Today we’ve got a tour that was arranged by another member of Cruise Critic, where we’ll do some touring of the Valparaiso area. Most flights out of Santiago back to the US tend to be late flights, so it’s good to have a tour that takes up a good chunk of the day when you disembark the ship here.
We gathered with our group and got off the ship all at once. In Chile, they’re pretty strict about checking for foods when you get off, and have dogs sniffing the bags. So don’t try to take anything off that you shouldn’t here! The ship docks in a cargo area (like most of the ports on this route), and when you get off, you take a bus to the cruise ship terminal. Those without cruise ship tours (like us) collect their bags here, those that had cruise ship tours didn’t have to deal with them until they got to the airport. We did have a little bit of trouble here, only found 3 of our bags together. Finally found the bag off to the side, apparently the luggage tag had gotten torn off.
Next we headed outside the terminal to meet our tour guide. Had to wait a little bit for them to bring the bus in, where we did have a little bit of a entertaining time. The person that had organized the tour had checked with the company to make sure they could handle lots of luggage, and that we were 10 people. Well, the small bus that they provided was a little short on the luggage space (heck, we were 10 people, 8 of whom had been on the ship for 30 days, and us 2 that just don’t pack light, there was a lot of luggage). Oh, and the bus also had 9 seats in it. With a lot of creative effort, they were able to fit all but a couple pieces of luggage in, and sent the other two with another van from their company that had people that were going to the same hotel in Santiago as a couple of people on our tour. And we were able to squeeze in to make the seating work.
This tour was pretty good. We spent a while going around Valparaiso, seeing some of the sights. Stopped at one funicular that dated back to the late 1800’s, and visited a place that had some local crafts being sold. We then rode down a different funicular that was also pretty old. The funicular’s run about 60 cents each way.
We then headed up the coast to the Vina del Mar area, and toured around there some. We also stopped at a small restaurant here that overlooked the ocean. Very nice place, and for those that had the fish, apparently excellent fish.
Finally we started heading up towards Santiago. Along the way we stopped at a winery. There’s a valley type area between Valparaiso and Santiago that has a lot of wineries. The first one we tried going to was apparently closed because they were having a wedding, so we headed to the next one down the road. There we were able to get a short tour of the facility along with a tasting at the end. I’m not really a wine drinker myself, but found the Chardonnay to be fairly reasonable. The wine drinkers in our group weren’t all that impressed with the other wine that we tasted (can’t remember exactly what type it was).
Just a short note about our guide for this day’s tour, Javiar. Very nice guy, excellent english, although he was a bit soft spoken, so could be hard to hear at times in the bus. He also seemed to really be pretty knowledgeable, which wasn’t always the case on some of our tours. For those that were staying in Santiago for a few nights, he was also able to give some recommendations for restaurants that were reasonable near the hotels they were staying at, along with some info for getting around in Santiago.
We were the only couple in the tour that were actually flying out on this day (had to get back so Cathy could go back to work), so on our way into Santiago they dropped us off at the airport before they headed to the hotels for the rest of the people. We managed to spend a good chunk of the day on this tour, getting to the airport around 6pm or so, for an 11:55pm flight.
We were flying out of Santiago on LAN, which appeared to be one of the larger carriers out of Santiago. Unfortunately, that also meant that it seemed like everyone else in the airport was also flying out on them. We got into line right away because it was a *really* long line. Ultimately, it took us about two and a half hours to get through the line, and about 2/3 of the people behind us were helped out before us because they kept having to pull people from the lines for flights that were getting too close. It was a little frustrating, because meanwhile we were going nowhere in the line.
Passport checks and security weren’t all that bad here, the lines for this weren’t too long (oddly, given the length of the lines at the ticket counters). Once through security, there were really only a couple of places that you could get food from. (And of course, everything is listed in Spanish, so trying to figure out what the food was could be entertaining). One thing that I thought was a little odd was that for a country that doesn’t really eat dinner until very late, everything in the airport, including the places selling food, seemed to be closing down around 9pm.
Flight was apparently oversold by a fair number, and to be honest, I didn’t feel that LAN was doing all that good of a job of handling that. They waited until very late before the flight before anyone came by to start servicing the flight, and then spent a long time just kinda timidly going around asking a few people about taking the same flight the next day. Wasn’t an option for us, and since we had seats assigned, wasn’t really a problem for us.