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Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

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Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro.  (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.)  If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float.  A lot.  This sounded cool, so we signed up.  What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold.  Really, really cold.  We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna.  Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan floating in Laguna Cejar image

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset.  This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Sunset at Laguna Tebenquiche image

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum!  Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long.  One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour.  Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English.  With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish.  We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away.  We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?).  This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Salar de Atacama image

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon.  They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Flamingos at Salar de Atacama image

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

Flamingos up close image

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude.  They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car.  And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van.  Not exactly adventure travel.

Path at lagoon image

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat).  Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around.  And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

Salar de Talar image

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Salar de Talar image

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit.  The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Toconao plaza image

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature.  After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all.  Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it.  Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust.  He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING.  Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago.  It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

La Estaka image

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music.  The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak.  There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon.  Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks).  Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome.  By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!).  This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

La Estaka outside image

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka.  They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours.  We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!!  We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant.  This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag.  It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done.  We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert.  We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude.  Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had.  He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered.  The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy.  We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table.  It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day.  The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good.  We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s  a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added.  Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter.  We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town.  We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation.  It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95).   The room was pretty, done in adobe.  But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors.  The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

Takha Takha image

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have.  For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

Hostal Katarpe image

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value!  Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!!  All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast.  The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun.  The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Hostal Katarpe patio image

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here.  It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible.  We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again).  Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

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We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat.  San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world.  We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen.  Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below).  This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went.  We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome.  This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon!  (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions.  We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor.  Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up).  Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro.  It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one.  We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this.  Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed.  We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Hiking in Valle de la Muerte image

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding.  We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Sand dune image

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing.  Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Valle de la Muerte view image

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria.  Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over.  We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Valle de la Luna sunset image

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset.  Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town.  First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am.  The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark.  The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there.  We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing.  And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing.  I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast at Tatio geysers image

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own.  The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air.  But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning.  The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up.  But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

Tatio geysers image

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs.  Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there.  It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places).  It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Hot springs image

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill.  It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

Jen hugging cactus image

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later).  The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary.  And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year.  What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro.  A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky.  We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away.  We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars.  Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible.  He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard.  Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars.  He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries.  He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them.  We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!!  And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly.  And lots of other cool things.  We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les.  He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Atacama desert night sky image

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip.  It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done.  I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!!  Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro?  Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update:  Part 2 is posted:  Trip Report:  San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Beaches and mountains and wineries, oh my!: More reasons why Santiago rocks

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While Santiago is a great city in and of itself, possibly its most compelling feature is its proximity to an amazing variety of incredible day-trips, ranging from beaches to wineries to mountains and more.  This is a tale of some of those day-trips.

Context

I thoroughly enjoyed writing about career related topics (e.g., Career Option-value) and will absolutely be writing a lot more involving evil mongeese in the near future, but I didn’t want to go too long without offering a little travel-related inspiration…

We’ve been in Santiago, Chile for a couple of weeks now and we continue to like it more and more (see our original post on Santiago).  So much so in fact that we are now seriously considering getting jobs and living here for the foreseeable future.  Anyone have any good leads?  🙂

We may sound crazy.  You may be wondering why we would consider living so far away from home.  There are many reasons.  In this post, I’ll discuss 3 of them: beaches, mountains and wineries.  Oh my.

Santiago day trip 1: Beaches

About a week ago we made plans with some friends to go skiing in some of the gigantic mountains hovering just outside/over the city.  We headed over to their house at around 9am to meet up.  When we got there, they told us that they had heard the weather was rough and it might be snowing too hard in the mountains for skiing to be much fun.  We are fair weather skiers, so skipping the slopes for the day was fine with us.  After some discussion about possible alternate destinations, we decided to drive to the coast for the day.  It was drizzling for most of the ~1 hour drive, so initially we weren’t all that optimistic about the beach.  We were in for a surprise.

We started at Isla Negra, which is a small beach town a bit south of Valparaiso and the site of one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (he’s kind of a big deal here).  The tour of the house was very worthwhile (this guy collected all kinds of crazy stuff, including a narwhal tusk!).  Beyond the house, the beach was fantastic which was helped by the fact that the rain stopped..

