Feliz Cumpleaños, Allison!

Today was Allison's birthday, and it also turned out to be one of my favorite days of the trip thus far! It was an interesting start to the day. Although it was nice being able to sleep in a little later, the water in the hotel wasn't working. Nonetheless, we left unshowered at 9:30am in the tour bus headed for Viña Indomita. Viña Indomita is a vineyard and winery located about an hour an a half south of Viña del Mar. So far, it has been my favorite company visit in Chile. We got a tour of the building and learned about how different aromas are created by storing the wine in different ways. I thought that our tour guide did an excellent job answering our questions and giving us a basic knowledge of how wine is produced. The company visit ended with a wine tasting, so we got to taste a white wine and two red wines.

Barrels of wine at Indomita!

After sitting in the gorgeous sunshine for a little while and just relaxing, we took off for lunch at Pablo Neruda's house. Neruda is a famous Chilean poet, and his home is open as a museum for tours to pass through. Lunch was delicious – we were served an appetizer of clams, a main course of a white fish, and tiramasu for dessert. We also sat and had a great view of the ocean waves crashing in on some rocks, just adding to the already fantastic lunch.

We had about an hour to spend before our tour at 4pm, so we walked down to the beach and climbed on the rocks to take pictures. The view was incredible. The waves were huge, and a few people got splashed accidentally by getting too close to the water. But we all had a great time relaxing together.

The tour of Pablo Neruda's house was really interesting! Our tour was given in Spanish, but our guide talked slowly and had good pronunciation, so I could understand most of what she said. For what I didn't catch, Christian translated for us. We ended the tour by taking a look at Neruda's grave; he's buried at the beach near the house with his wife.

There were a few little places to buy Chilean souveneirs near the house, so we looked around and bought a few things before hopping back on the bus and driving back to Hotel America. It was a great day! Tomorrow we're going to the spa (that's not actually a spa) to play soccer with the Chilean students.