Day after-relaxing winery tour and more stargazing

Today we get a little bit of a later start, although many people bail on the day due to our long day yesterday.

We are heading to Santa Rita winery this morning south of Santiago. The location is beautiful, right at the foot of the Andes. We have another delicious lunch with wine flights in a gorgeous room. After lunch, we are given a tour of the winery caves, fields and bottling, as well as a little history of the home and founding woman. The tour ends with a tasting and shopping.

In the evening, our group, now with everyone back in the game, takes three small buses to head to Observatorio Astronomico Andino, which is a private tourist observatory up in the mountains on a diet road. We are given drinks and appetizers before getting a little history of observatories in Chile, which has some of the clearest skies on Earth. In addition to the renowned scientific observatories, there are many private ones open to tourists, like the one we are at now.

Before dinner we break up into 3 groups to explore the stars-with the naked eye, with medium telescopes, and with large telescopes. We see Jupiter, Saturn, a couple for clusters and a nebula. The sky is actually not as dark as what we experienced in Rapa Nui, however the scientists are able to give us information about what we are looking at.

Dinner is in a freezing cold room, which makes the slow Chilean meal service a little less enjoyable. The Chilean soccer team is playing in the semi-finals, but lost, so the evening has a certain pall over it from the service staff.

After dinner we take the long winding road back to our hotel.