Meeting Friends Along the Way

Every day we have been traveling has reinforced the charm of visiting each new location for a minimum of several days. The rushing two day visits of our European whirlwind tour, while providing exposure to many fascinating places, missed the joys that familiarity bring. Today is our seventh day in the Colchagua Valley at the Vina La Playa Hotel. We added an extra night to our stay so that we now leave here tomorrow morning, drive to the airport and throw ourselves on the mercy of the cruise transfer buses to take us the hour drive to Valparaiso to board the ship. When we leave here we will miss the familiar smiles of the staff when we pass each other in the hall, the laughter that our fumbling Spanglish brings as we try to order our food and the intuitive assistance we are provided because we have become familiar to the staff(towels and sunscreen appearing without request when we head out to the pool or a third egg for Mike at breakfast). Due to our cash difficulties we have spent a week without tipping anyone (a problem we rectify tonight and tomorrow as we say our final goodbyes to everyone) yet the staff has been wonderful to us. We recommend this place to everyone.

We have also made friends of other guests, no one visiting for nearly length of the week we are here. Each group of Americans that come through seem to gravitate together. Roger and Sue from New Jersey stayed three nights and shared meals and lots of laughter. Because they were here a shorter time they crammed in more wine tastings than we did each day and were able to point us to the ones they enjoyed the most. Last night three travelers from Pennsylvania came in. Only in Chile for a few days before boarding a cruise to Antarctica, they had hired a driver and guide to accompany them. They were seeing the countryside on the back roads. We enjoyed their company at dinner last night and had the pleasant surprise of a packet of information on Brazil left for us by Barbara. She also asked for the blog address, so Barbara, if you ever read this, we appreciate your kindness.

Also checking in last night was an Argentinian family from Mendoza, the wine country capital of Argentina. Their beautiful little girls, Clara and Emilia have captivated us with their sweet looks. Trained in Texas as a Longhorn, the father (name unknown) of these little girls has offered to provide us with ideas of places to stay in Mondoza when we get there several weeks from now. He is apparently in the wine and tourism business, so he is currently off working today, but we look forward to his ideas.

Yesterday we had a terrific wine tasting with a young, well spoken college man, Christian (photo in the set of the wine country). He is studying for a career in English translation and provided a wonderful overview of the wine making process and the unique qualities of wines in Chile. We were so impressed with Christian and his knowledge of wines, not the mention the great wine that we left the tour with bottles of wine to take with us on our cruise.

On our final day in the Chilean wine country we are off to the ATM machine to load up once again. We will probably take in another wine tasting and some pool time. It is a wonderful life!

Adios, Deanne