Isla Negra beach image

This was Pablo Neruda's backyard. I wish it were my backyard.

After our tour, we decided to drive a bit further up the coast to Viña del Mar.  Viña is a popular beach destination for a good reason.

Viña del Mar coastline image

It's always a beautiful day in Viña del Mar

The weather was significantly better at Viña.  We had an awesome lunch on an outdoor patio (keep in mind that it’s the dead of winter here) and then took to the beach…

Viña del Mar beach image

Everyone out enjoying this beautiful winter day

Also, there were some very cool sand sculptures.

Viña del Mar beach sand sculpture image

Such as this crazy dragon thing

We got some ice cream, hung out on the beach for a few hours and eventually headed back to the city.

Let’s recap:

  1. We woke up in the morning ready to go skiing.
  2. We determined that it was snowing too hard to go skiing
  3. Rather than driving an hour east for skiing, we drove an hour west to the coast
  4. We spent the day enjoying a sunny, warm and beautiful day at the beach and eating ice cream (because it was snowing too hard to ski).

Does this seem strange to anyone?  Is this sequence of events possible anywhere else in the world?  If so, let us know!  If not, join us in basking in the awesomeness that is Chile.

Santiago day trip 2: Mountains

This weekend it wasn’t snowing too hard.  With our friends at the wheel, we managed to make the ~1 hour drive east (though ‘up’ is the more accurate direction) and hit the slopes at Valle Nevado.  It was our first time skiing in the Andes and it was unlike any skiing we had ever done before (in a good way).

Valle Nevado ski lodge image

This is the lodge down at the base (yep, that's the bottom...)

Aside from the incredible views and massive amounts of snow in every direction, there is something quite unique about skiing in the Andes…

Valle Nevado slopes images

Hmmm... what's missing from this picture?

Trees.  There are no trees.  I’ve never skied without trees before.  They pretend that there are separate runs, but really it’s more of a free-for-all where you can pretty much go anywhere–there is nothing but snow and mountains for miles and miles and miles.  At the lodge, you can conveniently pay for a helicopter to drop you off further out if you’re crazy (we saw it go back and forth more than a few times), or some people apparently take a lift up and just head off in a different direction and have a friend pick them up near the side of the road somewhere down the mountain (or just hitchhike from there).

I’ve skied all over the US, but I’ve never seen this much fresh powder–certainly none that is this light and fluffy.  Also, it doesn’t get that cold (rarely below freezing) and apparently the day we were there was the most crowded our friends have ever seen it–sometimes we waited in lift lines for up to 2 minutes.

Valle Nevado lift image

This is the 'most' crowded it's ever been...

And another thing…

Echaurren glacier at the top of Valle Nevada image

At the top of one of the lifts you get an incredible view of the Echaurren glacier (top left) which is hanging out at around 17k feet

If glaciers aren’t your thing, there are also some spectacular views of the city way down below.

Santiago view from Valle Nevada image

That's Santiago city down there in that valley. If you look closely you can see the buildings... completely surrounded by mountains

Not only that, but the drive home offered some pretty spectacular sunset views.

Sunset on road to Santiago from the Andes image

Sunsets in Chile do not mess around

Let’s recap:

  1. 1 – 1.5 hour drive from city
  2. Amazing powder skiing, wide-open runs, not crowded, warm
  3. Incredible glacier views
  4. Incredible city views
  5. Incredible sunset
  6. If we were feeling lazy, we could have gone to the beach instead

Convinced yet?  If you still don’t agree with us that Chile is awesome, that’s fine.  There’s plenty more…

Santiago day trip 3: Wineries

On another day, with some other friends (people are friendly here), we headed north to the small town of Los Andes.  It’s about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours north, nestled in between the Andes and the Coastal Range (more mountains) and more or less surrounded by the vineyards of the Aconcagua Valley (you have to be specific because there are like 7 wine valleys within an hour or so of the city).

Los Andes, Chile vineyard image

The views were ok

Frankly, there wasn’t really any need to have a particular destination in mind, you can basically just start driving and stare in awe out the window at the amazing scenery beyond every turn.

