Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Santiago & Santa Cruz (25.02.2014 - 29.02.2014)

In Santiago we visited the Plaza de Armas and had a look at its surrounding buildings. Strolled through the side streets and ended up in the fancier Bellavista district. Had some burger and beers and headed back to the little apartment we had rented with Has & Steff. Even went to the gym on the 25th floor with an awesome view! The pool was sadly too cold ;)
We met up again with Pim & Mark and ended up drinking till 2 in the morning and weren't the only ones having a good night out on a wednesday.
The next day we said goodbye to our welsh friends as we headed south and they would catch a flight to New Zealand two days later.
In Santa Cruz we stayed two nights to visit one of the many vineyards in the region. Together with an other visitor from Santiago we had a tour of the vines by horse cart. The lady explained the history behind the vineyard and the different grapes before heading to production facilities. We saw how the grapes get cleaned, crushed, filtered and then stored in oak barrels. Later the wine gets bottled and depending on demand a single lady labels all bottles by hand!
For the pricier wine this means to applying glue by hand to four labels and then attaching them so they are properly aligned. The rest have stickers for the front and back which have to be placed by hand as well. Because the wine yard is quite small and each country where they export to has different laws in terms of labelling it isn't feasible to buy/rent a machine.
Afterwards we could try the different wines they have on offer and ended up buying a bottle for later on ;)