Camacho Watcho

To continue in sharing my weekend in Chile with you, I thought I would write a bit about Vina del Mar. We woke up Saturday morning and headed to the bus station for our trip to Vina. The best deal in town. Less than $5 buys you a ticket on a pretty nice bus and you head an hour and a half to the Pacific coast.

It’s a beautiful drive to Vina. You head through a small mountain range and when you emerge on the other side there are orchards and vineyards along the road. Simply beautiful. I had intended to read my book the entire way there, but I honestly never took my eyes from the scenery. One fun surprise was passing the first winery – it was Veramonte! Now, you might not know the significance of this for me but Veramonte is my favorite Chilean Sauvignon Blanc that I drink back home. Literally I was telling Holly a few minutes before that the only Chilean wine I ever drink is Veramonte and voila! There is the winery! So, the picture below is taken from the bus of the Veramonte winery.

We made it to Vina by about 1:30 and had lunch at the hotel. Our sole purpose of heading to Vina was to lounge in the sun and that we did on Saturday afternoon. Our room was right on the ocean, basically hanging over it. It was so relaxing. Later in the afternoon, we took a stroll along the ocean and into the town of Vina del Mar. A long, wooden boardwalk runs along the beach and on it are market vendors, puppet shows, pony rides…just about everything you can think of.

That night we went to dinner in Valparaiso. We had intended on doing some sightseeing there, as it’s supposed to be an amazing older city, but we got there just a bit too late to see anything. Instead we went straight to dinner, which was at a typical Chilean restaurant, but the actual place was beautiful. It’s located inside an old mansion that is on the hillside overlooking the bay. Wow – what a view! I tried to order Chilean seabass again, but wouldn’t you know it…they were out of seabass. Hello! I’m in Chile, right?

At this point I feel the need to digress. So, there is a behavior that is common amongst Chilean people that I really do not care for. I know I should not take offense to it as they do not mean to offend, but it surprised me so much and I really don’t like it. It’s common for people in Chile to shake (or wag, as I like to call it) their finger at you when they disagree or want to show you that something isn’t right. Think of a parent scolding a child saying “no no no”. That is how it makes me feel. You see this all over the place. If you try to catch a cab and you don’t realize that it’s already taken they wag their finger “no no no”. It’s very common. But dinner on Saturday night was my final straw. As I said, I tried to order the seabass and I got the wag of the finger “no no no”. They are out of seabass…how was I supposed to know? They didn’t tell me this. It’s printed on the permanent menu, but somehow I am responsible for knowing to the point that I am now being scolded with the wagging of the finger…I guess that’s just the way it is. So, back to Saturday night…

After dinner, we headed to “Huevo”, a dance club with multi-levels of different themed rooms. There were rooms for disco, 80s, loungey sounds, boy-bands (yes, In Sync and Backstreet videos abound)…just about every theme. We settled into the 80s themed room and hung out there for a bit. We didn’t stay long, however, and decided to leave right about the time when we spotted a cross-dresser wearing a white leotard and ballet tu-tu, with bright blonde pig-tails, gliding across the floor on roller skates. At that point, we said chau to “Egg”.

We, of course, ended our trip with a quick detour to a winery on our way back to the airport. We quickly toured, tasted and got back on the road to make our flight back. All in all, our trip to Chile was amazing. It is definitely a wonderful country, minus the finger wagging, and I hope to return someday soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 2:46 am and is filed under Chile, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.