We had been pretty fixated by the Andes, but we learned about a whole new mountain range on this trip.

Coastal range from Los Andes image

Those are part of the Coastal Range. Also awesome.

We stopped at one point and did a little hiking through vineyards to get to the top of a hill (which happened to be the site of some very interesting petroglyphs).

Los Andes winery and mountains image

This is what we saw

After we managed to tear ourselves away from these incredible views (and of course buy as many bottles of wine as we could carry after some wine tasting) we headed to our friends’ favorite lunch destination in the area…

Los Andes lunch spot image

Decent place to have lunch -- try the drunken chicken

As if the above wasn’t enough, we also were treated to a brief performance by these guys:

Huasos image

Huasos - Like guachos, but Chilean

Once again, let’s recap:

  1. 1 hour drive
  2. Spectacular scenery along the way
  3. Not one, but 2 mountain ranges (Coastal Range and Andes)
  4. Cool wineries that make great wine in unbelievable settings
  5. Drunken chicken for lunch
  6. Chilean cowboys

What more could you want?

In Summary

We used to live in San Francisco.  San Francisco is known for having lots of incredible day trips you can do near the city.  While we are big fans of San Francisco, the day trip possibilities around Santiago make San Francisco day trips look a little silly (in diversity, intensity and proximity).  We’ve only just begun exploring this city/country and so far we are blown away.

Where else can you do all of this and more so close to a major city?  Why doesn’t everyone live here??  🙂

Check out more photos in our gallery:

Beach day photos

Ski day photos

Winery day photos

Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

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You don’t have to go all the way to Mendoza to taste great Argentine wines!!!

We’d heard good reviews from friends who’d done tastings of Argentine wines here in Buenos Aires with Anuva Wines and had been meaning to do it for months.  When Ryan’s sister came to visit and we thought we wouldn’t have time to visit Mendoza, we decided to book a tasting with them ($40 per person when we did it).  Due to Ryan’s sister’s obsession with Argentine malbecs, we requested to do a malbec-only tasting, and Sarah from Anuva ordered in a few special wines for us from Mendoza.

Logistics:

Anuva’s tastings used to be held in owner’s home in Las Canitas, but they recently moved them to a trendy new hotel in Palermo Hollywood (the Rendez-voux Hotel) because the neighbors were starting to wonder at all the random people coming to the building every evening and leaving drunk and happy.  We were a little disappointed when we first found out that they’d moved, because we’d planned to go to dinner in one of the many great restaurants in the Las Canitas neighborhood afterwards, but we ended up loving the location in Palermo (and Palermo’s not exactly short on great places to eat).  The hotel looks brand new and is decorated in a cool modern design.  The tasting was held in the the hotel’s lounge/cafe area, with bright orange upholstery – sounds weird, but it worked – see?

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So many glasses, so little time

It might have been strange if hotel guests were using the lounge area, but for our tasting it was just us so worked great.  We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by Sarah, who I’d emailed with beforehand and who was hosting our private tasting.  Sarah had the table beautifully laid with an assortment of Anuva-branded tasting glasses at every seat (we like seeing lots of wine glasses waiting for us . . . means lots of wine).

The wine tasting experience:

We started with a tasting of a sparkling wine (the only non-malbec of the night), paired with a green apple/Roquefort cheese bruschetta (may sound weird, but it was really good!!).  Our next wine was a malbec rose, followed by 4 traditional red malbecs.  It was a great selection of wines – all with their own distinct personalities, all from different boutique Argentine wineries that we had never come across.  The wines were paired with quite a plate of munchies – as I recall, a massive carne empanada, several different cheeses, a cheese and quince-paste spread, several sausages and 2 different types of chocolate – yum.  I didn’t exactly realize they were each meant to be paired with a specific wine so started digging in when Sarah brought them to us . . . oops.  It was really cool when Sarah led us through each wine with its paired food–despite many, many trips to wineries in California (we are lushes) we had never really had a great food pairing experience like this–it really does make a difference.

