January 27/28 Chile

We arrived in Valpariso, Chile at 8 am.  This port city serves the capitol, Santiago, which is about 75 miles inland.  The two metro areas have about half of all the residents of Chile.  The port is surrounded by coastal hills with very little flat ground.  There are numerous funiculars to take residents up the hills but apparently most are not in working order!  We heard from some passengers that one of the funiculars got stuck when one of our tour groups was coming downward and they had to walk down a huge flight of steps. 
Our tour traveled to the Casablanca valley, about 30 miles inland where a large number of winerys are located.  We visited one of the newer ones, it was very pretty with beautiful landscaping, lots of trees and flowers.  The wines were good, but not great.  Next on our bus tour was a drive through Vina Del Mar, a coastal resort area that was quite nice.  We returned to the ship about 1:30 in time for lunch. 

Front lawn at the winery

Large military statue in square near port

Silver Spirit in dock at left

A large crowd watching when we left dock

There were five Chilean navy ships nearby

The helicopter that came over our ship

We were supposed to sail at 5 pm but several of the tours that had gone to Santiago were late returning so we did not leave until 6.  Not sure if I mentioned it before or not but one of the Silver Seas ships, The Silver Spirit has been in several of the same ports and appears to be traveling on a similar itinerary.  They were docked in Valpariso when we arrived and were still at the dock when we left.
Chile has the largest navy in South America and were engaged in some sort of manuevers as we left port so we had to do some turning to avoid their ships.  One of their helicopters also came over our ship a couple of times.
We continue to be impressed with the obvious higher standard of living in Chile compared to Ecuador and Peru.  There is also a noticeable European influence in Chile.
We are at sea today, continuing south along the coast.  It is quite foggy and the fog horn has been sounding every few minutes for several hours.  The climate in this area is roughly equal to northern California in June.  Soon it will be much colder as we round Cape Horn and then head north.
Our team is now at full strength having acquired a new member and we managed to get a perfect score yesterday.  In the past we have always second guessed a few answers, ended up changing some and were often wrong, so yesterday we stuck with our first guesses and it paid off. Everyone on the team contributed.  Our next port is Sunday in Puerto Montt.