Thursday May 12. We didn’t have any classes today, but we had two company visits: first to Vina Indomita and then to LAN Airlines. Vina Indomita is the company that my group did. Translated into English, Vina Indomita means untamed vineyard or untamed winery. I believe Vina had one of the best views of the entire trip, with its natural valleys and lagoons. Vina was born in 2001 and has two main locations: one in Maipo Valley and the other in Casablanca. We took a tour of the place and learned some good things about the company. Vina has differentiated itself in the marketplace from a business perspective by building a restaurant on top of its cellar and in front of the bodega. It has become quite a tourist attraction. Engineers are necessary to make the place more resistant to earthquakes and figuring out which temperatures the grapes need to be at which points during production to produce the best possible wines. We even had the opportunity to do some wine tasting. Not a bad way to start the day. We had three different wines to try out. Some were better than others but none of them tasted terrible. We had lunch between the two visits. We ate at a cool place designed and structured like a cabin but also comfortable. Then we went to LAN Airlines and had a chance to go out to the hanger and board one of the nicest planes I’ve ever seen. Seats reclined back, had reading lights, plenty of leg room, etc. It took a lot of work from engineers to design such an elegant plane. After LAN, we went back to the hotel and had a handful of free time until dinner. I watched some TV and wanted to get some blogging done but couldn’t because the website was down. After dinner (which was quite scrumptious by the way) we went to another party and didn’t come back until about 2 and stayed up until about 4.