Bike at your own risk

Recently I re-discovered the joy and convenience of biking. We got one of those seats for the back of my bike. I have a burley and I worship it, but its just not super safe here due to the tacos (traffic. is that not the best word for traffic??). Anyway. So now Curly girl and I cruise to school, the park and the store super fast. It is awesome. It takes me less time to get anywhere and I can ride my bike to the gym too. WINNING. Since I have no car and am afraid to take the bus this opens up a whole new way of life for me. But biking comes with unexpected risks. The cars are not the problem. They are respectful of my space and right of way. Below is the list of people who are unknowingly trying to kill me.

1. Teenage girls/boys. They walk in lines that stretch the length of the sidewalk and then some. They are too busy gabbing about each other and about what so and so said at school, like omg (or the spanish equivalent), to watch out for me. I usually have to off-rode it or risk my life and go into the street temporarily to pass them. They dont even look up from whatsapping long enough to notice that I almost got smashed by a bus.

2. Business men on lunch. They might be worse than the teenagers and their whatsapping. They leisurely walk and stroll (wine with lunch is a thing here so the strolling happens all over the sidewalk) and are not aware of me at all. If Curly girl is with me I start talking loudly so they hear me coming, sometimes they get out of the way faster.

3. People walking with headphones. They cannot hear me as I yell, perdon permisso behind them so they usually jump as they see my shadow passing them. Instead of jumping out of the way they usually jump in my way. This is problematic.

4. Cab drivers. Yes, technically not a sidewalk problem. However, they love to hang out in intersections and block my way to cross the street while the little green man or little green bicycle is telling me that it is my turn to cross. They dont move until the green man is flashing which means that I can take my life in my hands and risk it changing to red man (dead man) or wait the light cycle out again. Thanks, cabbie.

5. My daughter. My own flesh and blood. Just this morning she threw her gloves off her hands in the intersection just as the green man was flashing green and my bike has no kickstand. I had to ride like hell, lean my bike against the light pole sprint back and grab the gloves before they got run over. Thanks, kiddo. She thought it was funny. She also likes to rock side to side. She apparently thinks I am stronger and have a better sense of balance than I actually do.

That one time when we went to the Atacama desert and I got the flu and fainted in a restaurant and the waiter thought I was drunk.

Last Thursday we flew to the beautiful San Pedro de Atacama. It is unlike anything I've ever seen. It is other wordly. It is breath taking. Granted I didnt see that much of it because Thursday night after checking into our gorgeous hotel we strolled into town where I fainted in a restaurant and was accused of being intoxicated. I hadnt had a drop. I was feeling a little weird from the plane ride. It was bumpy. I thought maybe I was air sick and maybe the altitude was getting to me. Well when Curly girl woke up the next morning with the same symptoms we were fairly sure it wasnt the altitude. It was in fact, the flu. Text book flu, naturally.
Well I figured we flew all the way here, lets just load up on Motrin and head out to the tour. (I was so optimistic at this point in the trip). First up, Cejar Lagoon. It is a dead sea. I just took their word for it because it was freezing but some other people there stripped down and floated around the lake. But there are a type of shrimp that live in the lake and in the winter flamingoes come and eat the shrimp. Pretty cool. All around the lakes are salt flats. The salt builds up from volcanic eruptions and water washing down from the Andes. It looks like snow but it is all salt. Its crazy beautiful.

So we survived that. Then we went back to hotel for lunch. Like I said I was optimistic up until this point. Right after lunch my fever spiked, I was wracked with body aches and chills. Amelia starts vomiting. Everywhere. Dan goes to town for medication. I was cleaning up Curly girl's vomit while vomiting and running a fever. That friends, is love. It all pretty much went down hill from this point. I will spare you the gory details. But my husband has earned his saint status. Also, silver lining, the hotel staff did all the vomit laundry. They changed the sheets and washed the towels, God love them. They probably put our pictures up somewhere under the heading "NOT WELCOME BACK" but still I am grateful. Also, by our flight Sat night we were all somewhat better. I could get up without falling over/having to crawl on hands and knees and Curly girl was no longer vomiting. The flight home was uneventful. I have never been so happy to be home. I was still not feeling great all day Sunday and Monday. It was a nasty bug, y'all.
There are Alpaca everywhere in the desert. We saw some just hanging out by the side of the road. I bought some Alpaca scarves as gifts. They are really lovely. There was an Alpaca statue at the hotel that Curly girl liked. She also really enjoyed taking some pictures on the trip. Maybe I have a budding photog on my hands. We stayed at the Los Cumbres and it was perfection. The views, the rooms, everything was just awesome. Cannot recommend enough.

