The actual second day here in Santiago and I think it started pretty great. I woke up refreshed and not freezing and then I looked out the window and saw the sun shining....amidst rain.
Winter rains.
Blah.
The rest of the week is supposed to be beautiful and sunny both here in Santiago and La Serena where we will be heading to tomorrow.
But today! We had breakfast at the hostel and listened to some spanish news where I was able to get....mmmm....maybe a quarter of what was being said? But I did perk up when I saw the news flash to the Eclipse....MY WHOLE REASON FOR BEING....*cough* here.
La Serena is in a place called the Coquimbo region of Chile. It's probably the largest metropolitan area in that particular area, and where most eclipse chasers I have spoken too are heading.
And the news said 300 MILLION people are going to be in the Coquimbo region during the eclipse.
I'm not surprised and yet...I'm a little surprised. It doesn't seem like a heavily populated area regularly, so I'm curious how it will handle this influx of tourists. Granted, it's a large region and there's an observatory that I'm sure a ton of people are going to.
And Katelyn and I are heading further than La Serena for the actual day of. But it might be crowded still!
Speculations aside, we moved on with our day to a wine tasting of the Casablanca valley (yeah...I know.) It's a region outside of Valparisio which is on the coast about 3 hours west of Santiago.
It was awesome! It was this place called Vinola (or Vinolina? I'll double check later) a wine store and restaurant and tasting room and auditorium and aroma class all in one.
I know. It started with us having a sparkling glass of wine, then moving into this auditorium where, on the ground floor, were tables set up with....smell jars basically. You'd pull the stopper, smell it, and see what it was via a placard that was upside down next to it. The idea was to give you a pure sense of what some notes you can smell in wine are.
After our little smell lesson, then we sat down to watch a video that showed us the valley where the wine originated, what techniques each vineyard used, and so on. Then you know, we tasted the wine and had some cheese or meat. Depended on the wine.
10/10 would totally recommend and now I wish that was how some wineries in America would operate.
After our wine sesh, we had a wonderful lunch at the same place! Empanadas and herb bread and butter (like the butter was rolled in herbs too) and a main course and desert. All included in the same price!
It was great.
Until it was time to leave because by then...well... the rain hadn't really let up. So we drove around a bit, accidentally left the city, turned around and then we decided to hit the hostel and walk around the nearby park. It was mostly clear by the time we got back and we joined a ton of people walking around playing Pokemon Go!
It was nice.
Now we're chilling and about to go to a play at a theater on a bridge??
We're near a river, and there's bridges that span it. However, one of those bridges isn't a road, it's a building!
It's nuts.
But we'll see how going to watch a play in a language we don't understand will go so...
art transcends language anyways right?
Time to find out!