Another Bucket List Trip a Long Time in the Making...and Waiting

October 2022

For anyone who has read any of my blogs, you'll know that we like to travel and that our trip locations run the gamut from mundane to somewhat wild.  Looking back on some trips, several have been tagged as "bucket-list destinations."  Immediately coming to mind are New Zealand and South Africa, as well as getting to bring Katherine and Anna to see Jordan.  While several destinations remain on that list, Patagonia has been on there the longest.  Admitting that I didn't know much about the area, it still created a fascination for me as both a part of the world I have never explored, as well as one of natural and remote beauty.  I knew, too, that it was not a place I would want to explore -- at least not the first time -- on our own, so a tour was the natural choice.  Our tour company of favor -- Gate1 -- has several trips to Patagonia, and one had garnered my attention for going on ten years.  

Our Gate1 Trip Overview

You may also know that we have traveled with our good friends, the Rieckhoffs, on several occasions, and always had a good time.  They share our love of travel, as well as good food and wine.  At some point years ago, we realized that they too wished to visit Patagonia.  That said, Jeff has been vocal in the past that he prefers to travel on his own or with private guides, as he'd never done a group tour.  For example, when we visited Egypt several years ago, only Barbara and Charlotte joined us, as Jeff had visited before and did not desire to join our tour.  That said, in discussing Patagonia, he agreed that it was place best visited with an experienced guide.  With that, we watched for specials on our tour of choice -- a 13-day trip to both Chile and Argentina -- and finalized plans for October 2020, booking in late 2019.  Given that we could not visit in our summer -- as it would be the dead of winter in South America -- and the fact that (at the time) both Anna and Charlotte were to be in university, we booked this as an "adults-only" trip for myself, Katherine, Jeff, and Barbara.  This became -- and remains -- a sore spot with both girls, and I must admit it was not without a healthy dose of guilt that we finally made our booking.

As with several other trips -- Poland and Kenya/Uganda (twice!) -- our originally scheduled trip in October 2020 was cancelled due to the Covid 19 pandemic.  We weren't surprised then, and when we re-booked for the same month in 2021, all of us assumed things would be back to normal.  As it was, we all watched the situation on the ground in both Chile and Argentina, and while we held out hope, the 2021 season was also cancelled, about three months out.  Chile remained closed to outside travelers and Argentina required a 7-day quarantine on arrival for any foreigners, so in hindsight we shouldn't have been surprised.  We rebooked -- AGAIN -- for 2022 and only grew confident in our ability to travel in early summer, when Chile dropped their quarantine requirement and the national parks reopened to reduced numbers of tourists.  Given our experience with having to cancel our April 2022 trip to Africa only five days out -- after I contracted Covid -- we remained worried about last-minute snafus.  I will openly admit that I was somewhat relieved that Katherine picked up Covid (an extremely mild case) upon our return from Romania in mid-September, as that provided her with an extra layer of protection.  I also received my third Covid booster shot, which added to my own immunity.

Day of Departure Finally Arrives

Wed, 19 Oct 2022

Though we had returned from a tour of Romania just over a month before we were due to leave for South America, we had to plan our packing differently for this trip.  We would be hitting multiple climates and have to pack warm and cold-weather gear, to include waterproof and insulated things.  That, coupled with the length of the tour, made packing logistically challenging, but we took our time and planned ahead as best we could.  We had the advantage of literally having three years to buy specific pieces of clothing we thought we might need, so we avoided last-minute scrambling to assemble the right gear.

The only pre-departure hiccup we encountered was a relatively last-minute need to shorten our trip by one day.  Katherine learned of a work commitment scheduled for 1 November, which was the day on which we were originally supposed to return home.  United Airlines -- with some polite prompting -- was accommodating and agreed to move us to the same flights a day earlier, and in the end, we only ended up missing the farewell dinner.  Overall, it was certainly an acceptable sacrifice, and in no way took away from what was ultimately an amazing journey.

