We woke up early this morning excited for our bike and wine tour! Mac meet us at the hotel around 10 (Chilean time of course - we had been waiting since 9:15). It worked out perfect because Kyle and I were the only ones on Friday's tour, so we ended up getting a very intimate and personal tour and didn't feel rushed in the slightest. We made our way to Maipo Valley, which is the oldest wine region in Chile and has a lot of the smaller vineyards as well as the large ones. Maipo is about 45 mins outside of Santiago. We went to 3 different vineyards during our tour. We started off at Vina Cualdo - which is a very small vineyard - about 80 acres. Most of their business comes from selling their grapes to some of the larger vineyards, but they still make their own wines as well. We had one of their Chardonnays which was amazing - Kyle and I are not big white wines fans but this one was very light and not as dry as some whites can be. After we walked around the vineyard, we were ready to hop on the bikes and make our way to the next vineyard...but we had a little hiccup...they didn't have bikes for shorties like me. Oh yes, when I got on a bike, my feet could not reach the ground. So what did they do - they got a metal saw out of one of the sheds and sawed the post on the seat down for me - pretty sure that is a first for anyone :) Once the bike was adjusted for the shortie in the group, we biked to the next vineyard - Perez Cruz. umm.....AMAZING! This is one of the weathliest families in Chile and they started making wine as a "hobby". You come in through an amazing iron gate to a long dirt path that has trees drapping perfectly over the road with a stone wall lining each side with horse stables and vineyards as far as the eye can see. The total land of vineyards is 1,000 acres - oh, and did I mention that they owned the Andes Mountains behind their land...yea, you read that right, they OWN part of the ANDES MOUNTAINS. Mac took us all around the grounds telling us about the history of the different grapes, the wine process, and the different fermentation, storage, and bottling techniques. I was keeping my eyes open for any of the Perez Cruz family members for my single lady friends...no luck :( After spending close to an hr at Perez Cruz, we biked to the next vineyard, Huelken. A vineyard that is in equivalent size to Perez Cruz but does not produce as many bottles of wine because it is an up and coming wine making vineyard. Something that we learned while being in Chile is that it is very difficult for the little guys. The big guys like Perez Cruz or Concha y Toro dominate the market and put so much pressure on the "smaller" vineyards that the smaller ones just end of selling their grapes to the large companies and the larger companies claim them as their own...crazy. At Huelken, we got to meet the owner, Mario, and drink wine and eat meat and cheese with him. An absolutely great man! Very entertaining and funny! Mac and him have a great relationship so it makes for an awesome time. Mario is slowly trying to build the wine making side of his business - right now it is 10/90 - 10% of making his own wine and 90% selling his grapes to the larger companies. All of the wines we tried were awesome! Even though we only had 1 more night in Santiago, we bought 2 of his bottles to support the cause. Sadly, he does not sell outside of Chile, but Mac is trying to work on his importing license - so fingers crossed, we will be able to buy some of this amazing wine soon!! We spent about an hr talking with Mario over his wine...I of course was asking extremely specific and analytical questions - so Mario was a little suspicious and asked why I was so curious and kept giving Kyle a look like "good luck buddy". It was all in good fun though. We ended our visit with Mario and headed towards a little place for lunch with Mac and our driver. Kyle embraced the culture and ventured off the normal menu and ordered the pork wrapped in pork intestines....don't worry, I held back the vomit. He enjoyed it - I on the other hand, tried it, and said "its not my taste" (still saying that Mom and Dad). After a great meal, our bike and wine tour sadly ended and we got dropped off back at the Sheraton. It was a great day and a very unique experience. It further pushed our interest in wine and learning about other cultures...we will be visiting many more vineyards and hopefully revisting the ones we have already been to.

We have had an amazing time in Chile and can't believe it is already over. Chile will always have a special place in our hearts! Cioa and see you in the US!

