Today begins the last part of our adventure – driving through the wine country to Santa Cruz in the Colchagua region of Chile. We’re up and out early so we don’t have to worry so much about traffic and can take as much time as we want to get down to Santa Cruz. It’s another beautiful day, and we drive out into the sunshine.
On our way down south, we’ve decided to take a detour to Isla Negra – a small little town on the coast where Pablo Neruda, the famous poet, lived. We make it there with plenty of time to spare – and quite easily considering the only map we have of Chile isn’t very detailed. It’s too early to go to the museum, so we stop at a restaurant on the main road to have some coffee. They sit us down at a table outside and we ask for Cortados – the waiter thinks for a moment, then says yes and disappears inside. After about 15 minutes I go back inside to see what’s going on! How long can it take to make coffee? It finally arrives, and it is more like cafe con leche than Cortado, but hey, we’ll take it. As we are paying the bill, it dawns on us that the restaurant isn’t even open yet! They were just polite and served us anyway – so that’s why the service took so long.
Off we go to Pablo Neruda’s house. We luck out and get an English tour within 10 minutes of arriving. The house is fantastic. It is said to be his favorite house and we can see why! Sitting on a promontory overlooking the ocean, it began as one room with large picture windows facing the ocean. Neruda expanded it using his own designs to include living areas, a bedroom and his office/study area. Neruda was a collector – and this house shows it. The stuff in there! In the huge 2 story open living room with loft , there are maybe 10 full size figureheads from old ships. The room is so big, that even sitting at odd angles and hanging from walls, they don’t crowd it, but actually make it seem like there are always people there. The dining room (which was the original room of the house) has a large round table with more figureheads on the walls and tons of glass vases, blues vases facing the ocean, orange/tan color vases facing the land, and many other collectibles. Also in the pantry here are the numerous sets of dishes and glassware that he collected.
Next up is the bedroom, on the second floor overlooking the ocean. You can feel the strength and fury of the waves hitting the rocks and the beach to the south of the house. A huge plate glass window faces the water and the bed is positioned to take advantage of the view. It is said that it is here that Neruda wanted to be in his final moments, but unfortunately he became so ill that his wife took him into the city to a hospital in his final days and hours.
The last area of the house if Neruda’s study – which was the last wing of the house he added. It mimics the shape of two train cars – with curved ceiling and “trailer” like length and width. His desk looks out onto the water, and you can imagine how this could enhance his literary prowess. The centerpiece of these rooms is an incredible stone and marble impressionist fireplace. I can’t even describe this piece of artwork (and there were no pictures allowed, so I can’t even show you) – but it was stunning, breathtaking, an amazing structure with all sorts of different stones pieced together into a totally harmonious masterpiece. Just incredible!
After exploring the study, with Neruda’s immense collection of pipes, Hindu carvings, ships in bottles and seashells, we were released into the fresh morning air to explore the grounds and the final resting place of Neruda and his 3rd (and final – as the guide kept telling us!) wife, Mathilde. Here, of course, we are allowed photos – so we snapped a few to try to capture the view, the wonder, the fury of the ocean and the general feeling of the place.
Back to the car we go – only to find a little parking “ticket” on the windshield. 400 pesos per 1/2 hour – so 800 pesos later and we’re on our way to Santa Cruz. We head in the direction of San Antonio where we hope to have lunch. After some confusing signage, we find ourselves in San Antonio – a really busy, bustling port city. There is mall and a casino – and around the mall – there are more taxi cabs than we have ever seen in our lives! We have no idea what they are doing – but it’s crazy – the traffic if stop and go and so clogged, that we ditch the idea of lunch here – and move on toward Santa Cruz.
We drive for miles and miles through San Antonio – and it’s all port! Every time we look to the west, all we see is the port. Wow – probably great seafood around here – but we’re not in the mood to try to stop and figure it out. So we head on down south and then East into to wine region and the Colchagua valley.
We made one wrong turn when we lost the Santa Cruz sign, but righted ourselves after about 5 minutes. We end up arriving in Santa Cruz right around 2 – which is when our room should be ready. We come into town from the opposite direction of where we think we should be – so we miss the turn off for the hotel and hit the 2 speed bumps in front of the university hard. A quick U-turn gets us back to the right road and down through the vineyards to the Parador de la Vina.
