Chile - The Rest of The Story

After landing in Santiago, we got in the car and headed to Vina Del Mar for New Year's Eve. This is a coastal resort town and was very pretty. Every year roughly a million people head to this area for the celebration and huge fireworks show.

The fireworks are shot from Valparaiso and 8 barges in the ocean. They were synchronized and it was the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen.

The next day we went to Valparaiso and walked around. The city is built on the side of a hill and it looks as if the buildings are built right on one another. There are trolleys around the city to take you to the top of the hills. Valparaiso was unlike any other city. Besides the steep hills, the buildings were completely covered in graffiti and it just had a different feel to it than Santiago.

That night we left for Santiago, and this time we went to spend some time there. Our first day in Santiago we went to a winery, Concha Y Toro. This is the largest winery in Chile, and one of the top 10 in the world, and extremely old. I the picture below shows the first cellar constructed for the winery. Their largest brand uses a devil as their logo because the locals used to steal the wine from the original owner. To scare the thieves off, the owner would dress in a devil costume and chase the thieves off. This was enough to scare away any potential thieves and created a legend that the devil actually lived in the cellar.

The next day was our last in Chile. Morgan took Dani and I to the old part of Santiago where we saw the old cathedral and presidential palace. As you can see in both pictures, most of the older buildings in Santiago are completely surrounded by new, modern towers.

That night we departed to Miami, barely catching our flight. We landed in Miami, took a nap on the beach and 13 hours later were home in Denver.