Category: Chile

Chile: San Pedro & Food

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DAY 7

SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA
Since we had the morning free, we decided to go into San Pedro and visit the Museum del Meteorito. (The hotel van drove us over, but we walked back which took about 45 minutes.). The museum is small, two tent-like domes and was surprisingly high tech.  

With an audio guide (in English), we made the circuit around the larger dome and heard about the meteorite artifacts that were in glass cases. Below each case was a video screen with a clip about what was in the case, how it got there and how meteors form and what their significance is for planet Earth. There were also wall-mounted posters in both Spanish and English with some of the same information.

The level of detail was almost that of an undergraduate course, but we did learn a lot and, at the end, got to touch some meteorite fragments which were explained to us by a resident guide.  

We then walked along dusty sandy, Tocopilla, the main thoroughfare in this town of 10,000 people. Here you find restaurants, shops, hostels, a gas station, and a very attractive church.  It’s obviously the hub for anyone wishing to explore the desert who is not staying in one of the hotels or resorts on the edge of town.  Just outside the business district is a section of homes for residents; like everything here, they are made of adobe, sometimes it’s adobe bricks, other times solid adobe walls, and even round adobe stones.  

We came upon several people in the process of adding tent-like upside down V’s to the top of their adobe wall. This tent shape is used to represent the nearby volcano.

Locals can have water delivered to square areas in their yard for their gardens, and if they don’t have their own wells, they may get water delivered to their own storage tanks or they purchase bottled water.

CUISINE
You might wonder what we’ve been eating the past few days. Overall, the food is creative and tasty.  Breakfasts here are done buffet style with the full range of hot dishes (scrambled eggs, bacon, cooked vegetables), an endless variety of breads and pastry, fresh fruit (usually pineapple, watermelon, kiwi, bananas, and cucumber melon, sort of a cross between cucumber and cantaloupe), and cold meats, cheese, and smoked salmon.

Lunch and dinner are a set menu with typically three choices for each course—an invitation to overindulge! One main course is vegetarian.  The soups are very good (cream of broccoli, cream of mushroom, vegetable with razor clams, e.g.), and we’ve had plenty of fresh fish such as corvina and swordfish plus baby octopus, fresh crab, and shrimp. The Chileans tend to eat more salads and fish and less beef than in neighboring Argentina, so we’re told.

Baby Octopus on Quinoa
Abalone on Avocado
Grilled Corvina and Shrimp on Puréed Black Beans

Today at lunch, the Chief Penguin and I both tried a special Chilean sandwich. It consisted of shredded beef on a hamburger bun slathered with mayonnaise sitting on a tomato slice, and topped with rings of chile pepper and thinly sliced green beans. The beef was tasty as were the accompanying potato wedges, but less mayonnaise was in order.

For dessert, there’s always a special cake of the day (carrot or Black Forest, e.g.), ice cream and sorbet, a cheese plate, and usually some fruit. Today the fruit was a thick slice of grilled pineapple in a syrup with saffron served with a scoop of a tropical sorbet.

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).  Header photo is a patch of green on the outskirts of San Pedro de Atacama.

Chile: Atacama Desert, Day 6

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EXPLORING THE ATACAMA DESERT
Thanks to the expertise and knowledge of Jordan and Kayli and the entire team at Knowmad Adventures, we have ended up in a fantastic place, Tierra Atacama. It is beautiful and the sunsets are unbelievably gorgeous, what I’d call layered pastels.  Located just outside the town of San Pedro de Atacama, the property is elegantly designed and landscaped, the food is excellent, and the rooms are comfortable. Included in the room rate is the opportunity to select one or more excursions each day.

Dining Room

We are at the high end of the demographic here (older, that is), and while we are in reasonably good shape considering, we have opted to do just a couple excursions during our short stay. I am not overly fond of high altitudes, but so far haven’t had any issues here at about 9,300 feet. We did nix a 6-hour excursion leaving at 6 AM to travel to geysers at 13,000 feet some distance away.

Given all of that, we had a wonderful morning with our guide, Mauro at the nearby Valle de la Luna or Moon Valley. There were just four of us plus the guide.  We stopped at several places to look around and take pictures and then embarked on a 45-50 minute walk or hike (what you call it depends on your perspective; for me it was a hike) up to several lookout points.  

Our guide Mauro

One of the few plants seen lower down.

The sand is several different colors from light tan to dark tan to almost black to matte gray, and has been sculpted by the wind and the infrequent rain into ridges and waves and valleys. In the distance, you can see the mountains and several volcanos, one of which is currently active.

Walking in from the parking area, we slogged through loose sand (just as hard as walking on loose sand on an ocean beach) and then began climbing up harder packed surfaces, not really paths, but already well trodden. We saw no vegetation from this point on, and it was beautiful and almost eerie and utterly quiet. The only sound was the wind.  

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).  I wanted to include more photos, but some of them were too large for this site.