Check out all of pictures from Santiago:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Joseph.Simmons/Santiago?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Dia numero nueve

After arriving in Santiago last night, we slept in and got a nice breakfast at the Sheraton before deciding what we would do for the day. For some reason, we had it in our heads that we were leaving tomorrow and so needed to plan two days of activities, but needed to be at the airport by 6:30pm tomorrow. Despite a well planned trip up to this point, I had forgotten to plan our time in Santiago, so we had a bit of a scramble to come up with a plan. We decided that the city itself seemed interesting, but would not be exciting enough to just walk around, so we wanted to go to a vineyard outside of Santiago. Before we left, I had found a bike and wine tour on TripAdvisor, so we looked for that. We ended up finding a different company altogether, La Bicicleta Verde, and called them to check on reservations. Only after telling Mac, an employee of Bicicleta, that we could not do a wine tour the next day because we had a flight did we realize that we didn't know what day it was. It was in fact Thursday, not Friday as we had thought! 24 extra hours, what a surprise!


Fortunately, Mac was also American and was able to point us in the direction of a few good restaurants and some things to do and see in Santiago. We had lunch at an awesome outside square on Avenida Bellevista and then spent the rest of our day ascending to and mostly climbing down from Cerro San Cristobal, which is a large hill in Santiago with a statue of the Virgin Mary on the top that overlooks the entire city and the mountains. As you can see from the pictures, Cerro San Cristobal offered a number of incredible views that I may or may not have gone photo crazy on. The walk down was beautiful, but looooong. We estimated it at about 4-5 kilometers, which would put us at close to 10 km of walking for the day! Needless to say, we were tired when we reached the bottom, but were very happy that we had made the trip. Of course our slow walk down the hill was nothing in comparison to the countless number of Chileans that we saw running or cycling up and then down the hill. 5 kilometers of continuous uphill running would be absolutely brutal and both Sammar and I agreed that there was no way that we could do it, which led us to propose a fitness challenge for ourselves for the next few months.






To reward ourselves for all of our walking, we decided to visit a highly recommended steakhouse called Fogon del Gaucho, but it may as well have been called Heaven. The Argentinean style of preparation which Fogon utilizes produces an incredibly delicious taste that neither Sammar or I have ever experienced before(Sammar's expression says it all!). Oh, and did I mention that an incredible 8 oz. filet was only $16!!!! We learned later that the beef is seasoned only with salt, but is uniquely cooked in a long, slow process. The large grill that is used has four separate areas. The furthest left is a raging fire using only wood, which as it burns down creates hot embers that are caught below the fire and distributed amongst the rest of the grill to create a hot, medium and cool section. The steaks pass through each of these four areas to create an incredible taste that keeps in all of the steaks natural juices. Some day, maybe we will have to make this type of grill in our backyard, and we are immediately looking into how we can get these incredible steak cuts from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The food was so delicious that we decided that nothing else could top it for the night and decided that we should return to the hotel and go to sleep(note: we are not incredibly lame, we finished dinner at 12:30am).



Check out the rest of the day's pictures here! ()

Cascada de las Animas numero dos

We woke up this morning ready for our horseback riding in the mountains. It was Kyle's first experience! We met our guide at the restaurant at 9am and headed towards the stable. Once mounted on our horses, we were ready to make our way up the mountatins. It was a pretty steep climb up the mountains but the view was unbelievable! It took us about an hr and a half to two hours to get up the mountatin - stopping along the way to take pictures and let the horses drink some water. As well as stopping and seeing the farm/gardens that are along the top. The amount of land filled with almond trees, oranges, avocadoes, goats, pigs, chicken, etc is indescribable. Once we got the top, the view was unreal. No words can describe how beautiful it was (thanks to Laura Johnson for the recommendation!). We spent some time just taking in the amazing scenery and talking about all of the different things that our guide has experienced in these mountains. His family has lived in this specific valley for many generations so it was very interesting to hear how the valleys have evolved and the water from the tops of the mountains have been channeled to the bottoms. Once our time was up, we mounted our horses to head back down the mountain - I may or may not have had a little freak out moment. I, of course, got stuck with the crazy horse who either stopped to eat everything or stripped over itself every .2 seconds. The climb down was extremely steep and complicated because it was just all loose rocks. I kept looking back at Kyle with complete terror on my face because I can feel my horse stumbling and can hear the rocks sliding and Kyle's horse skidding behind me. Kyle enjoyed the scenery but I just held on for dear life. Once on flat land, I enjoyed myself again :) Note to self - make sure you don't have a crazy horse or one with weak legs when going down a mountain! All in all though an unbelievable experience! Part of our Cascada de las Animas package was a trip to Concha y Toro - one of the largest vineyards in Chile. Our tour guide was amazing - Kyle loved him because of his corny jokes (Dad, you would have loved him too). He gave us a lot of insight in the family and the markets in which Concha y Toro has become prevelant. The actual vineyard and production side itself is HUGE! Pretty overwhelming actually. Since it has become pretty commercialized, we were only able to try 2 of their wines - both of which are available in the US. They were good, but Kyle and I have had them before since Brint (his old roommate) lived in Chile always had them around the house. So Concha y Toro is a cool experience but not a very intimate one if you ever make your way to Chile. Once we finished the tour, we made our way to the Sheraton in Santiago. Absolutely love Santiago! A very beautiful city with so much to see! You will be able to read all about that in our next posts.

