On Wednesday we went to CODELCO, the copper smelting plant, which we were told was going to be a rough tour, but it ended up being really interesting. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera with for some reason, so I don't have pictures of my own to show. The guy giving the tour only spoke Spanish, but he was super nice and wanted to show us everything that he could.
After that, we had to go straight to Centauro, a food canning/packaging factory. Mario, the manager of the company (I think that's what he is) spoke very good English, and he was a really interesting person to talk to. Apparently he teaches Marketing at USM along with another university and works for some other companies. He's a busy man! We got some free tomato sauce and a can of traditional Chilean soup.. bet you can't guess what a lot of us had for lunch!
After a short break we had another culture lecture with Mimo, which was really interesting. We talked about the geography of Chile and gender issues and the way Chileans live their lives, which is a lot different than the way we do, actually. Then Mimo got us empanadas! Mmmm! What a nice guy :)
Went to a tasteful gathering on the roof of an apartment with some of our student guides from the university then to a place called Café Journal, which has "international night" every Wednesday, so the place was full of ALL kinds of people! We met Mexicans, Spaniards, Germans, more Americans.. you name it! It was nice knowing we weren't the only strangers to Chile.
The next day we started our day with Viña Indómita. It was absolutely GORGEOUS. Everywhere. See for yourself..
Thankfully they didn't lose too much of the wine because of the earthquake. We had a wonderful little wine tasting after our tour where we got to learn all about how to properly taste wine!
We had lunch at this place called Hornitos on our way to LAN Airlines.
The waiters were all dressed up like huasos, which are the Chilean version of cowboys. The floor was all gravel, and there were tons of little things to buy. I'm kind of regretting not picking up a huaso hat now. Guess I'll have to come back!
Random, unrelated observation: I think the bus driver was playing Girl Talk. I was excited.
Our tour of LAN Airlines was ridiculously awesome. I don't think any of us had ever been that close to huge commercial jets before.. especially not when they had pieces missing. The guy giving us the tour was an adorable little Chilean man who gave us all LAN-related gifts at the end and wanted to take a picture with all of us. Apparently it's the best tour that LAN has ever given a Plus3 Chile group, so we were really lucky! Unfortunately, I left my camera on the bus for that one, so I don't have pictures for sharing at the moment.
That night we went to a barbecue at Werner's. What I learned from that whole experience is that the main Chilean food group is definitely meat. I don't think any of them eat vegetables on a daily basis. We had an appetizer of little chorizo hot dogs with our main course being shish kebabs with beef, pork, and more chorizo hot dog pieces. It was delicious, though! Don't get me wrong. After we all ate way too much, our Chilean friends taught us a bunch of dances that they know. We attempted to teach them the Cha Cha Slide in return, but it was kind of a failure and made me realize how bad Americans are at dancing.
After the barbecue, we had a big group go out to Valparaíso (actually I think we were in it already at Werner's) to a disco called Huevo. I think I mentioned it before, but each floor had a different type of music. It was too bad that the top 2 or 3 floors were closed because of some damage from the earthquake, but I didn't even know until the day after because we stayed on the Reggae ton/Salsa floor the whole time. The band on the first floor was decent from the couple of minutes I listened. It was definitely an experience to say the least.
So there's half of a week for you! I should have more time to update the rest of the time we're here.
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