 

Chile: In Transit North, Day 5

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HALLOWEEN IN VALPO
Last evening we had dinner at a pizzeria cum pasta restaurant which was a delightful casual place. The chef won the award for the best margarita pizza in all of Chile and the chef jacket he wore for the competition is framed on the wall. The Chief Penguin had the gorgonzola and prosciutto pizza which was delicious (I got a taste!), and I ordered the penne rigate in a simple tomato sauce with basil, also very good.  

On the way back to our hotel, we encountered several groups of children out trick or treating and were touched by the sight of them, but also of an older couple, who were standing in their doorway, she holding a box of Halloween candy.

ONWARD TO THE DESERT
We left Valparaiso and headed back to Santiago for our flight north to the Atacama Desert. November 1st, Day of the Dead, is a big holiday and leads into a holiday weekend. The traffic in our direction was normal, but the airport check-in area was totally mobbed with couples and families with children, all heading out of town! It took 40 minutes in line to check in our bags and get paper boarding passes. Then it was another fifteen minutes or so to get through security. The sign said, “No liquids allowed,” but our driver had said bottles of water were fine. So we asked the airport staff member and yes, water was allowed.

Boarding was in groups by those needing special assistance,  then priority (both customary), but the next line was for those carrying only a personal item, and the last line (the one we were in) was anyone with carry-on luggage. Interesting approach. I don’t think it was any faster, but we did have overhead bin space for our items.

Calama was our initial flight destination. It’s the home of the world’s largest copper mine and leaving the airport, you first see rows of small stucco homes for the workers and all around tan desert and then a series of wind farms. We rode for about an hour and half and there was almost no vegetation except for some tufty tan grass and what looked to me like tumbleweeds as seen in the header photo.

The desert landscape was shades of tan, pinky tan, and brown with off in the distance soft lavender to mauve mountains. The sky was a pale blue with some bands of cirrus clouds making a layered palette of pastels.  Alas, I was on the wrong side of the van to  capture the mountains.

Only when we got to San Pedro was their greenery and plants. It’s a small town with rustic stucco and wood houses, a gas station, a few restaurants, and other services. It’s an oasis of civilization and probably, a real oasis since there was so much growing. Our hotel is located a short distance out of town and is a very attractive wood and stone complex with a garden (giant hollyhocks, lavender and rosemary abound) and marvelous views of the desert and the mountains.  

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved). Header photo is a view of the Atacama Desert en route to San Pedro.

Chile: Neruda and Wine, Day 3

JWF 3 Comments

ISLA NEGRA

Poet Pablo Neruda is respected and revered by many Chileans. Politician, diplomat and man of letters, he owned three houses, one in Valparaiso, one in Santiago, and the third one on the coast at Isla Negra. This third house is a museum full of many of the objects that Neruda collected, and what a collector he was! There are ship figureheads, life-size wooden sculptures, fancy glassware, model ships, paintings, and even a gorgeous collection of seashells.  No photos allowed inside the house, alas.

The house is narrow, like the country, and has elements of both a ship in that it’s small and like a train with its narrow corridors. It’s located on a stunning stretch of coastline with large grey boulders and while we were there, huge waves crashing against the rocks, some of the largest waves I’ve seen on any beach.  

Neruda and his third wife, Matilde, lived here and he spent his last illness here in 1973, before dying in Santiago on the same day as the military coup. The museum has an audio guide in English which we appreciated and also a short film about Neruda with English subtitles. It was well worth the visit! Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Now I must read some of his poetry.

Getting here was a scenic drive through the countryside, stretches lined with pencil thin eucalyptus trees. They are often cut down and the boards used to make fence posts. The eucalyptus smell reminded me of California, particularly Torrey Pines outside La Jolla, and the dry climate and some of the flora, California poppies along the roads, are also reminiscent of that state.

CHILEAN WINE
The remainder of our day was spent visiting two wineries in the Casablanca region about a half hour outside Valparaiso.  Bodegas Re, the first one, is into doing things differently and experimenting. They are using clay pots for some of their wine aging and also huge rounded concrete vessels instead of steel tanks or oak barrels.

Over a delicious lunch, we tasted four blended wines, each paired with a dish designed to highlight its unique characteristics.  We began with a timbale of salmon, onions, coriander and another fish along side a small mound of greens, followed by round ravioli stuffed with mushrooms and tomato decorated with a red pepper purée. This was followed by a soft corn compote topped with caramelized onions and shreds of beef and then a dessert of leche asada ice cream.   Wines to go with each course were Pinotel, Chardonnoir, Syragnan, and then a liqueur of vodka with blueberries.

The second winery was Loma Largo, and the young woman who hosted us was a delight! We learned more from her about how grape vines are pruned, trained and grown in 15 minutes than we ever had in many previous wine tours. She sat with us at a round table and we tasted four of their wines, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. Cubes of cheese and a few saltines were there to accompany the wine. Two wineries, very different in style, and both great places to visit!  

We also learned that most Chilean wine is exported. Chile is a small country, only 17 million people total, and most Chileans don’t visit wineries and wine is not as popular a beverage here as elsewhere.

Upon returning to Valparaiso, we took another walk in the neighborhood before ending up at an Italian trattoria for dinner.  The restaurant we’d booked at was closed up as tight as could be.  

 

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).