Our flight itinerary -- which changed more times than I can literally account over the years -- had us flying from Dulles to Houston, and then onward non-stop to Santiago, Chile.  Our Washington-Houston leg ended up switching to a 1:00pm departure, with a long layover.  We had no choice, other than to risk a later flight and a very tight connection, which -- if we missed that onward flight -- would have cost us a day or more of the trip, so the decision was an easy one to make.  

I took the entire day of departure off, which allowed me to get Chip settled away at the kennel, while Katherine worked the morning and we linked up with the Rieckhoffs in the United Polaris lounge at Dulles.  The flight to Houston was non-eventful, and we collectively enjoyed the long layover there.  The lounge had a full restaurant, which allowed us to have a formal sit-down supper before boarding the 8:30pm flight to Santiago.  

Our Flight to Houston

Polaris Lounge at Dulles Airport

Katherine, on the Flight to Houston

Our Flight to Santiago

Katherine Gets Ready for Some Rest

Bienvenida a Santiago!

Thu, 20 Oct 2022

It was a 10-hour slog, but as we were in business class, we had a lie-flat bed and all of us good solid sleep ahead of our 7:30am arrival.  The weekend before we left, we had the Rieckhoffs over for a pre-departure dinner.  It was only then that the four of us looked at a proper world map and realized that both Chile and Argentina sit significantly east of Washington.  I am embarrassed to admit that, but it meant we only had a one-hour time difference, with both countries actually being one hour AHEAD of us.  That helped considerably with jet lag; namely, the lack thereof.

Approaching Santiago

On the Ground Safe and Sound

The airport in Santiago was shiny and new, and in fact we learned that it had just undergone a major overall, which was completed several years ahead of schedule, during the pandemic, when the international terminal was essentially closed.  We parted company with Jeff and Barbara at the airport, as they had hotel transfers pre-booked through Gate1, whereas I had booked us a private transfer, as I usually do -- to save money.  You know me.

It was a bright, sunny, and warm day, and while I had expected the transfer from airport to hotel would take 30 minutes or so, it ended up taking us well over an hour.  The roads into and through the city were an absolute mess.  Our driver spoke limited English and we wrongly assumed that the heavy traffic was normal.  We later learned that there had been a bomb alert in central Santiago (a hoax), but it was the cause of all the back-ups and closed roads.  We were thankful this occurred upon arrival, rather than if we'd been trying to get to the airport to leave.

Somehow the Rieckhoffs arrived ahead of us, even though they left after us, but in either case, we were all met by our tour manager for the coming two weeks -- Veni -- who had been waiting for us.  This was our seventh tour with Gate1, and the only time a tour manager met us upon arrival, which was a very welcome surprise.  In addition to getting our luggage and keys sorted, he told us of our welcome meeting and dinner that evening, and shared that our entire group was only going to comprise 14 people.  As with our trip to Romania a month earlier, I was both surprised and delighted that the tours were running with such small numbers.  Especially considering what a great group we ended up having, we could not have been more fortunate to have so few joining us.  Another unexpected surprise and treat.