There are tons of Volcanoes in Chile. The ones in the south are fairly active right now. There is one near San Pedro (the name escapes me) but it erupted 8 years ago and every morning there is smoke coming from the top of it. Kind of cool in a scary way. Its the flat looking peak all the way to the right. It is almost as tall as Mt. Kilimanjaro. 

All in all it was an ok trip. Thats a lie, it was terrible. But it is a beautiful place and I really want to go back when we are all healthy and get a do over. I would like to do the things we had to cancel like the hot springs and the geysers. One last picture of Curly girl looking all sad a pitiful. 

Winery tour #3: Santa Rita

We went to visit the winery of Santa Rita 2 weekends ago. It was gorgeous. It is right at the base of the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Impressive to say the least. It is BIG too. Much larger than the other 2 we have been to. They bottle 200,000 bottles of wine a day, 6 days a week. That's a lot of wine. When you drive up you are immediately surrounded by miles, ahem, kilometers of grapes. The tour guide answered a question I have had since we moved here but kept forgetting to ask.
Question: "why are there rose bushes planted at the ends of each row of grapes?"
Answer: Turns out they do this so they can detect any sort of fungus, ect in the soil. If the rose bushes die they know something is wrong with the soil and they can pull up the grape plants and save them. The guide compared the roses to the canaries in the coal mines. Smarty pants.

The roses looked good, so no worries here for the little grapes of Santa Rita. So Santa Rita's winery is in Maipo valley but they have grapes in Casablanca, Rapel and Colcahgua valleys as well. The weekend before we went they had their harvest....so this means they were actually making wine! Ah so cool! So while on tour I got to see the HUGE metal towers where they were in the process of making the wine. The guide showed us how they control the temperature and how long they keep the wine in the containers. Some wines can stay in the metal towers for up to 8 months. Then once they are done in the metal towers they are moved to barrels. They use oak barrels from France and the good ole' USA.

The white wines dont get put into barrels. They are reserved for the reds. After seeing the wine making they took us down to the cellars. The wines are stored horizontally so that the wine has contact with the cork. That is apparently very important for the wine to have proper oxygenation and maturation. I am learning so much in Chile! There were stacks and stacks of rows and rows of bottles. There is a special cellar that was the original cellar used at the winery. See below. 

It was beautiful on the inside. It has the original walls and floors and the structure was untouched until the big earthquake of 2010. One of the main columns was lost and the winery lost 5% of production. They fixed the column and now it isnt used anymore. It is a museum of sorts and now protected by the Chilean History Society. Pretty cool!
Ok so now to the good stuff.
Scenery: Absolutely beautiful. The mountains in the background really make it stand out. I still think that Casa del Bosque is the prettiest but this one is easy on the eyes too. It really is lovely. I think maybe we picked a bad day to go because the ash cloud from the volcano eruption down south was passing over the greater Santiago area and the air was hazy. I couldnt really see everything. We maybe should give it another go when my mom visits. This one gets extra cool points because it grows grapes, processes them, makes the wine and bottles it.
Carmenere: It is fantastic. They make some of the better Carmenere in my opinion. I love it. It is perfection and actually their Carmenere is the one that made me fall in love with this variety of wine. Their carmenere comes from the Colchagua Valley.
Cabernet Reserva: It is tasty. I really like this one. It is not as strong as some other cabernets that I have had since being here. It is smooth and light. It has a nice after taste and smooth on the tongue. Their Cabs come from the Maipo Valley. The Maipo Valley is famous for their Cabs.
Cabernet Grand Reserva: This one was "eh". It was kind of spicey and not really my thing. It wasnt bad but it just wasnt my favorite. It was too strong for me.
Sauvignon Blanc: Their grapes for the Sauvignon Blanc comes from the Casablanca Valley. All the good SB's do. It is good. It is light and fresh. It is slightly acidic and tart but not overly so. It to me would be perfect on a summer afternoon with some fish or ceviche. yum.
Food: We didnt eat so I cannot speak to the food, but the restaurant was lovely and so rustically beautiful. I have it on good authority from a friend that the food matches the environment. They were actually prepping for a wedding while we were there! We sat in the garden and had a glass of vino while Curly girl ran around like a maniac.

All in all great winery. 2 thumbs up!!