Sun and Carménère in Santiago

The calf muscles began to feel the burn five minutes in as we started to pant a little and Santiago`s rooftops spilled out beneath us, hazy and bleached under a thick blanket of early evening heat, the kind that, far from beginning to cool, instead feels even heavier with the accumulated power of the day´s sun. Andean crags only half visible in the shimmer, merely a few miles away, hugging the urban sprawl of the Chilean capital. Tourists and Santiagans alike milled along with us, making the slow Sunday afternoon trudge up Cerro San Cristobal, past the zoo to the gleaming white Virgin at its peak. 

`It`s not quite a walk in the park,`I muttered breathlessly. After our week of excess in Mendoza, we had been hoping to get out hiking for one of our four days in Santiago but, with the summer heat working its way firmly into the mid-30`s, even the steep half hour skip up to one the city`s best viewpoints, felt like it would work pretty well to break us back into some kind of fitness. The Inca trail was now only two and a half weeks away, if that, and festive over-indulgence seemed to have neutralised much of the groundwork laid down in Torres del Paine only 3 weeks before.

Bright sunny Santiago

Santiago is bright and beautiful with the gleam of implied prosperity. Funny, I`d had a notion of it as grey somehow, before coming - no idea why. I knew it was one of South America`s financial hubs and that it has a reputation as expensive but had little other mental picture of it. Yet in early January, just before the full assault of high summer, when half the town flees, it was sharp, colourful and crackling with energy and youth. The five hour bus ride from Mendoza had evolved into a nine hour trip. The border crossing is the busiest along the two countries` unfathomably - endlessly - long mountain boundary line; yet somewhow the process still took some three plus hours of loitering and passport stamping as the ceaseless procession of buses lined up on either side. The inevitable lining up four rows deep in customs, our bags in front on tables for sniffer dogs to scamper up and down hunting out illicit teabags and limes. A tourist couple were busted for their Mendozan wine and chocolates -  fortunately returned to them but we shuddered slightly at the potential fate of Carmelo Patti`s Cab Sauv had we not polished it off the night before. This is why we have a strict policy of Leave No Bottle Unfinished. Really, it is. No one expects the Chilean Inquisition.

After a journey which T spent chivalrously averting his eyes from the two young women across the aisle who spent the whole trip snogging each other`s faces off (What? That was his claim, I see no reason to doubt it?!) and I managed, in another spectacular display of dimwittery, to lose my hiking boots of eight years (Yes. My boots. To add to the litany of South American losses), we pulled into the frenetic bus station. 

Beers streetside in Bellavista

And Chile! Again. Busy and bustling; somehow, confirming our tentative impressions in the South as less reserved, more boisterous, than its giant neighbour. Anxious about our delay, for this was one of the few occassions of the trip where we were lucky enough to have someone waiting for us, we needn´t have worried. Andrea, a family friend of one of our closest friends, and her husband Jean-Claude were thoroughly relaxed and South American about our tardy arrival. Within an hour of getting back to their beautiful Vitacura home in western Santiago, we were all back out the door and downtown for drinks and nibbles with a group of their friends, who welcomed the scruffy, nackered, Spanish-challenged backpackers into their midst with great kindness, chat, Piscola and tips on their country.

We spent a relaxed few days between town and our hosts´ place, where we stayed in, literally, the most comfortable room and bed of our entire travels and enjoyed Andrea and Jean-Claude`s genrous hospitality. Offering lifts and recommendations, they allowed us to make free with the kitchen and generally gave us a wonderful travel respite during our stay - ahead of the long journey north to come. I`d initially found it hard to give up the Argentinian north but we`d felt keen to do Chile justice as we wound our way towards Peru and the Incan trail booking we had for late January. In addition, while the truism goes that Chile is the more expensive South American destination, we never really found this to be true and, after five weeks of wonderful Argentinian travel, our wallets were smarting (while many prices are quite similar - from food to galleries - buses, in particular, are a world of financial pain for the backpacker across the gigantic expanse of the Land of Mate). So we had decided to go for it and make our way to the Incan heartland via the Chilean capital and then the Atacama. 

