Day 3 Santiago & Conche Del Torro

Well today the touristing began and after around 28 hours worth of catch up sleep (ahh sweet sleep how I had missed thee) we got up and went out exploring with Pablo.

First stop was Conche del Torro, Chile´s largest and most highly reputed vineyard. Personaly I thought the wine was rough as guts and tasted like draino and actually poured mine out rather than finnishing it! (yes me - no seriously - dont look at me like that)

But the grounds of the vineyards were stunningly beautiful. Heres my first attempt at uplaoding a picture.

They also have the famous Diablo range of wines named so because Conche Del Torro invented a story that the devil lived in his wine cellar in order to stop the locals from stealing his best. The tour had a pretty tacky north american style to it but was enjoyable none the less. Heres a piccy of the wine cellar... mmm muchos vino!

We bailed on that place fairly quickly though because it had ´tourist trap´written all over fine spanish decor and Pablo took us to a funtastiko Chilean BBQ grill restaurante for lunch. Mui Bueno!

I ordered the steak and being that I look like the biggest Chilean woman known to man kind they served me a steak that looked like they had chopped off the entire left butt cheek of a cow and grilled it for me. It also came with fresh bread, butter tomato salsa and half a bottle of very palletable red wine. Oh my what a lunch!!!

heres a stunning piece of architecture I came across in our travels. Chile is the sad home to a fault line that sees earthquakes shake the buildings to the ground every few years. This happy snap is of a building that looks to me half of an original Spannish style apartment building and half a new residential complex. It just seemed to sum up Santiago so elegantly for me

We also checked out the famous hill in the centre of downtown which was the original spannish fortification that was the heart of Santiago city as all its building came from this central point. These days it acts more as a make-out-point full of lovers kissing under its lovely trees.

Oh also heres a great photo I snapped of Los Andes from the top of a hill in the upperclass end of the city. Cant wait to get up in there!

The other interesting thing (well just one of the many I guess) about the streets of Santiago is, the stray dogs.The streets are clean and Pablo tells me that eaxh inner city community prides itself on being cleaner and vbetter tahn the others and that includes the stray doggies! The dogs are everwhere but they are healthy and friendly and really very friendly. Apartently the government wanted to have them all killed recently which caused ahuge public outcry. Most of the people here live i apartment buildings and have sortof adopted the stays as pets. Restaurants feed the strays each night and passers by all toss them tid bits. Teams of local volunteers adminsiter vaccinations and free ventinary care which results in these huge healthy lovely dogs that ill hapuiily accompany you down the road just because. How nice!