Santa Cruz, Chile

 Had stayed a night in Santiago so took the metro to the bus terminal and had a hell of a time finding our bus but surprisingly we got into Santa Cruz early! I had pre-arranged transit through our accommodation and agreed on the price ahead of time so we just hopped in and took a quick ride to the accommodation since the driver was waiting for us at the terminal (I always recommend pre-arranging w/ accommodation when possible to get the best price and least scams!). We decompressed on the beautiful property and the next day we walked an hour each way on the side of the highway to get to our wine tasting at MontGras. No one else had booked our tour slot so it ended up being private and we learned a lot about wine (I didn’t really know much to begin with so I learned a lot)! We got to try wine straight out of the fermentation tanks and enjoyed the tasting. I don’t drink very often so it hit me harder than expected 😭 I frantically tried to walk it off on the way back bc I had a work meeting (oops). We went for an afternoon swim but found a dead chicken in the corner of the pool so quickly got out. Pre-arranged transit w/ same driver to head back to bus terminal and had another veryyy confusing journey to find our bus, but eventually were on our way back to Santiago. 

*Being able to speak and write a decent amount of Spanish was insanely helpful for texting ppl and talking to ppl in the moment to get accurate information and resolve confusion - especially in places with less foreign tourists. It definitely would still be fine without that, but not with the same degree of ease and comfort. My Spanish isn’t that great but when it was better than the English of whoever we were talking to I would ask them to speak in Spanish so I could get more accurate/descriptive info and then translate it for Tyler (except for when I would forget and Tyler would be confused about what was happening 😂)














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