Our favorite wine of the night was the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec – despite the name, it’s actually located in Mendoza.  It’s possible that Sarah skewed our opinions by telling us this was her favorite before we’d even tasted it . . .  Who cares, it was awesome.

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This isn't our picture because we were too tipsy to remember to take one, so we got this one from Anuva. That's the wine we loved on the right!

The company (Anuva wines):

Through the tasting, we peppered Sarah with questions, especially as we had since decided to add in a trip to Mendoza and wanted to know all the right wineries to visit, her favorite restaurants and any other pointers she had.  She was very knowledgeable and at the same time just fun to spend the evening with – we really enjoyed our time with her. At the end of the ~2 hour tasting, we decided to take 2 bottles home with us – Anuva has a cellar there at the hotel, so we walked out the door with our bottles that night.  And – this is awesome – we didn’t have to worry about bringing the right amount of cash as Anuva accepts both Paypal and credit cards – Sarah just billed us for the balance of our tasting and the bottles we took home.  If you haven’t spent much time in Argentina, I can’t tell you how (1) uncommon and (2) appreciated this is!  Anuva also has a business shipping wine to the US, so we bought enough to last us through the rest of our time here, knowing we could get more once we got back to the US (and decent prices too – lots of stuff under US$20).

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The aftermath - a very happy Jen and Ashley with our host, Sarah (right)

The Verdict:

Overall, we’re big fans of the Anuva wine tasting.  We tasted wines from really special, unique wineries (that we didn’t come across during our time in Mendoza – definitely not on the standard tasting tour route).  Their willingness to do a custom malbec-only tasting as well as Sarah’s wine knowledge and personality made this a great evening and money well spent.   We don’t normally post ads for places we’ve reviewed (in fact, we have never done it before), but we really liked this, so if you’re going to do the tasting with Anuva, book it through us and help us fund our South American wine research – thanks!!

Bottom Line: Argentina makes some of the best wines in the world, so if you’re coming to Buenos Aires and you like wine even a little bit, it would be crazy not to do a tasting with Anuva!  And when you do, please remember to click through from this ad–that way, we can avoid getting jobs just a little longer 🙂  Enjoy!!

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Click here to book with Anuva!

p.s.  Anyone that does a tasting with them, please let us know what you think!

p.p.s  For those of you not planning to be in Buenos Aires any time soon; Anuva distributes wine in the US as well.  Click on the link above and you can see what they have on offer–everything they have is hand picked, great Argentine wine and for the most part quite affordable.  Some of you have asked what Argentine wines to try at home–buy a few through Anuva or join their wine club and we’re sure you’ll be quite pleased;  maybe start with the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec, it’s awesome)  We will definitely be buying wine from them after we go back to the US.

Our first tango show (and lessons!)

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To mark our one-week anniversary as porteños, we decided to get our first exposure to the sensual dance that started right here in Buenos Aires – tango.  Our language school recommended Complejo Tango (which offers an evening of “lessons”, dinner and a show for ~US$60/person), so we got all dressed up and headed out across town to the theater.  We were a bit surprised to arrive right on time for the lessons and find only 4 other people there. The room slowly filled up as the buses sent to pick up tourists from all the hotels in town arrived, and we started half an hour late (not bad for Latin America!).  We quickly learned one basic step and then practiced while trying not to step on the toes of all the other tourists crammed into the tiny dance studio.  While we’re hardly pros now, it was fun to get a taste of what dancing the tango might be like, and we’re hoping to try out real lessons once we get settled into a routine here.

We were highly skeptical of the food that would be served in a small theater prior to the show, but we were pleasantly surprised.  As we’ve noted in previous posts, our food experience has been somewhat hit-or-miss so far.  But this easily ranked in the top half of dinners we’ve had thus far- and the endless wine helped too!  The show was entertaining – walked the audience through the evolution of tango over the last century, using different costumes for each period.  The live band was a nice touch, and while we heard a bit too much from the lounge singer between dances, the dancers were incredible and solidified our resolve to learn to tango while we’re here.

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Argentine tango involves dramatic costumes and a lot of leg

While this definitely had the potential to be a cheezy tourist trap, all in all it was a fun introduction to tango and a good evening out.  Next, it’s off to the milongas!