Our Hotel in Santiago -- the Pullman Vitacura

View From our Room -- Smog, and more Smog

Wine, Wine, and More Wine

Thu, 20 Oct 2022

While I don't pretend to know a lot about wine, I do know what I like and I have been spoiled by Jeff's acknowledged expertise in the area.  As both Chile and Argentina are world-renowned for their vintages, it was inevitable that we'd try to take advantage of visiting to enjoy some special wine.  As we arrived early in the day and did not meet as a group until 6:00pm, we had agreed previously to use the day to visit some wineries.  Unlike in Buenos Aires, there are major and well-regarded vineyards surrounding the city of Santiago, whereas the wine-growing regions of Argentina are concentrated hours west of the capital city.  There is a wine shop in Washington called Grand Cata, which we have frequented for more than five years.  It specializes in wines from Iberia and South America exclusively, and Jeff is quite friendly with the owner, who comes from Chile.  He agreed to help arrange a visit to a small winery, which he considers "quite the find," but making the arrangements turned out to be much more challenging than planned.  As the day of our departure arrived, we still did not have confirmation that we could visit, let alone at what time.  With that, we made a back-up plan. I tracked down a private driver, who we hired for the day.  He was set to pick us all up from our hotel at 11:00am, and by 10:30 we still did not know if we had a confirmed tour.  I ended up calling one of the other wineries mentioned by the owner of Grand Cata, and was lucky enough to get someone on the phone, not to mention someone who spoke good English.  Though usually not open for tours, they agreed to host us at noon for a private showing and tasing.  Around that same time, we got word that our original winery of choice was booked for 3:00pm.  Our driver -- Christian -- arrived exactly on time, spoke excellent English, and was able to map out routes and timings to both establishments.

Once clear of the city, traffic was no longer a problem.  We arrived at our first winery -- El Principal -- exactly on time, but were surprised to find a locked gate and security guard. She called ahead to verify our clearance to enter, and then proceeded to both check our passports AND take our temperatures, as a Covid precaution.  Once through the gate, we drove down a long and winding tree-lined gravel drive, past fields of horses and manicured gardens.  Our guide -- Ivana -- was waiting outside the manor house.  Christian waited for us as Ivana gave us a full tour of the vineyard and wine-making facilities, followed by an intimate tasting in a subterranean cellar at a lavish dining table.  They only make four wines, but each one was stellar.  Before the trip, both Jeff and I toyed with the idea of bringing along our respective wine suitcases, but both elected to leave them behind as too unwieldy to manage during the trip, which was to involve two internal flights and covering lots of ground.  We both assumed we could easily ship bottles home without much issue, so we very disappointed to learn that no wineries in Chile direct-ship to private individuals in the States.  If we wanted to ship home, we'd have to work with a distributor on both ends, which quickly squashed those hopes.  Faced with that reality, we each purchased three bottles, assuming we'd buy a few at the next winery, and making mental calculations as to how many we could fit into our luggage.  

El Principal Winery

Our Host and Guide, Ivana

Barbara and Ivana Prepare for our Tasting

We departed exactly on time and similarly arrived at the next place -- Acquitania -- at exactly 3:00pm.  This was a much smaller operation, and though also gated, we had only to buzz to gain entry.  No one was waiting for us, and we had to walk around a bit before found someone, albeit someone who didn't speak English.  We eventually found our contact in the fields, with a couple of visitors from Portugal and Spain.  She explained, and apologized, that while she heard of our visit, she had not confirmed with her boss, and she was already committed to the tour in Portuguese and Spanish.  She said it was simply too much to add a third language, and seemed sincerely sorry that we'd come all that way only to be turned away.

In both reality and hindsight, none of us were really disappointed.  During the drive over, we'd already realized that more wine was going to be challenge to get home, and we'd already had a great experience at El Principal, so why tempt fate?  With that, Christian got us back to our hotel -- the Pullman Vitacura -- in time for a quick shower ahead of our kick-off meeting with our fellow travelers.

