I am sure you will all appreciate the trials, tribulations and strains we explorers suffer in the cause of widening our knowledge and therefore your boredom when we return with exciting tales of far off lands. Today we had another bike ride and discovered our bums had not recovered from Sundays excursion, they don't seem to do soft saddles in Chile but you don't realise it is sore until you sit on another one.
We had a wine tour yesterday, it was very interesting (pictures below) but a very strange thing is they drink their red wine on the cold side, we had a Malbec for lunch which was served colder than the Chardonnay, it was rather good so it is a custom I may bring home although I am sure I will be labelled a philistine.
The picture left is of Gill tucking into lunch (two different wines) before a siesta and then another soak in the hot tub during in the afternoon. In the evening the owner was on site entertaining some important wine experts, we were invited to join them so had a wide selection of their best wines, there must have been 20 different bottles (there were 10 of us). It was a very pleasent evening but I am pleased to say I can't tell the difference between a £10 bottle and a £50 one, they are all good in my book so I will stick to cheap plonk. This vineyard produces 2,000,000 bottles a year but the wine business is a side line!
One very unusual wine is produced from "wild" grapes, vines that had been growing in the hedgerows for many years. They produce a very light wine which is great as an aperitif, fully organic and very expensive! I have bought the tee shirt, not the wine.
Today was a little frustrating. We drove 100 miles north and stopped for coffee in a town. The car (which has keyless ignition) would not lock on the remote, we had to use the manual key.
In town I wanted to top up my Chilean mobile, we are with the Claro network so not unreasonably I went into the nice Claro showroom to purchase £10 worth. No they don't do anything as mundane as poor people topping up thier pay as you go mobiles, they directed us to the pharmacy where we queued up with all the ill people and they topped up our phone!
So back to the car, it would not start, to cut a very long and frustrating story short (I will never rent from Alamo again, they are on my hit list with Ikea) a nice mechanic from the Nissan garage came out and started it straight away with a big grin on his face. It seems the radio interference in the city from WiFi etc buggers up the keyless ignition. If you hold the fob right next to the starter button it works. We wasted three hours finding that trick out, I was not a happy bunny.
We are now in Valparaiso which in the dark looks great, we will explore tomorrow but might extend our booking from two nights to three possibly four.