Please see all of our pictures from Cascada de las Animas and Concha y Toro below!
https://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Joseph.Simmons/CascadaDeLasAnimas?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cascada de las Animas

We are still enjoying our trip as much as ever, but have gotten a little bit lazy on the blog. Therefore I'm putting up a few quick posts today with just pictures and brief descriptions before we take off on our bikeride through the vineyards!
We got up at 5am today to drive to Casacada de las Animas with our friend(driver) Mario. Most of the ride was filled with beautiful scenary such as the photo to the left that Sammar took of the mountains in the five minutes that she was awake during the ride!








Once we arrived in Cascada, we took off on a guided walk to the namesake of the area, the cascada de las animas(waterfall of the spirts). It was a beautiful hike with stunning views of the mountains, a very cool old-school water filtration system that was built into the mountain, and fun and refreshingly cold waterfalls that I would have swam in if only I had brought my bathing suit instead of my jeans. We also got to learn some more spanish since our tour guide, Raul, only spoke a little bit of english.Finally, we stayed in a beautiful and cozy log cabin with a furnace as the sole source of heating. After a few failed tries, I finally got it lit(amazing, I know)! Sammar and I fell asleep at 8pm next to the fire after a bottle of wine and didn't wake up for a few hours when we realized we should probably move to the bed. Overall a relaxing and fun day outdoors!

Vina del Mar - dia numero cinco

Today I woke up saying good morning to my fiance! Still getting use to that one, but don't worry I'm not complaining :) We ate our extremely large breakfast again but saved some meat and bread for a little snack later. After packing up our room, we made our way to the water. Kyle has never been anywhere and not touched the water before...so obviously it was a must. While he embraced the absolutely freezing water and stared longingly into the ocean, I screamed like a little girl and went sprinting for dry land! Very similar to the way we are at Bethany Beach - I'm getting better though. After Kyle got his fix of the amazing ocean, we went back to Casadoca - taking in the last views and saying our goodbyes to Concon, a city that will always have a special place in our hearts.

We made our way back up the windy, hilly roads to catch a local bus to Vina del Mar - about 20 mins from Concon. The buses here require you to move pretty quickly. You pretty much jump on while its moving - doing this with a 50lb pack is quite the accomplishment. I'd just like to note that my pack is lighter than Kyle's :) Still so proud of my packing. Once we hopped off the bus (literally) in Vina, we walked along the coast to find our hotel. We are staying at the Sheraton - thanks to Bain! Of course, it is beautiful. There is a beach right next to the hotel, so we spent most of day there. The weather was incredible!!


Kyle got inspired by the other people in the water....so he braved the cold and took a dip in the beautiful Pacific. My excuse not to get in was that someone needed to capture that moment - it worked out quite well. The look on his face when he came up from going under was priceless and definitely did not persuade me to take a dip. We laid on the beach for quite a few hours enjoying the view and watching the locals - pretty much in heaven. After a while, we decided to venture into town to find some lunch. To be completely honest, aside from the beach, Vina is not very impressive. We got spoiled by Valparaiso and Concon (two places that have so much character and things to offer). Vina is extremely commercialized and is almost a little bit dirty. After grabbing some quick fajitas that were quite delicious, we headed back to the beach to find our happy place again :) Watching Kyle at the beach is one of my favorite things...he gets a look on his face, similar to the way that he looks at me, that just makes you smile. It was extremely relaxing and exactly what we both needed.


