Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

The lights suddenly turn off, and the shadow of the devil appears on the far wall of the most prized section of the cellars of Casillero del Diablo. It's cool and damp, and we peer into the long chamber where the aging red wine is kept to age and prepare for prime consumption. We are deep into the cellars of the famed Concha y Toro winery on the outskirts of San Diego, and experiencing one of the more unique wine tours we've been on. Concha y Toro is one Chilean wine that frequently shows up in San Diego shops, especially Casillero de Diablo. Concha y Toro happens to be Chile's largest winery, and lucky for us, just on the outskirts of Santiago, accessible by metro and bus. We set off this morning, a couple of hours before our 11:30 a.m. tour appointment (yes, it's quite commercial and appointments for tours book up quickly, so we phoned several days in advance for a tour booking) and it's a good thing we did, as it's taken us nearly two hours to get here. The woman on the phone that had given me directions, said we would easily reach the winery by metro. Once we got off at the last metro stop (Los Mercedes, Linea 4) we emerge from the dark station to find we're in the middle of some strip mall heaven. No one here has a clue where the winery is. Not to mention the fact that none of these Chileans can understand my spanish, and I certainly can't understand theirs. A couple of people said we could walk, so we walk for 20 minutes and still see nothing resembling vineyards. I finally go into a pharmacy where there's a young, hip looking security guy standing near the entrance, and he tells us to hop on the blue collectivo that stops in the middle of the main road, and tell the chauffeur where we want to go, the blue bus should pass it. So off we go, hoping and trusting that this guy is correct, and we hop on the next blue bus. Map in hand, I look up to tell the driver where we want to go, and I didn't have to even say a word - he looks us two gringos, smiles, and says, "Cocha y Toro?" "Si, por favor," I reply, and he gives me a wink and we grab a couple of seats. Ten minutes later we're here at the beautiful grounds of the winery. We pay our tour fee at the entrance and get a big blue sticker... well come to "Corporate Cellars." As we approach the tasting grounds, a guy with a clip board approaches us and says, "You are here for the English tour?" Ah, what gave it away, our big blue stickers, or our gringo accent Spanish? This place has the gringo tour business wired, and the guides are super enthusiastic, loving their jobs... who wouldn't love this job - getting to spend all day outside, meandering the vineyards, meeting new people from around the world, and sipping wines out under the big beautiful trees among the vineyards. The most memorable part of our Concha y Toro experience is the creativity they have planned into the tour. All the wine tastings are outdoors, under beautiful leafy trees, with phenomenal surroundings. They walk us through the different sections of the vineyard, pointing out the specialty grapes and giving us history of all the wines, and how Concha y Toro has really grown as the export industry has expanded. They take us down into the cellars containing their Casillero del Diablo wines and the show begins, lights off, mysterious voice telling the history and legends behind the great wine, special light and audio effects give way to the unveiling of the "Diablo" hiding out among the most revered bottles in the cellar. The story goes... back in the days when the winery was really just a private family business, they had a problem with bottles of wine disappearing... the staff was stealing their private reserve. So the locals, being a very superstitious and religious bunch, were fed a story through the "grapevine" that the Devil lived in the cellars, and had been recently seen. Since the rumors of the Devil inhabiting the cellars, the leakage of bottles ceased, and so became the name given to the wine in that cellar, Casillero del Diablo (Cellar of the Devil), and the legend lives on.