Refugio del Tricahue
Following the advice of the tourist information office in Talca, we headed up into the Andes for a weekend at the Refugio del Tricahue, a small mountain retreat located at the end of a long-ish dirt road and, remarkably, reachable by public transit.
Talca
After our relaxing stay in Concepcion with Pedro, we headed off to Talca, a medium sized city halfway between Concepcion and Santiago, to take a wine tour through some of the region's famous vineyards. Upon arriving, however, we were rather shocked to find that this city had been pretty thoroughly devastated by the earthquake. Whereas Concepcion showed some signs of damage but was mostly lively, over half of Talca's buildings were either uninhabitable or simply leveled.
Concepcion
Our first stop after Santiago was to Concepcion, the home town of our friend Pedro. We ended up staying for four very entertaining nights with Pedro and his welcoming family. Concepcion, as you may remember, was near the epicenter of the earthquake that struck Chile about six weeks ago, and the seafront city additionally had to deal with three tsunamis a half hour after the quake.
Santiago’s Pre-columbian art museum
One afternoon after class, we decided to head over to Santiago's pre-columbian art museum, located in the former colonial tax house just a block from the central square. The building was damaged in the earthquake, but luckily for us it was open for business by the time we arrived.
Santiago part 2
As we mentioned in our first post about Santiago, Venla took a photography class that resulted in a lot of really nice pictures of the city. We thought that we would share some of them here. Enjoy!
Isla Negra
Just before leaving Santiago, we took a nice day trip to Isla Negra, one of the homes of the rather famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It was quite a nice place on the coast between Santiago and Valparaiso, which he had built shortly after his marriage with his first wife (of three). We should note, though, that the luxury of the place (as well as his other house in Santiago, which we also visited) kind of makes us doubt the communist image that the poet cultivated.
Valparaiso & Viña del Mar
Our first visit from Santiago was to the popular beach towns of Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. The town is also well known for its rather precarious location on top of steep hills that cascade down into the sea. So steep are the hills that in bygone times the Valparaisanos built a system of cable car elevators to make the trip less arduous.
Welcome to Santiago
Our first stop in the "Real" South America was, of course, Santiago, Chile. This was a really nice city where we decided to spend two weeks to get to know the country a bit before setting off for more rural adventures.
Finally Moving on to Chile
We finally did it. The entire goal of this trip was to go to South America, with a quick stop in Central America and Mexico on the way. That was pretty naïve: there is just too much to see and do in that part of the world. So, five months later, we celebrated finally getting to our goal as we stepped on a plane out of Mexico City: we were going to sip wine in Chile.