January 13, 2010
Got the wake up call at 7:45, and watched MTV’s Chilean Morning video mix, They played Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, a somewhat disturbing video, Jonas Brothers, and some Spanish language rock. Unfortunately no Akon (which was blasting out of every stereo in Mendoza). The Seawolf group gathered up at 8:30 in the lobby, and I met Claudia, our short, bubbly, high energy Chilean guide, translator, and sommelier for wine, pisco (Chilean brandy), and cigars (I may have to pick up a Cohiba). We got on the bus and Claudia gave us some over view of Chilean history on the way to ProChile. ProChile is a government group which advocates Chilean exports, particularly wine around the world. A Japanese woman named Masako gave the power point. She had worked in the Chilean embassy in Japan, met a Chilean guy, and here she is in Santiago. Her English was pretty good, and her Spanish seemed even better, quite the trilinguist. We got some glossy maps of Chile and its political and wine regions, which we have to know by the end of the trip. Luckily Dave wrote a song/rap to learn the wine regions, apparently he’s putting it on youtube so we can learn it/laugh at him. Afterwards we headed out to the plaza in front where the presidential palace is located. Claudia gave us a more recent history of Chile, starting with Allende in the late 60s through Pinochet, up to the turn of the century. There were some pertinent agricultural reform issues we needed to know to understand the current wine industry here. Then we went back to the hotel to grab some lunch. I cruised solo down a couple blocks looking for a restaurant in Lonely Planet, but couldn’t find it, and chose a cafe with a chalkboard sign advertising a lunch special of tortilla verdure, vegetable tortilla. Lunches are package deals here, so it came with a fresh squeezed OJ, salad, and espresso after. The tortilla verdure, turned out to be more like a quiche, but it was tasty, and came with avocado, or palta, on top, all for $7. Then we got on the bus again to cruise down part of the Pan American highway to visit Concha y Toro Winery, one of the oldest and biggest wineries in Chile. It accounts for around 45% of all Chilean wine exports! We went on a standard tour with generic information: these are grape vines, this is a barrel, we keep the barrel room cool and humid, I guess I’m a little more knowledgeable on the topic than the average tourist, so I’ll cut our cute tour guide Monica some slack. They did have a pretty cool, archaic underground barrel room, the Casillero del Diablo, the devil’s cellar. The original Marques had problems with people stealing wine out of his private cellar, so he started a rumor that the devil lived in his cellar, which spread and wine stopped disappearing. Then we had a nice sit down wine tasting with one of the winery’s sommeliers. We tasted the 2007 Marques de Concho y Toro Merlot, Carmenere, Syrah, and Cab Sav. It came with a tasty cheese platter too. I picked up a fleece red devil-horned beanie in the gift shop along with a bottle of Riesling and Gewurtz, lets see how they do aromatic whites here.
We got back to Hotel Atton, and had 45 minutes to prep before our welcome dinner a couple blocks away. The restaurant was called Anakena, is owned by a Kiwi, and means something in Maori, I didn’t catch what. We had a set menu with 3 options for appetizer, I went with crepes filled with something rich and cheesy, several more options for entrees, I went with hot beef curry, and a couple options for dessert. I went with what turned out to be flan. It was good, but not as good as the fresh fruit plate with gelato looked. It was a classy restaurant, until I went in the bathroom and there were framed G-strings with women’s names under them over the urinals. We had pisco sours and vino with dinner, and an espresso to polish it off. Over the course of the meal the conversation deteriorated to borderline and sometimes plain inappropriate, we touched on our young professor’s potential cougar hunting, a girl whose dad called her a prude, and what tattoo the group should put on Shay’s derriere if he blacks out near an open tattoo parlor. He’s already given his consent and is onboard, however Claudia tells us tattoo parlors only operate during normal business hours. While throwing out ideas, Shay himself, jokingly suggested a tramp stamp butterfly with tribal on the edges, one of the girls in the group blushed, because apparently she has that tat! We got to the hotel around 11, and I tried to start this blog, but I found out the battery in my computer only lasts 15 minutes WTF. So I took it as a sign, along with a stomach ache, to go to bed.
