Talca - Paris, London

Well the tagline for the wonderful city of Talca compares it to Paris and London. Other than a slight hint of the whiff of the Paris Metro when walking under the railway line any other comparison to London or the French Capital is a little tricky to see.

Talca is about 4 hours south of Santiago and right in the heart of Wine country, hence the reason for our trip. From what we could tell there is virtually nothing of great interest in Talca itself. Even the Bernardo O´Higgins museum is shut for renovation just now. However, a short bus ride down to San Javier and a tour round the Balduzzi wineyard makes the trip worth while. It was very interesting to actually see all the machinery that they use to strip the grapes from the vines and to remove the seed and skin as necessary when making the wine. We even saw all the bottling process, which is done by hand at Balduzzi. Of course we just had to accept the tasting at the end of the tour, we tried four different wines, a very fresh sauvignon blanc, a rich Carminere, one of their premium blends and finally one of the sweet, late pick, chardonnays which was much to our surprise rather tasty.

8 more hours on a bus now to get to Pucon and the Villarricca volcano. (Active)