Fall Back to Spring

Location: Santiago, Chile

Introduction:

With school closed for a holiday-week in late Fall, we headed for South America where it was late Spring. We enjoyed lots of daylight with the sun rising at 6:30 am and setting at 8:30 pm. The time in Chile is just two hours ahead of Florida, making it an easy transition. The climate was dry with low humidity resulting in cool nights and mornings followed by comfortably warm afternoons, which was ideal for outdoor activities. The people were friendly. While Spanish is the dominant language, we often found someone spoke some English in most of the places we went. Elizabeth filled in the gaps with the limited Spanish that she knows. When all else failed, language translation apps saved the day. The exchange rate was favorable approaching 1,000 pesos to the dollar. The only drawback we found was that the dry climate made for very dusty conditions, especially once we headed out into the countryside.

Sights Visited:

KidZania has become a favorite of ours with numerous locations scattered around the world. Our daughter embraced the challenge of being immersed in a primarily Spanish-speaking environment and often found just enough English spoken to get by.

We rode a funicular up to the top of San Cristobal Hill located within Santiago Metropolitan Park, which provided panoramic views of the sprawling city of Santiago below. We then opted to ride a cable car back down.

We reserved an English-speaking tour of Conch y Toro winery fresh off of their Wine Spectator selection of Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon as the Top Wine of the year. It was a very enjoyable experience. The property is magnificent. The wines sampled were high quality and the cellar tour was especially entertaining. They locked our tour group inside, turned off the lights, and piped in a story of the legend of Casillero del Diablo along with an eerie light show. While it somewhat frightened our daughter, it was scary-good and she says she’d do it all over again.

Play:

Parque Araucano is home to an extensive playground close to our hotel. Parque Bicentenario de la Infancia offered up an unusually elongated playground that is best suited for younger children. We enjoyed a visit to the well-manicured public park in the town of Las Vizcachas on our way to Concha Y Toro, which also sported a playground best suited for younger kiddos. A fun pay-for-play area is located at the Oasis base station of the Metropolitan Park cableway.

We arranged a scenic trail ride on horseback and zip-lining on property where we lodged. We also went swimming and did some hiking culminating at a scenic waterfall.

Accommodations:

We spent our first two nights at the conveniently located Courtyard Marriott Las Condes. It was just a short walk to a park, shops and restaurants. We took advantage of the rooftop heated pool and game room. We moved on to the Andes and spent 3 nights at Cascada de las Animas located on the Maipo river in the Maipo valley. We stayed in a rustic 2-bedroom cabin with a kitchen and pot belly wood burning stove that came in handy when the sun went down. We returned to Santiago and the Courtyard Marriott for our final night’s stay.

Food And Drink:

The tap water is safe to drink in Chile. We had no problem finding chicken, pizza and French fries to keep our daughter happy. We were reminded that sometimes things get lost in translation. Rich thought he was ordering a pork loin entrée but received a grizzly piece of beef instead. The meals we enjoyed best were seafood. Our preferred wines were the local Sauvignon Blanc (white) and Carmenere (red). The Pisco sours made with Chilean Pisco were also quite good.

Transportation System:

We flew United Airlines from Jacksonville to Houston, where we then boarded an overnight flight to Santiago. We flew the same route in reverse on the way back home. Adelaide received a rare treat when invited by the captain to visit him in the cockpit on our final leg. Upon arrival, we rented a Peugeot 3008 SUV to serve most of our needs. Given limited parking at some city attractions, we opted to use Uber as our first choice and a Taxi as our second choice. We found Uber availability to be unreliable and taxi drivers are known to try to take advantage of tourists like us as one did try. The price of Gasoline was $5 per gallon.

Shout-Out:

The staff at Cascada de las Animas were plentiful and exceptional for their service.

For Your Amusement:

Highlights:

For Adelaide, playing with the cats at Cascada de las Animas was her favorite. She also discovered and fell in love with Push Pop candy. This trip also marks a milestone in that it’s the sixth continent that we’ve traveled to as a family.

Next Up: We return to Dubai for Christmas