Our Fellow Travelers

Thu, 20 Oct 2022

We met up with our fellow travelers in one of the hotel's conference rooms.  We already knew our group would only comprise 14, including the four of us (myself, Katherine, Barbara, and Jeff).  Despite its small size, this was one of the most diverse tours groups of which we have been a part.  We later learned everyone's ages -- thanks to an immigration form we had to fill out as a group when we crossed the land border between Chile and Argentina -- and we ranged from 40 to 70.  We had a couple from Connecticut, who had emigrated from Poland in the late 1990's.  An airline pilot (the "baby" of the group) and his flight attendant wife, a naturalized American from Germany.  Two young-looking Asian women, who we called "the girls" throughout the trip.  They were investment analysts from northern California and both looked as though they were in their late 20's.  They were incredibly tech and social media savvy, which added to the impression that they were so young.  We were later universally surprised to see that they were in fact both 42, and looked no older than 28 or so.  Both were extremely intelligent and well-traveled, and very fun to be around.  We had an older, and very interesting, couple from Silicon Valley, who had emigrated to the United States from Israel.  The man -- Gershon -- was our tour elder at 70, and was born in Mexico.  His parents were turned away at Ellis Island in the 1930's, when immigration by Jews was banned in the United States.  They ended up as refugees in Mexico, where he was born.  He moved to Israel after the 6-Day War, inspired to help Israel and turned off by the persistent prejudice he faced in Mexico.  He had FASCINATING stories we heard throughout the trip, and I'll try to be sure to include some of them.  For example, his father served as mountain climbing guide for the Soviet spy who murdered Leonid Trotsky in Mexico City.  After the killing, a Jewish man working in the Mexican Government came to their house, warning them that the Soviet Government had paid off the Mexicans, who were in turn looking for scapegoats.  As Gershon's father had served as a guide for the eventual assassin, he was told to pack his things that night and he was helped to cross the border into Texas, where he hid for the next two years.  Gershon's wife came from a wealthy Romanian refugee family, and was born in Israel.  She and Gershon met in Israel and emigrated to Cupertino, California in the 1990's, recruited into Silicon Valley for his deep technical expertise.  Rounding out the group were two ladies from Chicago, who used to work together.  They were essentially travel buddies and had seen much of the world together.  One of the women was Cuban, and helped serve as translator at times. 

As I mentioned earlier, our tour manager was named Veni, and he came from Brazil.  On every other Gate1 tour we have taken, the tour manager was always from the main country we were visiting.  We later learned that across South America, they use a different system.  They have tour managers based across the continent, and they fly in to handle tours regardless of where they begin.  In each area we visited, in addition to our tour manager, we had local guides, who stayed with us throughout our stay in that area.  In this case, we had local guides in Santiago, Chilean Patagonia, Argentinian Patagonia, and then in Buenos Aires.  Veni was a very experienced guide and also had an extremely outgoing and funny personality.  It was fun to see the rivalry between Brazil, Chile, and Argentina which came out in each encounter, and all of the guides had obviously worked together in the past and were all friends.  In fact, throughout the trip, we witnessed lots of reunions, as our guides were bumping into other guides or locals who they had not seen since before the pandemic.  Travel through South America really only picked up earlier this year, and the tours into Patagonia proper only resumed a couple of weeks before our arrival.  

Everyone in our group had traveled with Gate1 before, aside from Jeff and Barbara, and we all gelled rather quickly, which was nice.  Following an overview of the trip and an introduction to our local guide in Santiago, we boarded our bus for a welcome dinner in the historic downtown area of the city.  Thankfully Chileans do not eat dinner until after 9:00pm, as we would later encounter in Argentina, but it was still close to 7:30 before we began our meal, which was good but entirely too much food, especially on a day of travel.  We were all pretty pooped when we made it back to the hotel later.  On a related note, we learned that in Chile, the main meal of the day is lunch, and dinner is usually a smaller affair, and not late.  In Argentina, dinner is the primary meal, and rarely begins before 9:00pm, very much like what we'd seen in Spain.

Area Where We Had Our Welcome Dinner in Santiago

Santiago

Fri, 21 Oct 2022

As the focus of our tour was Patagonia, we only had one proper full day in Santiago, which served more as an orientation and welcome point.  The city struck me as very modern and clean, but many of us were still "scarred" by the horrible traffic we'd witnessed the day earlier.  When we started our city tour, we were pleased to see that traffic was in fact very normal.  The city is quite sprawling and sits at the foothills of the Andes Mountains.  The climate felt very much like southern California and, like California, there was quite a bit of smog which hung in the air and obscured incredible views of the snow-capped mountains.  Palm trees also abounded, adding to the California-like vibe.  We were told that during summer, the air clears, primarily due to a flip in the temperature inversion and increased winds coming off the Pacific Ocean, about 80 miles from the city.  As a whole, Chile has about 20 million inhabitants, and almost a third of those (just under seven million) live in Santiago proper.  

