Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Santiago, Chile

Smoggy and cool

 

We set the alarm for 7:30 – no unexpected wake-up call early this morning. The hotel provided a Continental breakfast, and Sergio was waiting for us when we reached the lobby with our luggage just before 8:30. It took about a half hour to reach the airport in the morning rush hour traffic. Sergio charged us $45 for the service. We checked in, cleared security, and had nearly a two hour wait before our plane boarded.

 

It is a short flight across the Andes to Mendoza; we were only in the air about 40 minutes. The western portion of the Andes is barren and appear to be sedimentary. The high Andes were shrouded in clouds, however. I was seated next to a nice young lady returning to Mendoza from a three month stay in the U.S., so she spoke excellent English and was quite chatty. She even said her parents would be happy to take us to our hotel, but she had four suitcases and there probably wasn’t room.

 

We waited in line at immigration for a half hour. Our luggage was waiting for us – LAN managed to break the handle on mine.

 

We quickly located a taxi, and 15 minutes and $10 later we were at our hotel. The drive into town was unimpressive. It is quite arid and the houses near the airport look rather poor. It was about 2 PM, and there was a message waiting for us at the front desk that we would be picked up at 4 PM for our group city tour. The hotel, Hotel Argentino, is again, certainly adequate for one night.  It is very European, and is located across the street the main plaza in the center of the city.

 

After settling in, and having two hours to kill, we headed out in search of lunch. What an adventure! We found a restaurant that appeared popular and, very importantly, accepted AMEX. Unfortunately, only one employee spoke a LITTLE English. We were rescued by the two women at the next table who were able to help us order. We wanted something light, and settled on what we thought were two BLTs and two bottles of water. First the waitress brings two large bottles of water, so we send one back. A while later she appears with one plate with four large triangular sandwiches which certainly looked like two whole sandwiches to us. The BLTs turned out to be more like ham and cheese with lettuce and tomato. Anyway, it was fine. That is, until the waitress showed up about five minutes later with a second plate! We explained that we couldn’t possibly eat all that and she graciously took it back. Lunch was $10 and we got a real lesson on why we need to learn Spanish if we want to visit places like Mendoza again.

 

We were picked up shortly after 4 PM by our driver, Alex, and guide, a young lady named Paula. Both speak fairly good English. There was already another couple on the van, and we made three more stops at various hotels, bring our group up to ten. We are the only English speaking people! This is going to be interesting.

 

We spent the next three hours touring Mendoza by van and on foot. Paula did as good a job as possible giving a bilingual tour. I won’t bore you with all the facts, but here are the basics. The large province of Mendoza has a population of 1.1 million; 900,000 live in this city. Founded in 1561, it was flattened by an earthquake 300 years later. They rebuilt the city a short distance away. It is a planned city build around a large central plaza, surrounded by four smaller plazas. The plazas and wide avenues are to provide safety in case of another earthquake. The fountains in the center hopefully will provide water.

 

The area is basically a desert. But the Mendoza River, flowing off the Andes, provides a constant supply of water. The streets are all lined with trees, mostly sycamore, and they are all irrigated by a system of small canals between the street and sidewalk. The trees provide beauty, shade, oxygen, and hold the soil. They have essentially created an oasis in the desert.

 

They are very fond of monuments in Mendoza, and I think we visited every one. They are also very proud of their park which occupies about 1000 acres on the west end of town. There is a 1 km long artificial lake used by the rowing club, and a rose garden. Virtually every tree in the city and park was planted.

 

It was after 7 PM when we finally were returned to our hotel. We finished off the last of the 24 bottles of wine purchased in Buenos Aires for the cruise. Then we headed off on foot to a restaurant, Azafran, highly recommended by the hotel for dinner. We arrived about 8 PM. They were full inside, but there were table available outside. Mendoza is cool at night and warm during the day (at least during late summer), so it was quite comfortable dinning outside. We ordered a trio of empanadas to share; they were much better than yesterday’s. We both ordered a filet wrapped in cheese and pastry. And a bottle of Malbec, of course. While waiting for our entrée they brought us what I would call a shot glass of vichys. Then they brought out a kind of potato. Then the chef appeared, apologizing for the delay, as they had just finished serving a party of twenty. Finally, around 9:30, our entrees arrived. It was very good, and since we had nothing else to do, it was worth the wait.  We finished around 10 PM, and people were still arriving to eat! We walked back to the hotel and retired soon thereafter.

 

 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Mendoza, Argentina

Clear and pleasant

 

I got up at 7:30, showered and shaved. It will be quite a while before I get to do that again. We went to the hotel restaurant for the continental breakfast around 8:15 and it was a zoo! Marcia finally laid claim to a table. We checked out of the hotel, leaving our luggage to be retrieved later, and sat outside waiting for our guide.  Sandra and our driver (whose name we never could get) arrived just before 8 AM in a Toyota Camry – we have a private tour today, a real bonus after yesterday’s experience.