Once the sun started going down, we made our way back up to the hotel room to capture some photos of the sunset. One thing that we really wanted to accomplish from this trip was spending some time with the camera and getting great photos - it is something that we both love and have a passion for. And it is makes it even more interesting and exciting to learn from each other and experience it together. I think that we ended up getting some amazing shots of the sunset and the waves crashing on the rocks. We were so full from lunch, and probably our dinner from last night, that we decided to skip dinner. We just listened to some spanish music, talked, and drank some delicious Chilean wine...preparing for our big day tomorrow in Cascada de las Animas and early pick up at 7am. Ready for the next adventure!

See the rest of our pictures here! (https://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Joseph.Simmons/VinaDelMarDay5?authuser=0&feat=directlink)

El Dia numero cuatro: Relaxation & Food

Today was a day of recovery. After an incredibly exciting day in Concon, we decided to take advantage of all the amenities that our boutique hotel had to offer. We slept in late, thanks in part to the soothing sound of the waves crashing on the shore just outside our balcony(I may or may not have recorded a 10 minute video of this to play on repeat while I sleep back in Atlanta!) After waking, we started our day with a GRANDISIMO desayuna(Yes, that is chocolate cake in the middle, surrounded by two omelets, a fresh plate of fruit, a plate of ham & cheeses, a bowl of bread, a bowl of guacamole, 2 glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice, and a coffee & tea)! As you all know, I've stayed in wayyy too many hotels, but this is by far the best complimentary breakfast that I've ever received. Surprisingly enough, we finished the entire thing, at around 2pm :).

In the afternoon, we decided to walk around Concon a bit with two objectives: 1) mess around with Sammar's camera and get some sweet photos 2) find a mercado to buy a couple bottles of Chilean vino for less than $5! We went down to the beach and climbed along the jetties to find the right landscape that we could take pictures of. Clearly the ocean is beautiful, but Sammar and I also share a wierd obsession with funky trees and rocks. We spent an hour or so out on the jetties and got a couple of fun photos and just enjoyed having nothing to worry about at all. After this, we decided to set out to find the vino. A few hills later and a couple pounds lighter, we finally found a Shell gas station! And across from it was a nice mini-mercado that happened to have a decent selection of vino. Through a combination of pointing and mumbling "este" and "cuanto cuesta", we landed on two bottles of vino for a whopping $12! Since we had exerted so much energy finding the vino, I decided that Sammar needed to be pampered a little bit more, and took her back to the hotel for a massage, while I hung out in the hot tub and read about Chilean architecture.

Later, we cracked open a bottle of the precious vino that we had purchased and sat on our porch for a while just talking and listening to the sound of the ocean. Shortly after the sunset, we decided to walk down to La Gatita restaurant, a local favorite that I had found in someone's blog a few months ago(coincidentally, this was the same blog that had a picture of the sand dunes in Concon which inspired the location of the proposal)! On the recommendation of Sabrina, our hotel hostess, we ordered las machas de parmesanas(which we are now obsessed with), as well as La Gatita, a dish of machas de parmesanas, locos(i still don't know what these are), jaiba(crab), and camarones(shrimp), and bowl of Chupe de Jaiba. We followed up with Reneita de Margarita, what we thought would be a nice dish of fresh fish with a pico de gallo salsa(it wasn't) and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. If you're thinking that this sounds like way too much food, then you are exactly right! We pushed hard through the first three delicious dishes, but when the Reneita arrived and we realized that "margarita" actually meant a cream based sauce with camarones we hit a wall. We decided to get the Reneita wrapped up and would give it to the hotel staff. After we had paid the bill and were ready to leave, our waitress retuned to the table and said something in Spanish that we could not understand, but it sounded like, "we need more money". After Sammar asked her to repeat it a bit slower, we caught a few more words, "we have liquor", "apple", "amaretto", "on the house", but we had missed so many words in the middle that we had no idea what she was saying and stared blankly at her. Slightly frustrated with our ingnorance, she said "un momento", and ran to the kitchen. She returned with two shot glasses and explained that they were apple liquor and amaretto, at which point everything made sense, and we were extremely appreciative. We quickly downed the shots, said muchas gracias, and added to our tip for her. Overall, a great day of relaxation and spoiling ourselves!

