NOTE: We wrote this entry on February 26th, the fateful night before the earthquake hit Chile, but we didn’t post it right away and the next day there were obviously more important things to write about. Now it seems a shame though not to show the beauty of the place as well so without further ado, here is the Colchagua valley, pre-quake.

Santa Cruz is a small town in the Colchagua valley about 140km south of Santiago, chock-a-block with vineyards. Apparently the town came into its own only a few decades ago when a local bad boy (seriously bad boy – we’re talking world-wide arms trading and clusterbomb sales) decided that in his retirement and possibly because he couldn’t leave the country anymore without being called in front of an international court of justice, he wanted to give back to his community and help the region develop its real potential. There had always been wine in the Colchagua valley but not to the extent that it is found today with numerous vineyards, some producing award-winning vintages and many commanding eye-popping prices.

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of foreign influence. Especially the French have invested heavily into the area with Grand Manier at the head of the pack at Lapostolle and a cellar that cost 10 million dollars to build. Yes, you read that right, 10,000,000 USD. We really only went for a tour at their winery to see what they had done with all that money since vats of gold seemed to be the only way to go. Alas, no vats of gold but it was interesting nonetheless. The entire cellar is built into the side of a hill, using nature as much as possible to control temperature, humidity and make use of gravity. (PD: This might have also helped them during the earthquake. Damages to their cellar were minimal.)

The entrance to the cellar is at the top of the hill in a large hall that serves as reception but during harvest time is the place where the grapes are unloaded from the tractor and hand-stripped from their stems by almost 100 women sitting around a very long table. The loose grapes are put into small plastic containers that in turn fill two custom-made steel containers on wheels that move between the women with the grapes and the fermentation cellar where the vats are located.

Here, a grated walkway runs in a ring around the top of the vats so once the containers are rolled in, all the cellar master has to do is open the grate on the walkway above a container and the grapes can fall straight into the vat.

This is what the fermentation cellar looks like with its grated catwalk and high-tech humidifiers on the wall to control temperature and humidity:

After the initial fermentation the grapes are moved into barriques for a year. Once again gravity does all the work because the ‘first year’ cellar is located directly below and several pipes inside the floor of the fermentation cellar lead directly down into the first year cellar.

Even further below is the second year cellar where special wines spend another year in barriques for further aging, of course, gravity does its thing again and all the cellar master has to do is connect a hose and let the wine flow down into the new vats. Finally, the last floor of the building holds the family’s private cellar.

To top it all off, there’s an elevator built into the cellar.

From the four wineries we saw that day Lapostelle was certainly the grandest and most imposing but our favourite was a smaller and quieter place called Neyen. (The other two were Las Niñas, also French-owned with some quirky marketing/packaging ideas, and Viu Manent, one of the oldest wineries in the area.)

The approach to Neyen already sets the two haciendas miles apart – where we had to pass a security gate and give our name at Lapostelle, there wasn’t even a sign for Neyen except for a small wooden plate right before the turn. Luckily others had given us directions but even when we drove up to the main building, there was no sign for ‘Sales’ or ‘Tastings’. There are no tours offered and there are no t-shirts for sale. Which is not to say that the wine is cheap – au contraire – but you can tell that most of the money and dedication of the owner has gone into the product, not the surroundings. (Although those are spectacular as well, just on a more understated scale.)

Neyen prides itself on selling only one wine, which isn’t technically true since they do make special blends depending on the vintage, but they have only one main wine per year which they leave to repose for two years before putting it out on the market. We tasted the 2005 (the 2006 will be released in the next few months) which is a wonderful blend of Camenère and Cabernet Sauvignon. Unfortunately the pictures we took at Neyen all came out a bit blurry which might or might not have to do with the fact that this was the fourth winery we visited that day. But in any case, if you ever come to the Colchagua valley in Chile, be sure to stop by Neyen for a tasting. It’s money well spent.

Thank you everyone for your comments and thoughts! We arrived safely in Santiago this afternoon after only a couple of detours on the highway. The roads from Santa Cruz to Santiago were mostly fine in fact. We saw a couple of bridges that had collapsed but most affected the highway leading south so we were lucky.

Once we hit the highway at San Fernando we also found an open gas station (very important since we only had about a third of a tank) so we managed to get to Santiago in just 4 hours, which considering the circumstances is probably a pretty good time!