People-watching

And a great choice it was. Santiago itself felt eminently livable, perhaps accentuated by the fact we were staying with locals. Basically untouched by the recession it felt monied, dynamic and creative, with huge leafy parks stretching throughout the city and the occasional respite of a cool mountain breeze reminding you that - as everywhere in narrow Chile - you are only a few hours from either an Andean hike or the wild Pacific coastline. Art is everywhere - from sophisticated public scuplture in thronged plazas to sprawling street murals and punked-up grafitti enlivening cool avenues of street bars and cafes. 

Sitting out on the street in Bellavista, beneath the shadow of San Cristobal, over one Monday night beer that turned into three and the biggest and best pizza 5000 Chilean pesos can buy, we watched raggedly hip Santiagans with guitars slung across their backs greet one another and punk kids with blunt Gaga fringes and DIY undercuts beg a few hundred pesos from passersby to buy beer from the offlicenses. Blink and you could be in Dalston or Camden. And yet not. As with BA there is that sense of being in a hip neighbourhood of any vibrant European capital, only with a twist. The twist maybe of nights that are barely getting started by 11.30pm and of a world of open space stretching from Atlantic to Pacific beyond city walls. Of fresh ceviche and unmeasured shots and expansive skies and histories still brand new, having almost entirely displaced the older worlds that preceded them. 

Street art in Bellavista

Valparaiso views

After a few days enjoying Santiago we set out on two daytrips. The first was to Valparaiso, a famed port town, now filed somewhat under faded glory but still attracting hordes of daytrippers and less than two hours bus ride away. Like many seaside towns, it has that odd alchemy of idyllic coastal views and mystique mixed with melancholic seedy underbelly. Unemployment is the highest here of anywhere in Chile and warning of muggings and pickpocketing abound. But it also is also wildly colourful, edgy and quaint, with its ancient Ascensor lifts linking the coastal strip with the Cerros above - and is pretty much a photographers dream. Whether pacing the portside streets or riding the creaking, antiquated lifts up into the scenic heights above, it is hard to resist the contrasts. We wandered and checked out the views. We stopped for a glass of Emilia white wine with a gloomy, misanthropic sommelier who told us how tourism had plummeted this year - and then ran out cursing as it transpired a fire up the coast in upmarket Vina del Mar had wiped out all power for the afternoon and the already struggling restaurants and cafes were now stuck with freezers full of un-ordered and slowly defrosting meat in the 36 degree heat.

This did, on a mercenary note, make for an afternoon sale on ice cream. And thus also became the day on which I, a 32 year old woman, would proceed to pick up a melting fistful of dropped chocolate and vanilla ice cream from the dirty and baking Valparaiso pavement and deposit it back in the cone to eat. Twice. To the amusment of all onlookers. Ah, seaside towns - so beguiling and yet so forlorn.

Our second trip was, you guessed it, into wine country. Afte a week of intensive initiation into Argentinian grapes we could hardly, we reasoned, hold our heads up among the proud Chilean people without offering the same courtesty to the wine regions that kicked off the boom in South American vines. Indeed, how otherwise could we hold our heads up among the East London Kurdish corner stores when buying our Friday night Casillero del Diablo in future? Ironically, visiting these wineyards felt less accessible to the independent traveller than those just across the border. After rejecting various organised tours which tended to be costed high in US dollars and to largely be PR exercises for individual wineries, we fomed a plan to visit Colchagua. Further south from the capital than the more obvious pick of Maipo, it was recommended by everyone from Andrea`s friends to sommeliers in trendy Lastarria`s BocaNariz. The latter is a new Santiagan wine bar we sought out on our first night for tasting and tips. More bar than tasting room, in comparison to Vines of Mendoza, it is nonetheless a superbly stocked homage to the humble Chilean grape, with a mind-boggling menu wall and knowledgable staff. We each did a mini-tasing and grilled an overworked waiter on his top picks for Colchagua.

