Day 23 Feb 4 - Valparaiso (Santiago),Chile

Valparaíso literally means, Valle Paraíso (Paradise Valley) and it is also called "Valpo" locally or Mapudungun Aliamapu (burned land). It's a city in central Chile, one of that country's most important seaports and an increasingly vital cultural center in the hemisphere's Pacific Southwest.

The city is the capital of the Region of Valparaíso. Although Santiago is Chile's official capital, Valparaiso houses the National Congress, is the "port of Santiago" and has a population of over one and a half million inhabitants.

Valparaíso played an important geopolitical role in the second half of the 19th century, when the city served as a major stopover for ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by crossing the Straits of Magellan. Always a magnet for European immigrants, Valparaíso mushroomed during its golden age, when the city was known by international sailors as “Little San Francisco”. Its special and picturesque feature are its funicular railways that climb the hills surrounding the port, dotted with tall, colourful dwellings that command a view of the pretty harbour (see photo above).

Examples of Valparaíso’s former glory include Latin America’s oldest stock exchange, the continent’s first volunteer fire department, Chile’s first public library, and the oldest Spanish language newspaper in continuous publication in the world. The opening of the Panama Canal and reduction in ship traffic dealt a staggering blow to Valparaíso, though the city has staged an impressive renaissance in recent years.

Though San Antonio has taken the reins as the country’s most commercially important seaport (greater tonnage moved), the City of Valparaiso remains a vibrant center of Chilean culture and the Greater Valparaíso metropolitan area (which includes Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Quilpué and Villa Alemana) has the third largest concentration of population in the country after Greater Santiago and Greater Concepción.

Today we have arranged to be picked-up at the port by Christian Roy Montenegro Friedl, known as the VAN MAN, who will be our chauffeur for the day. He comes highly recommended from previous 'cruisers' who visited this port and we made all our arrangements on the Internet.

Our plan is to head off into Maipo and Casablanca Valleys which form the main centres of the Chilean wine industry. I have asked in particular to visit the Vina Concha y Toro winery as this is one of my favourite wine labels from this country. After the winery visit we intend to have a tour of Chile's capital, Santiago (see picture of its skyline and the Andes backdrop), and then return to Valparaiso and the ship.

We entered port this morning at about 6.30 and were tied up along side the quay by 7.00. It was still quite dark as sun up was about 15 minutes later.

After a cup of coffee and a bowl of porridge oats in the Lido restaurant I returned to the cabin with green tea for Maria and a suggestion that she got dressed as we hoped to start our tour today at 8.00.

Table mates Gerry and Gary from Southern California chose to travel with us in our chauffeur driven six seater van. It worked out at $100 each for the whole day of 7 or 8 hours duration.

Before going we were made aware that the whole ship was to be super-sanitized in order to inhibit the spread of illness. This super-sanitization would include all cabins and we were asked to put away all personal effects. There was obviously a great dermination to deal with virus problem. Passengers were still going down with the illness.

We took the shuttle bus from the ship to the port gates where our man Christian was waiting for us with his comfortable vehicle. We were soon on our way to Santiago and the nearby vineyard we had chosen to see. The highway between Valparaiso and Santiago is first class and the busiest road in the country.

The countryside was particularly interesting as we headed through the Casablanca Valley seeing many of Chile's finest vineyards on route. The Andes were soon seen dominating the western skyline with their glacial and rugged forms. This really was a country of contrasts.

In heading to the Maipo Valley to explore the Concha y Toro winery (see its entrance in the picture) we passed through Santiago.

What a beautiful city. It just looked and felt like a great European city. It was very clean and bustling with a youthful population. We were lucky that our chauffeur/guide Christian had been educated in an American school in Santiago and therefore spoke excellent English. He was very knowledgeable and kept us well informed.

After driving through the nation's capital for an hour or so we now headed south westerly down to the Maipo Valley. Santiago, incidentally, houses approximately a third of Chile's population of close on 18 million inhabitants.

We signed up for an hour's tour and wine sampling session at the Concha y Toro establishment. This was the original site of the first vineyard operated here over 120 years ago. Other vineyards in the nearby valleys and owned by the company had their grapes processing here too. Our tour guide here was a nice knowled-geable young lady called Francesca.

After an inform-ative 10 minutes video show she explaining the history of the place and then took us on a tour of the estate which had been set in a beautiful English type garden setting where I took a picture of Maria, shown below.

We moved on from here to the very original winery buildings that housed the various ageing cellars where a multitude of barrels were kept for maturing and fermentation purposes.

The other interesting part of the tour, besides the wine sampling, was visiting the legendary Cellar of the Devil after which much of Concha y Toro's wine is called namely, "Cassillero de Diablo".

Because of the amount of wine uncon-sumed in our cabin, we reluctantly decided against making any purchase although our good Californian friends made up for that.

Once the wine tour was over we decided to head back to Santiago for a quick city tour and then return to the ship.

Again we were very impressed with Chile's capital city as we spent an hour or so down town often stuck in traffic. We decided that to really see Santiago and enjoy the city, a couple of days at least would be required. Maybe we would do that on another visit, who knows?

After the tour we sped back the 70 odd miles along the excellent express way reaching the ship at about 3 o'clock.

The picture on the right is the entrance to the Devil's Cellar from which the majority of the winery's produce is named. A little show is put on here for the guests so they can decide for themselves whether the devil is really here or not!!

More passengers joined the ship in this port and were due to occupy the newly installed and refurbished cabins. Perhaps we can report more on that later. This was also a major bunkering port with many hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel being loaded plus plenty of provision including lots of Chilean wine. This delayed our sail away by about an hour and we didn't get out of the harbour until close on 6 o'clock.

As we left we passed a flotilla of visiting French naval frigates in the company of a few Chilean Naval craft. Surely not!! Could it just be that the ever resourceful and hard working Françoise Birarda, who I described yesterday as being Napoleon-like, as he marshalled his troops, put out a call for assistance from his nation's navy to assist in his battle?

Before leaving the Captain warned us that like yesterday evening and night, it was going to be a slightly bumpy ride...hold onto your hat Maria! Although I must say that my wife has become a first class sailor and needs no motion sickness tablets of any variety to keep her stable.