(cont.) The next morning I took a short taxi ride into Barrio Bellavista, the eclectic, exuberant neighborhood just north of downtown that’s the center of Santiago’s nightlife. It’s also the home of the city’s historic bohemian culture, and where you’ll find one of the houses of the Chilean icon, Pablo Neruda.

Neruda, the nobel-prize winning poet who, at the height of his fame, was forced to flee Chile due to his leftist political leanings, is revered throughout the country both for his timeless poetry as well as for his political accomplishments. (He was elected as a Senator in 1945 before being exiled, and in 1970 he was nominated as a candidate for the Presidency which he gave up to support Salvador Allende.) His house in Santiago, La Chascona, is one of three houses he owned, and is actually a complex of small buildings nestled in the hills of Barrio Bellavista. Each building shares a nautical theme, complete with porthole shaped windows and crooked floorboards to simulate a ship’s deck. Neruda was known for his playfulness and this is exemplified in each house by his vast collection of trinkets and eccentric artwork.

After La Chascona I got on the subway and headed an hour south out of the city and into the Maipo Valley to visit Chile’s most famous and largest wine producer: Concha Y Toro. Far from the bustle of downtown, the Maipo Valley’s land is fertile and the climate is temperate, making it an ideal place to grow high-quality grapes. Concha Y Toro began as a family affair in the 1800’s, and as the winery grew and made the family rich, they built an amazing mansion overlooking the well-tended grounds, viewable during daily tours. (Reservations are required so call ahead if you want to visit.) For many winery tours, the requisite walk around the grounds is usually a pretext for heading to the bar, but here you’re taken to both the grounds as well as inside and down under the winery into the basement where they store their most famous wine: El Diablo (a name derived from a ghost story concocted to keep the workers from heading into the dark recesses of the building to steal bottles).

My friend and I hung around the bar for an hour or two and sampled a number of their wines, including their Carmanere -- a grape once thought to be extinct in Europe, only to be rediscovered flourishing in South America -- and their Cabernet Sauvignon, along with a generous fruit and cheese platter. The bar quickly emptied out we chatted with one of the waitresses who told us how she spent a semester in Wisconsin (she hated the cold) and how much she loved her current job (the waitresses are required to try all the wines in the morning for “quality control”).

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