`I`ll have what they`re having. All of them.` The glory that is the Bocanariz Wall of Wine.

So armed with a train timetable and Googlemaps we planned a manageable assault. The train (in South America! Novelty!) would get us into San Antonio from where we would taxi to our first vineyard and then onto another two, which looked vaguely walkable. So appointments were made and we rose at 5am to make the 7am train. Yes. As we dragged ourselves up in the dark, we wondered how it was we kept finding ourselves up at dawn in order to go drinking. I couldnt help but think of the Leytonstone aloholics I`d always see in the little square near our first London rental, as I popped out before 9am for the morning paper: `You`ve got to admire their work ethic,` I`d comment to T.

Somewhow despite the hour to spare, we were over 20 minutes for our first appointment, as our cab driver finally turned down a long, rustic lane towards the Neyen property. Not for the first or last time, we`d got ourselves tense and concerned about our lateness - having had to beg our way into a 10am slot, the second visit now potentially being pitched back, the rudeness, oh the rudeness... - only to find our hosts sat serene and unphased in the shade of the winery, alongside rows of vines extending in all directions, still languid in the morning light. They didn`t care, of course. No one in South America does. And no one in India ever did either. Funny how long it takes you to shake off your uptight Anglonorms about punctuality nonetheless.

The Neyen wine estate in Colchagua

Neyen was stunning, perhaps the most quietly, unobtrusively beautiful vineyard we`ve been lucky enough to visit, with the most personalised attention. Our guide explained, to our suprise, that Neyen only produce a single wine, a blend of Carménère and Cabernet Sauvignon, thereby preserving a small scale boutique ethos. Our guide, a part time wine specialist who worked as an English teacher most of the year, led us on a very individualised tour around the vines and cellars, finishing in a gorgeous tasting room that channels a medieval French chateaux, all chic and underplayed grandeur, where we awaited the Espiritu de Apalta with slight apprehension. With just one line, and only ourselves on the tour, there was kind of nowhere to hide if it turned out to be underwhelming. But any pressure melted away with the first sip, a complex and smooth blend, all too melt-in-the-mouth perfect for a measured morning tasting in fact. We duly purchased two bottles, one for T`s birthday, only a few days away, and another for our hosts in Santiago. Topping off a touchingly personal service, Roxanne, our initial contact, turned up with a place of cheeses, olives, nuts and ham. Then, on learning we planned to walk up to Montes (we`d already realised, passing it on the way during the unfurling jungle heat of the day, that the country stroll we had envisaged looked set to be more of an hour-long sweaty trek), our guides loaded us into Roxanne´s little car and we bumbled up the road to the neighbouring winery.

The idyllic terrace at Montes

Montes is one the region`s bigger boys, set in an almost ridiculously scenic stretch of the valley. Our Neyen guides set us down by the cafe patio in which our lunch was booked and, bidding us farwell, left us welcomed into the schoolmarmish cheer of Maria. Within our larger tour group of eight, we investigated the deep and endearing eccentricity of a vineyard much more commercially aware and present than the one we had just left, but no less full of character. Angels - the vineyard`s motif - and Feng Shui principles abound in the complex and after checking out the roof-level pipes from which grapes are funnelled down into the bowels of the winery, we were shown into the `choir`of the barrel room. Here, the oaking wines lie in rest, spread out in an eerily silent, back-lit orchestra of theatricality, facing glass-fronted tasting rooms. 

Line `em up lads,,,,

Before retiring us to the terrace for lunch, Maria then led the group through the most impressive tasting of all our visits: a well-guided trip through five or six of the Montes range, talking through what we were picking up, our preferences and what we would select to eat with each. By 1pm at Cafe Alfredo, lunch was then a tomato risotto and crab soup, respectively, paired with a Merlot and Chardonnay from the range. Dragging ourselves only reluctantly from the indulgently, impossibly pretty scene before us - and not before polishing off another glass each - we prepared for the long, hot walk further on to Lapostelle.

