2016 Tour of Chile

Journal Pages
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Getting There

Santiago

San Pedro de Atacama

Vina del Mar

Talca

Pucon

Puerto Varas

Talca

Wednesday - March 9

We left Viña del Mar and drove to Talca. The drive was not difficult, but because a lot of it was on two lane roads and there were quite a few trucks it was very tiring. We have seen no sign of railroad traffic. Rather, it appears that most goods move around the country on big trucks. Our hotel in Talca was nice, but the city is eminently forgettable. We went for a short walk and concluded that there was not much to be seen.

That evening we walked to a little Italian restaurant for dinner. Our meal was acceptable but forgettable. The restaurant apparently did not have a license to sell alcoholic beverages, so there was no wine available.

Thursday - March 10

Mel had found a card in the hotel lobby for a place called the Resort and Spa Panimavida . We were able to locate it with our navigation app and decided we would spend the day going to see this place. Unfortunately, the navigation app routed us on quite a bit of dirt road. We finally did locate the place and it was wonderful.

    The entrance to the spa

The resort is quite large and has a number of pools (both indoor and outdoor) and hot tubs with water at different temperatures. It also has an extensive spa and a very large dining room. We had lunch in the dining room and then headed for the pools. Our time in the pools was limited because we had made reservations for a massage.

       The dining hall and pools - in the dark area beyond the pools are the hot tubs

The cost of a room is not all that high, and when you stay there you get all three meals and use of the pools and other facilities. Spa treatments are, of course, an additional cost.

Between the pools and the massage we were feeling quite relaxed by the time we left. Unfortunately, we still had to drive on a lot of dirt road to get back to Talca. We decided to just have dinner in the hotel dining room and make it easy on ourselves. Mel had salmon served on risotto and I had a steak. The meals were very good.