Leaving Chiloé on Monday meant we only had four and a half days to get back to Santiago to return our van. Small matter the it was still over 1,200km away.
It rained pretty solidly for the first couple of days, which gave us the impetus we needed to cover some decent ground. So except for a lovely stop at the El Rincon Eco Hotel near Los Angeles, where we made good friends with the family running the place, we were on the road almost constantly.
Santa Cruz and the Colchagua Valley
Out of nothing they’ve created a bit of a tourist route in Santa Cruz. This really is a great place for growing stuff, fields of tomatoes, fruit trees and maize are abundant. But what they really grow a lot of here is grapes. For wine.
Our lovely little hostel Casa Suiza rented us some bikes for the day, and we headed up the Apalta valley to visit the vineyards. The first 5km of the bike ride were along busy town streets and then a pretty hairy couple of kilometres along the side of the busy trunk road.
Once we turned off the main road all was calm, and a flat and gentle cycle between the fields was enjoyable. The near 30 degree heat and bright sunshine was a bit of a shock to the system however.
After lunch we sampled some wines at Apaltagua, and wandered around the vines trying grapes. Getting back to Santa Cruz was a sweaty affair. For dinner we visited a small bakery which looked fancy, but was fairly average. Quite a lot of Chilean food seems to follow the rule that if it looks good, then it probably isn’t.
Colchagua Museum
The museum in Santa Cruz is actually one of the best in Chile. It’s got a large collection of pretty much anything any everything from the country. There’s a great collection of fossils, and a lot of pre-columbian artefacts. There’s plenty of colonial era stuff including maps and war memorabilia. Oddly there are world war 2 uniforms on display from all belligerents, which seems strange. And there’s a big room about the Chilean miners rescue, including the lift thing they built to pull them out.
Goodbye Condor Camper
He never really grew into any of his given names, but we took him home to Santiago to see all of his siblings. (Via 2hrs of horrendous Santiago traffic)
It’s hot here – take us back south!
- The infamous Binga-Karoi road
- Mana Pools: A bucket list location?
- Camping Among Lions: Chitake Springs Experience
- Chirundu: The worst border in the world
- The Wild Dogs of Jeki: Sunrise in Lower Zambezi
Small Holiday Big Dream 
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