Barely had we made it out to the road, through the robust and fragrant workshops of vines fronting the Montes estate, than we were picked up by the German-Polish couple from our tour. Not yet realising we would later pay for all this good travel karma, we waved them goodbye thankfully from the gates of Lapostelle ten minutes later. Perhaps our most eagerly anticipated destination, the estate stretched out before us as we squinted up into the early afternoon glare. Assuming we might take a stroll or cool off in the shade for the 40 minutes before our tour began, we quickly realised this was not to be as staff in the agricultural office gestured us up into the rolling hills beyond. A-ha, we said, twigging finally the suprise of the security guy who had checked our names off as we wandered into the estate on foot. Glancing up at what can only be described as a Bond Villain´s lair in the distance, we set off purposefully along the long dusty, vine-side path. 

In a cooler clime this would perhaps have been a pleasant 20-25 minutes stroll, hand in hand, as we mused on the beauty before us. However, in what was becoming a 36 degree 2.30pm sauna, almost entirely exposed to the roiling heavens, it evolved into something of a suicide mission; days, weeks passing as I draped my scarf around my head like a Rajhasthani construction worker and we drew perplexed glances from workers driving up and down the grounds in their shaded two-seater buggies. Reaching the hills after 1000 Arabian nights, we faced a steep final scramble up to Dr No´s compound and arrived predictably sweat-drenched and beetroot red into the serene haven of Lapostelle - to the incredulity of staff accustomed to smart khaki-clad tourists who arrive in aircon rental cars. Ever the scruffbags...

Lapostelle is grand and stylish, both cutting edge and rustic. 60 seasonal workers join the ranks to de-stem the entire crop by hand each harvest (Ìt´s crazy,`our guide remarked matter-of-factly, shaking his head, `Nobody does this´), while in the main hall steaming vats glisten like cryogenic units awaiting Silicon Valley millionaires. The secret is the rock, he explained to us, showing us the exposed flint embedded into the building, further down its concentric levels; working to infuse the grapes with a heady and complex minerality. Descending further, we and our Dutch and Australian comrades audibly gasped at a glimpse of the private collection of French owner Alexandra Lapostelle (heiress to the Marnier business) - a dungeon treasure trove of over 8000 archived bottles reached by a staircase from the cellar/ tasting room. ´Locked,`I shook my head ruefully at the Australian woman, on trying the gate, and we snapped our fingers with regret. Meanwhile, in the tasting itself, the Chardonnay again was something of a revelation.

Tasting room at Lapostelle, Here be greatness.

The three visits were splendidly different, highlighting the astounding diversity we were discovering between vineyards only a few kilometres apart - and whose vines often stopped within a few hundred metres of one another. The day had also been wildly informative, with much more personalisation than we had tended to find in Mendoza, leaving us as soaked in the detail as in the wines themselves. So finally, after a week and a half of intensive tasting and touring, I felt both my knowledge bank and palate had grown. We knew the difference made by a French or American oak (and even, unthinkably, that made by a Chinese or Russian oak - experiments at Luigi Bosca still ongoing...) And we actually had relevant questions by this stage as well as a bank of tasting notes. Imagine.

Valparaiso tipple

After a perfect day, right down to the lift we secured from the Dutch couple back to Santa Cruz (we were effectively hitchhiking the Apalta Valley by this stage), our luck turned as our already late 8.30pm train back to Santiago packed up and our poor Spanish only barely kept us abreast of developments and options as the angry and stranded Chilean crowd harangued train staff. Buses finally wheeled in at around 11pm, making for a 2am return to Vitacura. Truly a karmic bitchslap in the face of our 9.30am bus tickets to San Pedro de Atacama - some 20 plus road hours away - the following morning. 

Still - that will sober you up after a hard day on the wine trail. And ever our saviours, Andrea and Jean-Claude duly loaded us up into the car the next morning for door-to-door bus station service as we set off for the dry lunar landscapes of the Atacama.