I have been following Lesley Ann Murphy for years. And then watching her take these groups of women on incredible adventures all over the world. Last year I changed my mindset from “I will never get picked” to, “Why NOT Me?!” and applied for her Patagonia adventure through Limitles Travel.
I sent my application in last May and found out in July I had been selected, along with 16 other women, to go on a trip of a lifetime through Patagonia, both the Chilean and Argentine parts.
Two days ago our adventure started. We had 12 hours in Santiago and found someone to take us on a food and wine tour through the city. We wanted to see, eat and drink as much as possible to get the full Chilean experience.
First up: hot dogs for breakfast. Apparently that is a thing here. Our guide, Kenny called it an Italian hot dog because of the way it was dressed: it looked like an Italian flag. It was guacamole, tomatoes and the debate is out whether it was mayo or queso.
Next, we found a street vendor who served mote con huesillos, which is essentially a peach, floating in syrup, with wheat thrown in. You are supposed to drink the syrup (no thank you) and eat the wheat like cereal. It was a hard pass for all of us. It did taste like the juice from a can of Del Monte peaches though!
We continued to move through the city, taking in the sights. Third stop: empanadas. The Chilean way to have it has eggs and olive so I had to pass but it truly looked like a hot pocket. I thought they were supposed to be crescent shaped?
We moved through the fish market and saw the most beautiful King Crab from Antartica. I wish that would have been included on the tour! 🙂 We sat down had a Pisco Sour (my first ever!), crab dip and clams while being serenaded by a Chilean guitarist.
Up next: Terremoto. It is a concoction of white wine and grenadine, topped with pineapple ice cream! The drink was too sweet for me again, but I could tell very strong. It takes the name terremoto, which means earthquake in Spanish. It is their traditional drink they have on Chile’s independence day.
Kenny asked if we still had room for more food (obvi) and we moved to another stop where we had Pastel de Choclo, which is a corn “cake” (like corn bread) with eggs (what the heck with all the eggs?!) and meat.
One more stop for another Pisco Sour and then on our way to Cousino Macul for wine tasting, truly the highlight for all of us! Such a gorgeous vineyard with amazing wines, both white and red. Buenas Chicas!
There are 16 of us on this trip and we finally were reunited with everyone this morning. (Britt gets the award for worst travel experience to get here but it will be worth it)! We cover states as far west as Wyoming and as far North East as Rhode Island. A large contingency from North Carolina and us midwesterners (me and Maria) are representing with Texas and Minnesota. The common theme amongst the group is we all love dogs so we are off to a great start!
I have already grown in many ways on this trip, managing my stress really well when there were hiccups with travel and being ok with leaving work behind.
We are currently enroute to Puerto Natalaes where the hiking adventure will truly begin.
