It's official

Yes folks, watch out, cuz Kaitlin is officially ON HER OWN!! Why am i talking about myself in 3rd prson? i don't know...anyway, here I am in santiago at La casa roja, my first night alone. I leave for Mendoza, Argentina tomorrow for more delicious wine and perhaps a bit of snowboarding. Killer. i have had the BEST time with my mom the past couple weeks. I last left you all in arequipa, so now I can describe our time in chile.

we arrived super late into santiago and thanks to Monica and francisco, got hooked up at Francisco's hotel, El atton, in a great district of santiago called el Bosque. Moni met up with us for lunch the next day after mom and i walked around and got stared at by pretty much everyone being the only blondes walking thru the business district. It was cool though, it really boosts my self-esteem ;) we had a great Italian lunch with Moni, then hung out at her house for many hours and played with her baby Lucas, so darling, and rested. We met them both later for an awesome chilean dinner with great wine, an dlater went to some local sketch tango bar. Highlight you ask? The drunk girl in front of us sharing her wine and cigarette flying everywhere. We come to find out she and her beau just got engaged that night (no ring though? Hmm, honey don't hold your breath). They get called out to the dance floor, do a terrible tango, to which the mc says, hope she's a better wife than she is a dancer. ha! Mom sees her in the bathroom and turns out the wasted, chimney-smoking skinny chick is preggers. Yikes.

We were ready to leave santiago as it is kind of an ugly city to be honest...but first enjoyed an AMAZING 4 course meal at Rosita's, Monica's mother in law. Full with staff and everything. We had mussels (i barely got them down, though they were the best mussels i'd ever had ;) followed by...i can't remember right now. Something good, plus an awesome meringue type pie. yum. After a few hours of eating we were toast for the night. we did manage to get over to the bellavista neighborhood for late dinner and live music before hitting the hay.

we headed down south to wine country and per Moni's recommendation stayed in a great hotel in a town called Santa Cruz. Got the full food/wine package so ate ourselves silly and did wine tasting. Deeelish. I recommend Mont Gras wines if you can find them! That and Montes, another good one. carmenere is a wine known only to Chile, so that was exciting to try. It's a spicy red. I did have my birthday dinner there, though we weren't very hungry and were tired from wine tasting! We made it downstairs for a nice dinner in the dining room, just the 2 of us as no other guests showed up to sing me happy birthday! how dare them...well, the wait staff made up for it. haha.

We drove 4 hours to get to valparaiso onn tuesday, after getting a bit lost thru Santiago. terrible terrible freeway signage! we were lucky we made it out alive. geeez. we arrived at like 830 into VAlpo and went out to dinner, again the only people still eating at 10pm. our sweet boutique hotel was awesome though, with views of the port our our window. enjoyed walking around there all day yesterday, meandering thru the bohemian streets. I even picked up a small painting hand made by some smelly guy at the dock for $4! oh, and we smelled the fish and sea lions on our 30 minute boat tour. arrived into Zapallar, an exclusive, wealthy beach community, yesterday. We were happy to get out of the car adn relax at Hotel Isla seca. Gorgeous, again on the water...

Okay, people are waiting for the compute,r gotta run. Have had a fabulous time so far and can't wait to get more pics up! Keep checking the flicker link on the left side cuz i keep uploading more. still not perfectly savvy but i'll get there.

Mwah ;#