coastal mansions and wine tasting- photos from when I pretended to be elegant

I've always wanted to visit Zapallar, a coastal town north of Viña del Mar (I'm backtracking to my Chile visit here) because it's famous for having big mansions and old estates.  It takes a while to advance along the coast via bus because it dips in and out of all of these small towns and it can take several hours.  Alvaro and I decided to take advantage of having borrowed his mom's car, and we headed along the coast en auto which was nice.  Zapallar was beautiful, and the sun came out just as we got there (although the fog slid up the hills while we were there too).

Looking out at Zapallar norte

Lovely beach for those with moneyyyy

I had fun taking pictures of all of the fancy homes in their varying styles.  It reminded me of when Rachel and I were little and we would plan out our Dream House with Heather, complete with architect stencils to make blueprints and Pottery Barn catelogues to pick out the important things like sheets, cabinets in the bathroom, and handing lamps in the kitchen.

Look at how enormous it is

Different styles- this side faces the beach

This is the front

So elaborate!

Typical beach-y

I had to include this one because it was Alvi's favorite for the Greek style

I liked the widow's walk

This just reminded me of a book I read when I was little

This never was a monastery, despite looking like one. We learned from a gardner that it's now split in two and is kind of like a duplex- there are two owners

Lovely tiling

You can tell they're rich because even though they have the whole ocean, they still have pools and jacuzzis (to the left, not pictured)

Later in the week we headed to Casablanca where we toured the Casas del Bosque vineyard.  It was an interesting tour- they produce mostly white wines (lots of sauv blanc).  I learned that to keep the vines from freezing when it gets cold, they "spray" warm air at night because water in the valley is really limited, so rather than watering (cheaper, more energy efficient) they have to take special care of the water that they use so they spray warm air.  Crazy! 

The entrance area

I was still suffering from allergies (later transformed into sinusitis) and just wanted to sit in this chair in the sun the entire time while we waited for our tour

I liked the mix of colors in the leaves

Salud!  They had a wine tasting at the end with all of these yummy flavors in the middle in a line of classes that you could smell (if your nose canal wasn't completely blocked like mine)

Best view from the mirador