One of the main problems was the lack of information. We didn’t know whether the roads would be open since everyone gave us a different accounts of what they’d heard, no one knew whether there’d be gas available on the road or even if Santiago still existed. A few people made the situation out to be much worse than it really was and possibly for some it was since there were people living in tents and collecting money and anything else available for funerals, repairs, food and other basic necessities. But this was also one of the reasons why we decided to leave: there wasn’t much we could do to help physically. Instead of taking up valuable resources like food and water, we preferred to leave our cash with Anne at the hotel to distribute in town as she saw fit.

When the papers from Santiago made it through this morning to Santa Cruz we decided that we’d also be able to make it no matter how long it took so we packed our little Suzuki to the gills (including a couple on their honeymoon who decided last minute that touring the wine country wasn’t such a great idea these days after all) and we made it to Veronica’s house in time for lunch and some excellent home-made pisco sours. So yes, we’re more than okay and now we’re just hoping that they re-open the airport in time for us to fly to Caracas in three days.

We would have probably stayed quite comfortably at our hotel as well – our hosts Anne and Eduardo did everything they could to accomodate everyone. They even cooked a first-class barbeque last night for all the hotel guests because obviously there were no restaurants open anywhere. It ended up being a wonderful evening with everyone pitching in (Conor got blisters from cutting potatoes), sitting around a long table in the yard with candle light and bottles of wine. We can only recommend the TerraViña, be it in time of crisis or for a lovely holiday to explore the Colchagua valley and its vineyards.

We can’t wait to see you all again – some of you very soon – but until then, thanks again for your messages, emails, comments and care. Sending you all lots of love from Chile!

The wind gusts, rivers flow, lava erupts and the earth slides. Our planet is composed of enormous plates that float on molten magma. In places they pull apart, creating new earth (the mid-atlantic ridge). In others they slide past each other, creating fissures (the St Andreas fault). And in some places they collide, creating mountains and building pressure (the Andes mountain range). Once the pressure becomes too much to bear, the plates move and the earth shakes – last night so did our furniture.

At 3:38 am this morning we woke up to the wardrobe inching its way across our floor with its doors flapping and banging. The ceiling fan above our bed was violently shaking back and forth and it sounded like a giant freight train was passing just outside our window. The lamps toppled over, picture frames fell from the walls and our bed just wouldn’t stop shaking. In fact nothing stopped shaking – for almost three minutes our hotel swayed back and forth like a schooner caught in a squall. Needless to say, we were shaking as well.

The damage assessment this morning revealed that we had been very fortunate. Our room looked like Keith Richards had stopped by for a party yet nothing was broken (including the wine bottles we bought yesterday). The hotel itself, which has only been open three weeks, held up well too. A few shingles fell from the roof and the pool lost a few hundred litres of water, a flowerpot fell and there are a few cracks here and there. Okay, and one wall fell.

But no one was sleeping in that room so it hardly counts.

There are rumours of toppled wine tanks and loose barrels in the wineries that we cannot confirm however we did walk into town this morning, Santa Cruz a 140km south of Santiago, where the main church and the town hall have been badly damaged and some buildings collapsed completely.

As far as we can tell most seem to have been offices, bars and a sushi restaurant so hopefully without any casualties. There are a lot of adobe buildings in the area which according to reports didn’t hold up and there have been deaths but we haven’t seen this ourselves. Some of the bridges and roads are damaged and have been closed but we will try and make our way up to Santiago tomorrow anyway, road conditions and gasoline availability permitting. We have friends there and as wonderful as our rag tag team of survivors here at the hotel is, it will be good to see some familiar faces. Even though our hostess has been incredibly accomodating (baking fresh bread) as well as interesting (she’s the South America correspondent to the Danish magazine Politiken).

In case you’re wondering how we posted this in a place without electricty or water, one of our fellow guests, a Chilean architect, has a mobile modem and graciously lent it to us. It was the least she could do after telling Conor immediately after the quake that new buildings were built with modern anti-earthquake technology but that the second quake, for there always is one, would be stronger.

