When we decided to loll about at the Hacienda Los Lingues, we canceled our original plans to visit Pablo Neruda’s seaside home, Isla Negra. We were able to get our tour guide for today to re-arrange things so that we got to see this home after all. Definitely worth it. First of all, the location is magnificent. Any place with crashing waves and miles of water at the horizon gets an A+ from both Cliff and me. Isla Negra delivers on both counts.
Then there is the home and its collection of odd, fantastic and completely fascinating collections ranging from ships in bottles, Japanese Noh and other clay masks, carved ships’ figureheads and angels, wooden replicas of Easter Island statues, Chilean embroidery, colored glass bottles, shoes, Mexican glassware, sets of china, antique French postcards, etc. etc. Not to mention the two Nubian statues that greet visitors in the entry-way, the life-size horse (with three tails!) in the “horse room” and the tuxedo he wore when he accepted the Nobel prize for literature. The Nobel prize itself is also on display. I’m missing a zillion other things. A captivating stop.
Fish imagery abounds.
I think Neruda got seasick!
The boat above was purchased and promptly (if not immediately) placed in the garden.
An interesting note for some of you….Neruda typically wrote in green pen and there are a dozen in a bowl on his favorite desk made from a salvaged ship’s door that he and Matilde retrieved from the waves at Isla Negra.
Onward to Valparaiso, a hill town (44 of them!) where nearly every inch of the territory seems to have a house, an apartment, condo or shanty erected on it. The colors are electric. Graffiti is everywhere with an occasional (and usually defaced) mural sprinkled here and there. We took the funicular — quite different from Santiago’s — up to an Italian-esque restaurant for lunch. We sat on a sunlit terrace under the shade of an umbrella and had a glorious view of the harbor. The Chilean Navy’s training sailboat was moored in view and at one point a teensy sailboat sailed into the scene, quite a contrast with the 4-masted sloop at the military dock. Valparaiso is a very busy port and its waterfront is not tourist friendly. Nice to look at, but nothing much for tourists to do there.
After touring various Valparaiso neighborhood’s (thankfully and gratefully by car), we traveled to Vina del Mar, a newer town located across the harbor. Our guide said it is known as the Miami of Cuba and there was definitely a comparison to be made. A casino dominates and it is filled, alas, with American fast food restaurants. We stopped to see An Easter Island stone sculpture that was sent to the city as a thank you for some sort of good deed, or more likely, money!
Last stop of the day was a wine tasting at an organic vineyard, Emiliana in Casablanca Valley. This is the Chilean area known for white wines and we tasted two — a Sauvignon blanc (pretty good, even to my dead tastebuds) an a Chardonnay which Cliff liked a lot. We also tasted a 100% Cabernet and a delicious red blend. We must have oohed an aahed in the right way because they ended up giving us a taste (albeit shared between the two of us) of their top of the line ($70-80 a bottle) red called Ge, and, yes, it was spectacular…but maybe not 7 times as spectacular as the red blend which I thought was pretty nifty.
Tomorrow is our last day. We’re both ready to get home, and have many terrific memories to bring there with us.
P.S. At dinner on our last night we spotted Flaherty wine on the list and, of course, ordered it. Just as delicious albeit not nearly as fun as drinking it at the winery with Jennifer!