Check out the rest of today's pictures on our website! (https://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Joseph.Simmons/ConconDay4?authuser=0&feat=directlink)

Concon - una dia increible

We woke up early Saturday morning to enjoy our last breakfast on the terrace of Hotel Brighton before heading to Concon. After packing up, we had one final look over the city and headed towards the main area to catch a bus to Concon. We were so proud of ourselves for catching the right ones! Concon is about 30km from Valparaiso and we paid a whopping 400 pesos each..oh yes, 80 cents! The US transit system could learn a thing or two. Kyle did an awesome job in making sure we didn't pay too much and caught the right bus. The drive into Concon was amazing - lined with beautiful houses, unique buildings, and artwork. While we might have found the bus easily, our hotel was a little bit of a different story. Once we got into the city we weren't exactly sure where to be dropped off. We gave the driver our street address and he ended up having us get off at the very end of the street - the opposite side from where our hotel was. So we embraced the moment and became real backpackers :) We had a 3.9 km walk along the coastline, but it was well worth it - the view the entire way was unreal. And before you know it, we were at our hotel! (well, I may have asked are we there yet a couple of times). The hotel is absolutely perfect - like nothing I have ever seen. It is a boutique hotel and has only 6 rooms. Kyle completely surprised me with staying here - we had found it online back in the US but decided it was a little much. He surprised me saying that it was part of my birthday gift because back in July he told me that I would have a special day on our trip for my birthday present...come to find out, later in the day I got the best birthday gift any girl could hope for! Once we got settled in, we headed to lunch. The conceriege gave us some suggestions and they were incredile! Best meal we have had thus far! After stuffing ourselves (a common theme on this trip), we headed towards the sand dunes - the original attraction that led Kyle to find Concon. We were going to take a bus but once we saw the sand dunes in the distance, we couldn't help but walking briskly towards them. Once they were right in front of us, it was a sight that neither of us have ever seen before. It was a combination of a beach, mountains, desert, and tropical - absolutely incredile. The Sand Dunes are any where from 300 - 900ft high. We found what we thought was the perfect path and made our way up to the top...it was quite the trek - walking through sand is hard enough sometimes, but going up a 65 - 70 degree sand incline is a challenge. A challenge that was beyond worth it! The view at the top is unbelievable, no words can describe. You are presented with a view of endless crystal blue ocean and a sun that reflects perfectly on the water. The 360 view is just as incredible - being able to see every city, the surrounding homes and sand dunes. And Kyle insisting to bring the tripod made it even more worth it! We were able to take pictures of the both us with this incredible scenary behind us. We stayed on the sand dunes for about 3 - 4 hours, waiting for the sunset. We didn't make it quite that long - the breeze started to pick up and it started getting cold quickly. Kyle said that he wanted one last video of the area, so I stepped aside and he did a 360 view and then walked over to me. The look in his eyes said it all...I immediately started giggling/tearring up because its what I do when I get really excited and happy. He gave a speech that I will remember for the rest of my life and then he pulled a sock outside of his pocket that had an iphone case then another sock then a pretty little blue box...got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! I had the world's biggest smile on my face and of course, screamed yes and gave him a huge kiss. No words can describe how perfect the moment was, but what I can tell you is that it was more perfect and incredible than anything I could have imagined. Of course, immediately afterwards, I started asking all of the questions of how he pulled off this amazing surprise! Thank you to everyone who helped and was a piece of this!! The sun started setting so we made our back to the hotel as an engaged couple..once we got back, I of course shared our exciting news with one of the hotel staff and was eager to call family!! We heard a knock on our door and it was the hotel staff with 2 glasses of champagne and dessert - incredible! We then went to the spa for a private session - we had the entire thing to ourselves. So we enjoyed the hot tub and sauna and amazing dinner just the two of us. This day will be a day that I forever remember and don't think I have stopped smiling. I am looking forward to the rest of our vacation but more importantly, looking forward to being the future Mrs. Kyle Simmons! Can't wait to be home and celebrate with all of the ones that we love!!!

Please check out all of the pictures from our wonderful day! https://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Joseph.Simmons/ChileDay3Concon?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCM_p_eH9kdfc0wE&feat=directlink