.

In the afternoon we took a cab to the airport where we flew to Lima, then Los Angeles, where we are hanging out for about 7-8 more hours. Our travels for now have come to an end, but our blog will continue. We'll talk about things we learned, stuff we needed and didn't need, and eventually get up all the videos we took but couldn't download on the road. Stay with us!