What a find! This adobe house out in the middle of the vineyards – literally – with 6 rooms and tons of little sitting areas, windows and doors – plus a pool right at the edge of the vineyard. Wow! We check in – all in Spanish btw – no one here speaks English much at all. We are in room #5 with 2 beds pushed together to make one – a great bathroom and walk in closet area with mini bar (and complimentary coke, coke light, water and wine!!!) – plus windows looking right out onto the vineyard. We dump our bags, get a little organized and head out to explore the town of Santa Cruz and get some lunch.
As we are leaving we ask about a Peruvian restaurant we saw very close to the hotel. The gal at reception calls them, and makes reservations for 8pm. Yay! And we’re still not speaking English!
Off we go to explore, as we are on the main road looking for the Peruvian restaurant, we forget about those darn speed bumps and hit them full speed again. Ouch! Finally, we get into town and park on the main street. We ascertain that we don’t have to pay for parking until we leave (again, no English) and we go off in search of a bank and food.
We find the bank, but get a little hung up on the food. It’s a little late for lunch and there doesn’t appear to be much open. We end up on the same street as the car – and lo and behold – we have a flat! Ed had suspected this when we hit the last speed bump – but was hoping he was wrong. Nope. Bummer! This is going to be fun.
Well, we’re starving so we end up at a nice little restaurant where they put us upstairs at a nice table, but all we want are snacks, so we go back downstairs and really weird everyone out by sitting at the bar and asking for beer, wine and “snacks”. It’s not going very well – no empanadas (come on! That’s just so disappointing), but we end up with Papas Fritas (yes, french fries – oh are we going to diet when we get home!) which are extremely good and do the trick. But it’s totally apparent that you don’t eat at the bar here in Chile. You drink. Several men come up and order drinks and then leave, but no food. Well, those crazy Americans, what can you do?
The waiter is really friendly though, so as we sit there, I decide to ask him about a service station for the tire. It took a while – a couple of missteps with service station and gas – but we ended up getting there – and it turns out the station is only a few blocks away. We pay our little parking guy (they are all so official looking with their orange vests and little tickets – although the Isla Negra guy had an electronic ticket machine – not so here in Santa Cruz), and head off to the gas station on our little flat tire (praying the whole way it’s just a slow leak and not a total blow out). The gas station attendant (it’s all full service here – no self serve anywhere) figures out our horrible pronunciation of “aire” when we point to the tire – and fills up both front tires. We’ll just have to wait and see.
We’re pretty beat by this point, and it’s getting really hot, so we head back to the Parador to do a little work and relax. We have internet access there – so we do a few things – then head out to the pool. What a fantastic 2nd to last day! Cooling off in the pool next to the vineyards (and we mean cool – it’s not heated and it’s COLD in that water!), then drying off and relaxing under the huge draping limbs of the monstrous tree off the veranda. We spend the next 4 hours, reading, napping, blogging and playing with our new best friend who follows us all over the yard – including to the pool for a drink!
After a quick shower, we head up the narrow lane lined with vines to La Casita Barreales, the Peruvian restaurant up the road. We are, of course, the first people in the restaurant – even at 8pm! We’re escorted to a cute table inside a small dining area divided by adobe walls, and adorned with Peruvian looking artwork. Everything is in Spanish – no English – so of course we order drinks first (that’s easy!) and they come with corn nuts – fresh corn nuts. Oh – yeah – we’ll just stay here and drink and eat those little delights!
Eventually we have to make our way through the menu ordering Pulpo con Moztardo (octopus in mustard sauce) to share, and for dinner, I had Fondo de Alcachofo y Camarones (cheese gratin of artichokes with shrimp) and Ed had some sort of fish (that we can’t remember now!!). Unfortunately, there was apparently something wrong with the Fondo, because our waiter came back and was trying to tell us something about the artichokes and that maybe they didn’t have it or something? Not entirely sure, but he brought the menu back and pointed at the artichokes with crab – and so after a few minutes of bad Spanish translations, I finally said “Si, Bueno”. Whatever! It’s food, I’ll eat it.
Well, whatever happened, and whatever was said, we’ll never know, because I got artichokes with shrimp and some sort of awesome cheesy seafood sauce. To die for – I was a happy camper. Ed’s meal was really great too – at least we remember he liked it – even if we can’t remember what it was! We asked the waiter to take our picture, and he made this big production of focusing and moving the camera around to get the best shot. And then, well, you can see for yourself…….think he needs to stick to his day/night job of waiting tables!
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