Day 56 - 30 Jan.2012 - Santiago

Today we left for Santiago. On our way we stopped at a winery close to the Ruta 5 and went for a visit. It was the winery established by Miguel Torres, who came here from Spain in 1979. It was probably not the oldest winery here but nonetheless really interesting to visit. The women gave us a tour in English and we learned quite a lot about wine making. Unfortunately, the harvest only starts end of February and at the moment all the equipment was idle or was been prepared for the harvest. After we had tasted a few wines, we definitely needed a break before hitting the road again. The winery has its own restaurant where we went for lunch. It was probably the best food we had so far in Chile. It was already four in the afternoon when we continued our way towards Santiago. Javier, a good friend of ours from Scotland, is coincidently in Santiago visiting his family. He tried to organise a place for us to stay not to far away from his parents but all the hotels nearby were fully booked. At the end we got a really nice deal with a flat for temporary rent in the same building where his parents live.
It was a bit of a challenge to get there, as our TomTom did not have any streets of Santiago – quite surprising as it is the capital after all. At the end we made it thanks to the driving directions given by Javier. In the evening we went out with Javier, his brother Jose, Andrea (Jose’s girlfriend) and a couple of Javier’s university friends to sample Santiago’s nightlife. The Pisco Sour was particularly good for one of us ;-)