Despite sitting on a two major fault lines, they city has quite a few skyscrapers (including the tallest in South America), most built to earthquake standards, with major help from the Japanese.  The city didn't feel overly large, but we did see signs of the civil unrest that had plagued the country from 2019 to 2022, locally referred to as the "Social Outburst."  It was sparked by increases in subway fares, but soon grew into very large demonstrations focused on economic inequality, school costs, wages, etc.  This led to an eventual referendum to rewrite the country's constitution, which passed by a wide margin.  The protests eventually died down after the pandemic started and strick social-distancing and quarantine requirements were put into place.  During regular elections in December 2021, a 35-year old leftist from Patagonia -- Gabriel Boric -- was elected president; the youngest leader on the continent.  His government eventually drafted a new constitution -- per the earlier mandate -- which went to another national referendum in September of this year, and it was NOT approved.  Feedback was that the draft was too leftist and there were broad fears of moving too far in that direction, and ending up like Venezuela or Bolivia.  Across Chile and Argentina we saw and heard about large groups of refugees from both of those countries, and that sparked fears across Chile.  The government now has to go back and redraft another constitution and bring it forward for another national vote.

While we saw signs of the protests in several areas, and despite the uncertainty over the constitution, Chile is remarkably stable.  They have the second-highest GDP in South America, low inflation, and a stable currency -- the exact opposite of what we'd later see in Argentina.

Chilean National Art Museum

Another Reminder of the California-like Vibe

Seat of the Santiago City Government on Plaza de Armas

Central Post Office

Plaza de Armas

Changing of the Guard Ceremony at Chilean President's Office

Security Personnel and Posters of Protestors Killed During Recent Unrest

Monument to Salvador Allende -- Marxist elected president, overthrown by CIA-led coup in 1973

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Chilean Cultural Arts Center

We toured the historic old town, main squares, and even got to watch the changing of the guard ceremony at the Presidential Palace.  There were, however, very few historic things to see, so having more than a day in Santiago would have been certain overkill.  We finished the tour with a trip up a funicular to a vantage point (San Cristobal Hill) overlooking the city, on which a huge statue of the Virgin Mary stands.  From up here we could appreciate the sprawl of the city, but it also accentuated the smog and how the views were marred by the haze.

On the Funicular Going Up San Cristobal Hill

Madonna Statue atop San Cristobal

Sprawl of Santiago

Gran Torre, the Tallest Building in South America (64 stories) -- and SMOG!

Following lunch we had an optional afternoon tour to a major winery -- Undurraga -- in the Maipo Valley, which is home to numerous well-regarded vineyards.  The grounds were extremely beautiful, and our guide was excellent.  The wines were quite good, but not on par with what we'd tasted the day before, at El Principal.  Most of the wine they sold is in fact available in the States, which made it much easier to pass up on buying any and adding to our expanding suitcases. 

Arriving at Unduragga Winery 

Extensive Gardens at Undurraga

Barbara and Katherine Taking it All In

Cellars at Undurraga

Native Art Museum on Grounds of Undurraga

Our Guide and Post-Tour Wine Tasting

Dinner was on our own.  As this was our one free night in Santiago, Jeff and Barbara volunteered to arrange a nice dinner.  They made reservations for us at a very well-reviewed restaurant called Ambrosia (Ambro-see-ah).  We took a ridiculously cheap Uber ($10) for the 15-minute ride to the restaurant, which was tucked into a toney neighborhood south of our hotel.  We sat outside in the perfect California-like dry weather, with overhead heaters to help once the sun set, and the meal and service were out of this world.  Prices, too, were extremely reasonable, and we all ranked this meal as either our first or second favorite of the trip (the other contender being at El Calafate, in Argentina, later in the trip).

Wonderful Outdoor Meal at Ambrosia in Santiago

CLICK "OLDER POSTS" TO SEE MORE