We’d decided to base ourselves in Chile’s capital for 5 nights so that we could explore the city and surroundings without needing to faff around moving hotels. That decision was helped by Debbie securing a 1-bedroom suite at the 5* Intercontinental Santiago using IHG loyalty points and a suite upgrade voucher, and her annual Executive Lounge pass meant that we got free breakfast and evening drinks/food (which unusually were available 6pm-10pm). So basically we could live in luxury for 5 nights TOTALLY FREE! And we did!! That is the end of the gravy train now though – the points have all been used, and the Platinum Elite status & lounge pass will expire at the end of this year – oh well, it was good while it lasted.

We were staying in the Las Condes area, also known as “Sanhattan’, Santiago’s most modern, affluent and visitor-friendly district, most popular with business travellers and airline pilots, well connected to the metro and close to shopping and restaurants. We didn’t actually use any of them though, eating in the hotel lounge, avoiding the shops and using super-cheap Uber to get around. Santiago doesn’t really have any ‘must-see’ sights, the attraction is more in its setting and surroundings, but we did spend a day having a look around.

Santiago felt far less chaotic than Lima, the roads straight & wide with many being one-way. There was graffiti everywhere though. The historic centre had a very impressive Plaza de Armas housing the most magnificent cathedral, and as it was Sunday we found ourselves in the middle of a mass, with standing room only at the back. Debbie said that she was re-visiting her Catholic roots – Steve said it was a miracle that she wasn’t struck down!

Next was the Bellavista district, full of bars & restaurants and home of the zoo, grabbing a cheeky beer in the sun before visiting La Chascona, the former home of the Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda, built for Matilde Urritia, his secret lover who later became his wife. It was a fascinating place (no interior photos allowed), both for the fabulous design, eclectic furnishings and an important collection of original books, artwork and maritime objects. The house is preserved as a museum these days, along with Neruda’s houses in Valparaiso and near the coast, but that didn’t stop a new entertainment complex being built on the doorstep!

A short walk away was the entrance to the funicular and cable car up San Cristobal Hill, Santiago’s most famous viewpoint, part of the huge Metropolitan Park of Santiago, one of the largest urban parks in Latin America. Steve somehow managed to purchase the ticket we wanted – funicular up, and a different Teleferico (cable car) down to the Oasis terminal, nearer to our hotel – from a mobile vendor and bypassed the huge queue – good job! The views from the hill were stunning, across the city to the magnificent snow covered Andes. At the summit there was a humble but beautiful church – the 2nd visit of the day for Debbie – and a 22 metre statue of the Virgin Mary, and lots of pilgrims and worshippers in/around both. The South Americans are rather keen on religion! The cable car down, in the golden hour just before sunset, was fabulous but the two guys and their little dog sharing our pod got in the way of us taking any decent photos.

We also spent a day in our suite, popping out only for food and wine, as we really needed to get some travel planning done. Debbie was somewhat distracted by the small dog balancing on a ledge opposite, in danger of falling to its death, but we did manage to book the flights for our remaining 5 weeks in South America. And the dog stayed safe!

For the rest of our time in Santiago we took trips to the surrounding areas, obviously with wine as the priority…

Maipo Valley

Chile’s 3 main wine regions are within a couple of hours of Santiago and we opted to focus on the Maipo Valley as it was the most accessible for decent reds, booking a day tour (rated 4.9/5 from over 3,000 Tripadvisor reviews) directly with Stamp’s Tours.

Our pick-up time of 07.30 seemed a little early, and even after spending an hour driving around the city collecting other guests, we were still at the first vineyard Campo La Quirinca by 09.00. Even Debbie thought this was too early to be drinking wine and we weren’t sure that we could face it, but thankfully we spent some time looking around the family-run boutique vineyard first, before sitting at beautifully laid tables for a tasting of 3 wines guided by the fabulously camp Mattias. The pourings were VERY generous, and they DRINK in Chile rather than taste – firstly a wonderfully complex rose, then a nice but not exceptional Shiraz, and finally a magnificent Cabernet Sauvignon with 4% Sangiovese. We bought a bottle of the latter – unlabelled as this is not a commercial production. Then we moved on to tasting the Mistral Nobel range of Pisco – it still wasn’t even 10.30 – discovering that we very much liked the flavoured ones, especially the cinnamon & spice ‘Fire’ variant, perfect for Christmas. They didn’t have any left for purchase but luckily we managed to find a bottle elsewhere.

Half-pissed already we headed to Vina Ballek, another family-run boutique place, but a far less polished experience and not the nicest wine – but they did have some pretty cool barrel structures soon to be glamping pods. Steve won a pack of special salt for answering a question correctly – we have no idea why and he later opened it to eat thinking it was chocolate!

Lunch was at Vina TerraMater‘s restaurant and we opted for a huge tomahawk steak to share washed down with a glass of Zinfandel. Lovely but a decent vet could’ve revived it, and we’d ordered medium rare.

