Lagos Andinos, Part I

A couple of weeks ago, we went on our longest vacation ever. (The stats: 12 days, 11 nights, 4 planes, 3 countries, about 4200 miles, maximum land elevation 3500 meters, and 60 kg of luggage).

We had signed up with a local Travel Agent for their 12-day "Lagos Andinos" tour. The trip included: Santiago, Chile; Cruce de Lagos (Cruise of the Lakes); skiing in Bariloche, Argentina; and a few nights in Buenos Aires. Overall, it was a great trip. I'd post some great pictures to my Flickr account, but our camera was stolen in Bariloche by the maids at the hotel (more on that in a future post). I do have a few pics from our video camera - it takes stills, but not the highest quality. We weren't really expecting to have to share the video cam pics.

Day 1: We departed Sao Paulo in the afternoon, and were in Santiago by early evening. By the time we got settled at the hotel (Crowne Plaza), it was only about 8 or 9, so we still had time to catch dinner. We had a great meal at Como Agua Para Chocolate, and the wine steward gave us a lesson on wines. Chilean wines are really bold and crisp, with great legs (whatever that means). By the time we finished, it was getting late, so we just grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel.


Day 2: We woke to a bit of an overcast day in the city, but not so much as to ruin the fun. On the day's agenda was a city tour in the morning, a stop at a local shopping mall, and a tour of a Chilean vineyard. The city tour was good - well, at least as good as seeing the city from the window of a bus can be. The city seems clean, relatively safe, and the people are generally nice. We did stop once or twice to get out of the bus to stretch our legs and get a closeup of a few sites. One stop was the Presidential Plaza where we were lucky to see the arrival of the President of Chile, and his entourage and military parade. I guess this is one of the more touristy things to see in Santiago as I see some of the same pictures we took posted all over the web. We also saw the city cathedral, which was impressive for sure.

Later in the day, we stopped at a Shopping Mall for lunch. For Edge, this was one of the highlights of the whole trip. There before us was the neon glow of "Burger King", "Taco Bell", and "Dunkin Donuts". Seriously, he almost wept. As far as the fast food places we are oh-so-familiar with in the US, to date we've only seen two of them in Brazil - McDonalds and Pizza Hut. MickeyD's tastes basically the same as back home, but Pizza Hut is different (Brazilian's do not put a lot of tomato sauce on their pizzas). But, Burger King was an elusive dream for Edge, and he happily ate is Whopper. There's rumored to be one somewhere in Sao Paulo, but he's is down 2 votes to 1 on us hazarding a trip to inner-city Sao Paulo to find it. Regardless of what Edge says, we think it's refreshing not to be inundated with all those over-commercialized fast food restaurants here.


Last stop on the tour was the Concha y Toro vineyard. This is one of our favorite wines that we have discovered in Brazil. The tour was interesting and we got some free wine along the way. Unfortunately, July is not the month too see any grapes on the vine as it's the dead of winter in South America now. We spotted the "diablo" of the "Castillo de Diablo" wine fame in the underground dungeon (somewhat tacky, and clearly touristy, but fun).



Finally, after a long day, we went out to a Chilean-themed tourist-friendly restaurant/dance hall. The food here was not the best, but the show was good. It featured costumes and dances from each of the different regions of Chile, including Easter Island (yes, that Easter Island; it's a part of Chile). In the end, we wound up dancing a bit ourselves, and a good time was had by all.

In retrospect, Day 2 was one of the busiest of the whole trip. I posted a few more Pics from Days 1 and 2 on Flickr. We had a great time in Santiago and are planning on going back one day.

Look for more details of our trip in future posts.