Holy Shmoly: Fun Blog!

So As I sat down to write a blog about fun I thought "hmmmm, I could write mundane, text filled, blog about fun or, OR, I could write a super, awesome blog that will grab your attention with the force of a WWE wrestler's headlock and stubbornly never let go of your attention like a toddler with its blanky." I opted for the latter.

Here is the story of my extracurricular activities...

Most days after class, there is some sort of activity. So far, these activities have ranged from a tour of Valparaiso (which I referenced in the last blog) to a class on cooking sopaipillas - frieds disc of floury, pumkiny goodness. Ours were topped with some tasty salsa. Mmmmmm sopaipillas.

Here we our frying our sopaipillas. Again, mmmmmm sopaipillas.

Some days when there aren't planned activities, Reed and I do our own thing. On this day we decided to go to Renaca, a some, beautiful beach town about 15 minutes north of Vina del Mar.

Here is the view of the Renaca beach in the other direction. I really like the whole "houses in the hill right up to the ocean" thing that they have going on in Chile.

But I'm going to focus on my most recent weekend (Saturday 11/10 and Sunday 11/11). On Saturday, Ecela arranged for a tour to a local organic vineyard, Emiliana Organic Vineyards. I guess the magnetism of organic agriculture was too strong for Reed and I to escape.

Apparently, some of the best wine in the world comes from Chile. A fact that I knew little of in the United States, where the drinking age is 21, but that I have learned more about in Chile, where the drinking age is 18.

What's that you say? The whole WWOOFing thing wasn't enough and you want to hear more about organic agriculture? Well here you go! Pictured here is the alternating cover crop method. This method balances the beneficial effects of a cover crop (adding powerful Nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil) and the ability to travel throughout and harvest the couple hundred hectacre vineyard by machine.

Selfie with the alternating cover crops

This vineyard is either famous enough, or beautiful enough, to host some sort of a film shoot. The details of which are still a mystery to me.

These are wine grapes early in their lives. Fun fact: wine grapes are not tasty.

They also have animals (chickens, cats, horses and alpacas) on their vineyards to reduce the harmful insect population, as well as produce compostable material. Well, ditching the subtly, the poop a lot and poop is great compostable material.

THEY HAVE ALPACAS!!!!!

They also use a biodyamic calendar - a planting and harvesting schedule that factors in the Earth's energy to maximize efficiency. The only tangible practice that our tour guide mentioned was filling a sheep's horn with horse poop, burying said horn for three months, then adding two grams of now powerful fertilizer to a ton of compost. And Walla! You got yourself some real nice compost.

After the tour, came the wine tasting.

We tried four different types of wine: two white, two red and four with more specific names that I don't remember. I definitely enjoyed searching for the notes of grape fruit or butter in the whites, and tones of smoke or oak in the reds. It is fair to say that even my thoroughly developed palette could not detect such blatant tastes. If someone can find those flavors in wine, I'm impressed. I only tasted grossness.

Selfie with the wine tasting.

Selfie with the crew at the wine tasting. Take notice of Pablo in this picture. Pablo is a teacher at Ecela during the day, student during the night, vineyard tour leader on the weekends and awesome all the time.

Adios Emiliana!

The next day, Reed and I woke up early, in an attempt to conquer this beast: Cerra La Campana. An hour and a half outside of Vina, this 9 mile hike was an all day excursion. This picture was taken about an hour into the hike, but trust me, that summit you see is far.

Cerra la Campana is known for it's gorgeous views, but also for the fact that Charles Darwin passed through here one time. I guess that is supposed to add some sort of historical edge to this hike.

Translation: Carlos Darwin was here.

The hike was a pretty solid incline, and then we reached this sign... This marked the beginning of the hardest hiking of my life.

The terrain transformed from forest to super steep, loose rock field almost instantaneously. The last mile took about an hour and a half.

BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!! The summit had, art of its previous conquerors in the foreground and the Pacific in the background. It's hard to see the Ocean from this photo, but be rest assured, it's there.