Our final winery was a big commercial operation, the Santa Ana estate of Vina Undurraga, one of the oldest in Chile founded in 1885. The vineyard, parkland, cellars and buildings were certainly impressive and the wines good too. We sampled 5 in total – an unusual Sauvignon Blanc, a couple of Cabernet Sauvignons that Debbie liked but Steve was overwhelmed by sulphites, a great late harvest desert wine and a sweet sparkling. Only the Sauvignon Blanc stood out as special so a bottle of that came back on the bus with us.

Overall – a nice day, some decent wines (and some quite nasty ones) but nothing really WOW. And in contrast to the beauty of some of the other wine regions we’ve been fortunate enough to experience around the world, Maipo was a bit less ‘picture postcard’ and more working industry. We think that the Colchagua Valley (3 hours away) probably has the best Chilean wines but we couldn’t find the time to get there.

Valparaiso

Chile’s most distinctive city, 70 miles or so from Santiago, is famous for its steep hills, colourful houses, street art, historic funiculars and bohemian atmosphere. We had originally intended to take a bus there and wander around, especially as Debbie couldn’t find a tour that did exactly what she wanted, but in the end we decided it was just too much faff (especially as it had a reputation for being a little ‘edgy’) and booked another trip with Stamp’s Tours. And it turned out that our guide Esme from the previous day was accompanying us to Valparaiso too.

First were a few brief stops in the seaside resort of Vina Del Mar adjacent to Valparaiso. Firstly the famous ‘Flower Clock’, with a real clock mechanism, inaugurated in 1962 for the FIFA World Cup in Chile. Then on to Museo Fonck to see the authentic Moai statue from Easter Island, gifted in 1951 and one of the few located outside Easter Island. it was not surprising, but was somewhat embarrassing, to learn that another had somehow found its way to the British Museum. Debbie quite liked Vina Del Mar but Steve thought it was rather like Torquay, and that’s not a compliment!

In total contrast, the port city of Valparaiso was less manicured, more chaotic and authentic. The fish market was an experience – we initially came across a giant South American sea lion named Ben waddling between the stalls, and then stumbled across his colony on the shore. These guys were HUGE – growing to around 350Kg – and gave us quite a fright as they were on the edge of the car park, the height of the cars’ bonnets and not inclined to move to let the cars park or pedestrians pass. There were more pelicans than we’ve ever seen too, and more of the giant sea lions swimming under the pier – an amazing and most unexpected wildlife encounter. There were some ‘sights’ in the market too – Debbie is still a little freaked by the eyeballs being popped out of the octopus’s sockets!

Our time in Valparaiso was concentrated on the picturesque streets, viewpoints, historical architecture and murals of the Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion areas, reached by a super-steep vintage funicular (ascensore) after passing through a turnstile brought across from Manchester. We purchased the cutest fridge magnet, a tin model of the funicular with opening doors apparently hand-made by the vendor – a lovely souvenir for around £7 – but when we turned the corner and entered the craft market we found others selling them for £3, and they weren’t claiming to have made them. The district was beautiful and calm, the views down to the sea outstanding, there were some very grand and colourful houses. Onwards to the alleys with amazing street art, including some spectacularly-painted staircases – the ‘Piano’ next to a Mozart portrait was genius in it’s simplicity. Debbie preferred this area to Medellin’s Communa 13 – Steve thought it was less ‘real’ but agreed that the art was fabulous. We had a delicious seafood lunch on an outside terrace looking across to the sea, wandered a bit more with our guide and had a really nice few hours in Valparaiso. Perhaps it was a quiet winter day, but this area felt very safe and underserving of the warnings – but maybe it’s different when packed with tourists and opportunistic pickpockets and phone-snatchers. We aren’t guided tour types of people, far preferring independent transport and exploration, but sometimes it’s just easier to get someone to show you around, and we both agreed that we’d not have seen nearly as much if we’d tried to do this day ourselves.

Casablanca Valley

We’d not bothered with a tour to this region, around 30 miles west of Santiago, as its cooler climate focuses on whites (which Steve doesn’t enjoy so much) and Pinot Noir (which we both mainly dislike, even after trying some of the World’s best in NZ). But on the way back from Valparaiso we had no choice but to stop at a vineyard, and what a special stop it was. Casa del Molle is a brand new boutique winery that’d only been open 6 weeks when we visited. The grounds were gorgeous, as were the alpacas, dogs, a llama and a sheep, and the buildings just beautiful. The wines were pretty good too – at the moment they only have 2 – a red and a white – but both were decent (but not worth the £20/bottle that they need to charge for such small production). If we’d had time left to drink their wine before we left Chile, we’d have bought a bottle or 2 to support them, but sadly we were flying very early the next day and still had wine to drink from Maipo.

If we’d visited in spring, summer or autumn, our next hop would’ve been south into the lakes, mountains & fjords. But we couldn’t pack effectively for both a Patagonian winter and the tropics, and we had neither the budget nor the fascination to visit Chile’s farthest outpost of Easter Island. It’s difficult to sum up what we think of Chile as each part is totally different, unsurprising given that the country is almost 3,000 miles long. San Pedro and the Atacama was out of this world and should absolutely be on any bucket list, Santiago and surrounds are interesting but probably not worth a standalone visit, and Patagonia is probably a highlight but will need to be another visit for us.

But now a quick hop across the Andes, into Argentina and the home of Malbec, beckoned….