As we’re writing this there are still tremors happening every 10-15 minutes. Some are softer and some make the lamps sway and the flowerpots tremble. Last night the Nazca plate moved eight metres and it’ll take some time to settle down again. It’s eerie and unsettling each time the plates re-adjust and I don’t blame Rocco, the dog, for taking off like a crazy hound every time another aftershock passes. The dog, the birds and the low rumbling noise are all excellent indicators of imminent shaking. Our world is always in motion, sometimes and some places drastically so.

Our plan in Chile is to travel north by car. Having the freedom of our own transportation we decided to leave lodging to fate. We would see unexpected things and stop where we saw fit. Each intersection was a choice to be decided on the spot.

The morning started out well, we ended up in the city of Frutillar and like many others of the towns in the southern region it had a German colonial background. We had a surprising Chilean fish lunch at the “Guten Appetit”. Then we visited the German museum in town, which had reconstruction of the old colonial buildings and relics that had been saved from the 1800′s. The most interesting relics where those dedicated to farm work as they where quite advanced for the times and far reaches of southern Chile.

As evening approached we ended up in the town of Valdivia. On the road in we spotted the tourist office and what better place to get information on lodging. As I walked in and exchanged pleasantries with the tourist information lady, Nora picked up the first brochure she liked and declared we would be staying there. The tourist lady agreed it was a great place and marked the location on the map and off we set. She did not happen to mention that the surrounding communities were in town for a vote. As we approached the hotel the street leading to it was blocked by a police officer. We decided some pedestrian fair might be going on, so we would approach from the east, blocked. North also blocked. Not feeling good about the chances for a westerly approached I suggested the hotel down the road. However, once Germans make up their mind they are a determined bunch. So we decided to ask the police officer for guidance, “None can enter”. “But sir, I am headed for a hotel at the corner”. “Sorry, this street is closed”. Pulling out the map that the tourist lady had marked I waved it at him, “But I am sleeping here tonight” while stabbing a finger at the map I implored. I had no plans to let him know that I actually had no reservation or knew what the hotel looked like. In fact by this point we didn’t even know the name. Taking the map from me he softened, “You have a map? Why didn’t you say so, clearly this is the street marked on the map, please proceed”. Excited we drove around the blockade while the officer radioed in our arrival to his fellows down the road. We parked as soon as we ran into another police car with a group of officers glaring in our direction and decided to walk the rest of the way. Even walking they approached us and queried about our presence. Being a quick learner I reached for the map at which point they became jovial and pointed us in the right direction. On the way to the hotel we passed another twenty fellow officers and 5 armored vans. Having found our hotel right across the street from the building that the officers where guarding we gathered it was not a street fair, but must be someone important visiting. We asked for a room and the hotel manager decided to show us one while he blamed the trouble outside on the acronyms, with no meaning to us, on the front page of the paper that was lying on his desk. Along with the tour of the hotel we got an explanation that the police was there due to a demonstration, based on a vote currently going on that should be over in a next few hours. After we agreed to the room and price he mentioned that he hoped the vote would turn out to be no. I asked why that would be a good outcome, and with a worried look he said, “It would mean no tear gas”. Turns out by random chance and not pre-booking we were going to sleep in the closest hotel to the demonstrations against a new proposed water drainage pipe and hydro-electric dam. If the plan was approved the environmentalist apparently have a habit of getting rallied and this reflected in the 100 armed cops outside. Trusting in chance so far we left our belongings and headed out to the street vendors for dinner and beer. If there was going to be tear gas then I wanted a beer.

Today marks exactly one year since we left our lovely little apartment in Barcelona and started travelling. We didn’t know if it would work out for this long, combining work and travel, left to our own devices 24/7 and sometimes without much of a plan. But it’s been absolutely wonderful and it’ll probably be much tougher to stop than we anticipated.

We’re in Chile now, crossed over via the lakes from Bariloche to Puerto Montt (a trip that’s slightly overrated and vastly overpriced), and are slowly making our way up to Santiago. We hope to visit some vineyards, maybe the thermal waters at Pucon and then enjoy the big city life in the capital. More details to follow!

Tonight we’re staying in Valdivia, a nice little town on the pacific coast. Our hotel is right across from a government building and there’s a big demonstration going on about a vote that’s taking place tonight. The streets are closed off, police in riot gear is everywhere and they’re expecting tear gas later. So if you don’t hear from us in a few days, you know what happened…

In the meantime though, keep on reading. We hope you enjoy our ramblings.