Dec. 15th - Carrie´s Birthday in the Big City

It´s Carrie´s 7th 29th birthday! With that in mind, she gets breakfast delivered to her in bed from her attentive and thoughtful husband. We then get dressed and packed on onward towards our final tasting at VOE, the only organic winery in the Cohchagua valley and one of the very few in Chile. Unfortunately, Rich left his camera and IPOD at the hotel, so he and Dave rushed back to the hotel missing out on how wine is made for the 4th time in 3 days.


Carrie and Betsy enjoyed the tour as it was quite different from the larger vineyards. It´s a complete farm with llamas to cut the grass, chickens to eat the bugs off the wines, and lavendar near the vines planted to keep away root rot and bugs.









Luckily, Dave and Rich returned in time for the tasting, and quickly were caught up on the happenings via a 5 minute debriefing from the tour guide in congruence with the pictures on Carrie´s camera. Carrie's favorite part of the whole tour was probably the 4 day old llama on the accompanying farm. We finish our wine and off we go to Santiago, a city of 5 million people and therefore a major change from what we've seen so far (Antofagasta is the 2nd biggest city in Chile with 300,000 people).

After only a 2 hour drive, we have no problem finding our hotel, which is mostly due to the fact Rich stayed there 2 weeks previously when he was dropping Bryce off with Carrie´s parents. Luckily, it happened to be within 6 blocks of Bario Bellavista, which is the hippest, most happening neighborhood in all of Santiago.

With that knowledge in hand, we head out to Etniko, which both Frodors and Lonely Planet describe as THE hippest restaurant/bar in Santiago, replete with Asian cuisine, awesome drinks, and a DJ working the turntables from 10:00 p.m. on. We order up a bunch of sushi, a delicious shrimp tempura appetizer, noodles, miso, and who knows what else. Everything was fantastic, and it probably goes down as the best meal of our trip so far. So much the better that it just so happened to be Carrie's birthday dinner as well!




After enjoying a few post-dinner drinks at the bar, we head out into the barrio to explore a few more venues. We stopped to enjoy a postmodern comedy troupe´s take on the death of Pinochet (we think), and then proceed to a very charming little bar featuring a long-haired casanova playing the guitar and singing (the 5th cafe on the block with live music). After having one of the best mojitas Carrie and I have ever had, the waitress finds out its Carrie's birthday. The next thing we know, the maestro with the guitar is leading the bar in a rendition of "happy birthday", followed by the Chilean birthday song with the whole bar clapping along. Afterwards, the musician came over for a hug and a kiss on the cheek (for the girls, not Rich or I), and off we go back to Etniko to see what that scene had become (everyone that worked there told us to come back later). We pop in for a quick beer, and the scene is definitely jumping. By that time, though, the girls were turning into pumpkins, so Rich and I hustled them off to bed before deciding (incorrectly) that we needed to see some more action before we left Santiago for good.

We make the walk back to the scene and grab an empty table on the street and start telling each other our life stories. 15 minutes passes before we realize we haven't even seen a waitress or ordered a drink, and by that time we also realize that was a good thing. We go back to Etniko for one final beer before calling it a night (and perhaps two hours later than would have been appropriate, considering we had a big day of travel to follow...)