Santiago was only a few hours away from Valparaiso. The city was really nice. There were lots of outdoor cafes and nice restaurants like Europe (and Hoboken). Even if its freezing outside, it seemed like the people in Santiago loved to sit outside. I was too cold myself. The city even had a subway or metro system. It felt like I wasn't in South America anymore. (By the way, if you say subway to some Europeans, they don't think of the subway trains underground. They think of the sandwich. And definitely don't call it a train. They get all confused.) I had tried to get in touch with this lady Maria that I had met in the Galapagos. She lived in Santiago and said I could stay with her. I was already in a hostel but I wanted to at least meet up with her. But it didn't work out. I was only there a few days.
Anyway, we took the metro to a winery to do some wine tasting. We went to Concha Y Toro. It is Latin America's major wine exporter. The most famous and global wine brand is Casillero del Diablo.
The winery was really nice. We had a great lunch there before our tour. The tour took us around the grounds and saw a few of the many vineyards.
Then we went down into the Casillero del Diablo cellar. The reason for the name was the owner created a myth that there was a devil that lived in the cellar. He didn't want people to steal the wine. It worked. People believed the devil lived there and stopped stealing. The tour brought us down into the cellar. There was this scary audio they played of the Diablo story while we were in the dark down there. It was pretty funny because it was supposed to be scary, but it wasn't really. Then they showed us where the devil was. It was just a picture at the end of the hallway.
Then the best and most important part of the tour, the wine tasting. We got two tastings, a red and a white. I took a picture of the better one, the red. We even got to keep the wine glass as a souvenir. The one really good thing I learned was that 2007 was a phenomenal year for wines in Chile. So if you get a 2007 Chilean wine, that's really good.
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