Colchagua Valley

Imagine staying in the Napa Valley in a beautiful "casita" located on a hillside high above a sea of grape vines. Now imagine it is 40 years ago and there are virtually no tourists. That is what the Colchagua Valley, Chile is like today.

Vineyards are everywhere but there is still lots of land that is undeveloped. And tourism is still in its infancy here though fantastic places to stay and eat can easily be found. Deborah especially felt like she landed in heaven for four days when we stayed at the Lapostolle Residence on their Clos Apalta winery in the Colchagua Valley. The owner of the vineyards is a member of the Lapostolle family (the makers of Grand Marnier) and she left the family business and entered the Chilean wine business about 15 years ago.

We were very impressed with the residence and the amenities here. In fact, Deborah thought it was just about her favorite place she ever stayed (we'll post pictures sometime soon). And, the wine is heavenly as well. We've drank all of the Lapostolle Chilean wines at home in Seattle except the flagship "Clos Apalta" wine. We didn't realize what we were missing until we got here! Yes, it is very expensive and not an everyday wine. But, we can say that the 2006 was very excellent (having enjoyed in 3 of our 4 nights here). The 2005 just won #1 wine of the year in the Wine Spectator so they are clearly doing something right.

On Friday, at about 10AM local time, we were enjoying time in our casita when all of a sudden there was quite a bit of shaking. Turns out, there was a 5.2 earthquake that occurred about 100 miles southwest of us. Our first Chilean earthquake! Que divertido!

On Saturday, we did a beautiful hike on the property up to an old Incan wall. The wall is something like 40 miles long and it is a simple wall with no obvious purpose. It is only 3 feet tall so wouldn't stop anyone. People think that it was a marker for a boundary of Incan territory and a group of people that lived in the Colchagua Valley and were considered very difficult. They didn't want to be subjugated by the Incas and were resistant to the idea of agriculture. So, rather than fight them, they marked the no man's land. Seems like it kept the peace and it would be interesting to know more about the wall.

After our hike, we hopped in the car and drove to Pichilemu. Surfing capital of Chile and maybe South America. The pictures we saw on the internet of the surf wave were impressive but the actual in-person experience was not as impressive. It is a beautiful beach and the wave is nice to look at, for sure, but Saturday's surf conditions were not ideal so we didn't get to see it in all of its glory. When we have more internet bandwidth, we'll watch some of the surf videos on youtube to know more about what we missed!

We were both very sad when we packed our bags yesterday morning and began driving south. We'll be back before too long...