For my spring break at the end of March, Roman and I traveled to Chile to explore Santiago and a wine region about two and a half hours south of the city.

Our first stop was a town called Santa Cruz in the Valle del Colchagua, a region known for their Carmenere wines. We stayed at a quiet and comfortable bed and breakfast for 4 days and explored several vineyards via bicycle. Our first day, we rented bikes and rode the larger of the two loops on the Ruta del Vino, taking us to the Laura Hartwig and MontGras wineries. The scenery was beautiful and we had a lovely time learning about grapes and the local wines from our guide.

We visited the Santa Cruz vineyard on our second day and enjoyed the ride up the teleferico with views of the surrounding landscape. Our day ended with a visit to the Estampa winery and a nap for Roman on their patio.

On our third day, we did the shorter loop on the Ruta del Vino, visiting the vineyards of Lapostolle, Montes, and Neyen. Each winery had something unique to offer. The building that houses the wine making equipment and aging rooms at Lapostolle was built into the side of a mountain and had the most amazing architecture of any of the wineries we visited in the region. At Montes, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at their cafe and a nice driving tour around the vineyard. We ended our day at Neyen, one of the smallest vineyards we visited on our trip, but not to be outdone with the quality of their wine; they only made one varietal of Carmenere and many of their vines were over 100 years old

We headed back to Santiago on Thursday to spent a few days in the city before returning home to Quito. On Thursday evening, Chile played Argentina in a world cup qualifying match so we headed down to the stadium to try to buy tickets. This quickly became more difficult than we anticipated, given that you had to have a Chilean id in order to purchase your ticket online. We walked around for quite a while holding 2 fingers in the air but no one seemed to understand this very American way of trying to find tickets; a miracle did not come our way. Around game time, we gave up and headed back to the neighborhood of our hotel to watch the game on t.v. at a local restaurant.

The next morning we went on a walking tour of Santiago with Tours 4 Tips. We went to some of the local markets and ended the tour in the cemetery of Santiago. We learned a lot about Chilean history and culture from the tour. That evening, we met up with two friends of ours from Academia Cotopaxi, who happened to be traveling in the area at the same time, for a nice dinner and drinks at a local jazz club.

Roman ended up renting a mountain bike on our last day in Santiago and went for a ride on one of the hills near the city. Later, we had an amazing meal at Bocanariz. That night, we headed back to Quito after another memorable trip in South America.