Valparaiso

JoAnne and Donny at Winery
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02.01.07

Yesterday we woke up in Valparaiso,Chile’s most important seaport. Valparaiso is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. And the home of the National Congress although Santiago,74 miles to the southwest, is the capital. This is our 3^rd viist to Chile,the last being in Dec.2002 when we disembarked from The Siltverseas Whisper with the West’s after a trip around Cape Horn.While the ship was taking on new passengers and supplies, the 142 World Cruise passengers were taken to Matetic Vineyard- a beautiful hour bus ride up in the valley of Casa Blanca. Three generations ago a Croatian arrived in Chile and bought tremendous land in this valley. In 2000, his grandchildren decided to establish a vineyard, a winery and a lovely guest ranch on this beautiful property. The winery is a 10 minute bus ride on the property from the manor house and guest facilities and isan unusal modern design by a Norweigan and build into the side of a hill. After sampling the wine we went back to the manor house where we had a great reception with more wine and pisco sours.During a big lunch we were entertained by Chile’s internationally famous dance company. The music, dances and costumes of these beautiful young people was really a special treat-particularly in such a setting in perfect weather. On our bus ride back to the ship,we toured Vina Del Mar,the beautiful seaside resort next to Valparaiso and the site of the summer home of Chile”s president-now a woman for the first time.Valparaiso’s harbour is big and it takes 10 minutes by bus to go from the terminal to our ship.. Before the opening of The Panama Canal all the ships from Europe and the east coast of America had to stop here for provisioning after coming around The Cape. We must have seen 10,000 containers on the dock or on ships in the harbour. It makes you wonder how they keep track of them and what we would do without them.

Sal and Bill at manor house-Matetic Vineyards
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Since Donny had such a big lead in our running bridge game we decided to have separate running games for each of the nine segments of our trip. After today Sallie is currently winning. This morning our lecturer was Glenmore Trenear-Harvey an Intelligence Analyst of Britiians Sky News TV. His subject was “The Litvinenko Affair-Back To The Cold War”. Litvinenko was the former KBG agent recently murdered in London and a friend of his. Wow- the lecture was interesting and sobering. Tomorrow we will be visiting Robinson Crusoe Island. In the meantime I am enjoying a good book-Sea of Thunder-given to us by Rinky and Bill Neuhauser.