 

Sandra is about our age, has always lived in Mendoza, and speaks very good English. She told us more of Mendoza’s history, especially as it relates to wine. Wine was produced early in the town’s history, as it was needed for communion. We will be visiting two wineries today; the first is the oldest still in operation, the other is just a few years old. Both are known for excellent wines. There are only 1260 wineries in Mendoza. It would take a while to visit them all. Only about 20 wineries are still owned by Mendoza families.

 

Our first stop is Alta Vista. The old winery here was purchased a number of years ago by a French family and they restored the building and equipment, as well adding modern equipment. There are beautiful vineyards lined with olive trees surrounding the winery. But the vineyards are just for show. The working vines are located in several different areas around Mendoza; the land this close to town is too valuable, so most of it has been sold off. They do harvest the olives and make an excellent olive oil. The snow covered volcano, _______, is clearly visible from this location.

 

We toured both the winery and the cellar, which lies directly below the winery. The barrels are fixed in place; they fill the barrels using hoses through holes in the ceiling to the winery above. Next we entered the tasting room. Alta Vista makes six tiers of wine. They only export the bottom two tiers. They don’t make enough of the higher tiers to meet the demand. Their premier tier is a blend that they won’t even bottle if the vintage is inadequate. We tasted several of the fourth tier wines, and then were treated to the 2007 vintage of their finest wine. It is outstanding; so much so that Marcia convinced me (with little arm twisting) to purchase a bottle for a mere $100.

 

Our next stop was Vino Cobo, a relatively new winery in an ultra-modern building. We shared our tour here with four others. The wine tasting was first. This winery has four tiers; we sampled mostly the lower ones. The wines were okay, but paled in comparison to what we sampled at Alta Vista. The other couple had purchased a bottle of Vino  Cobo’s finest Malbec, and kindly offered us a taste.  It was excellent, but I don’t think it was worth the $200 price tag. We toured the impressive new equipment in the winery and barrel room as well. They have finished with Chardonnay this season, and are just starting to harvest the reds, as the season is a little late this year.

 

After our tour of Vino Cobo, we returned to Mendoza where Sandra dropped us off at at 1 PM at a recommended restaurant for lunch, La Marchigiana. We both had lasagna, although different kinds, and I had one final glass of Malbec.

 

We walked the few blocks back to the hotel, and then killed the next hour walking around the plaza and the pedestrian mall. There are few stores open, as they shut down for siesta about 1 PM, and then reopen around 4 PM and remain open until late in the evening. Marcia thinks it is a poor business model.

 

At 3 PM the taxi arrived to take us to the airport. We checked in with LAN, but there were for some reason unable to check our bags any further than Atlanta. We have to pick up our bags in Atlanta for customs anyway; we will figure how to get them to Savannah. LAN pushed back early and was in the air by the 5:25 departure time. This plane is full of families with young children and it is a real zoo. Fortunately, it is only a 40 minute flight. We circled back over the city; the plazas and park were easily recognizable. We crossed the Andes and spotted the large reservoir that supplies Mendoza. There are fewer clouds today, but the highest peaks are still obscured. As we neared Santiago, the smog returned.

 

We had over two hours before our plane boarded. Marcia did a little last minute shopping – we really haven’t purchased much on this trip. The Delta desk finally opened and I got our boarding passes. I explained that our bags were only checked to Atlanta, and they said they would see what could be done about it. Just before we boarded we were informed our bags had been rechecked through to Savannah. Thank you, Delta! Somewhere I lost the stack of papers with all the information about our trip. I think I left them at the Delta desk. The only thing I still needed is the phone number for the hotel courtesy van, but I can find that.

 

The plane pushed back on time at 9:10 PM and we were in the air by 9:30. We are on a 767 and have the two seats by the left window. It is reasonably comfortable, but we lack the personal entertainment unit. The 9½ hour flight was uneventful. They showed a dumb movie (Perfect Pitch) – I listened to music instead. Dinner was the usual lousy fare. We each took an Ambien.

 

 

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Atlanta

Very cool

 

The next thing I remember was them waking us up for breakfast at 5:45 (4:45 in Atlanta – we only gained one hour because the U.S. went to DST while we were gone). We landed about an hour later. Immigration was fairly quick, especially by Argentine standards. Custom was a breeze as well. We rechecked our bags, and then waited in the longest line of all to go through TSA “security”. My shampoo and conditioner container were a little too large, even though they were only half full, so they had to test these potentially lethal substances.

 

We took the train to Terminal B and found the Delta Sky Club to await our flight to Savannah at boards about 10:30 AM. I used the time to catch up on my journal. The plane departed on time and we were in Savannah with our luggage by 12:30. We waited about 10 minutes for the courtesy van to take us to the Mini. We were home about 1:30. It was just under 24 hours ago that we were picked up by the taxi in Mendoza. We spent about 13 on planes, either in the air or on the ground. Less than two hours were spent in cars going to and from airports. The remainder of the time was just sitting in airports.

 

It was a great trip. We saw wonderful sights and enjoyed exceptional weather in places notorious for overcast skies and rough seas. And we traveled with two of our closest friends. It is unlikely we will return to any of our ports of call, but they were certainly worth visiting. We can cross them off the bucket list. I wonder where we will travel to next?

 

End of blog.