A Super Busy Week

We had a super busy week with our friends Debbie and Devin visiting! Because our friends were here, we turned into super tourists and took lots of pictures, so we're including lots of them here with brief captions. Enjoy!

Kraftwerk opened for Radiohead live in Santiago on March 26. The music was good for techno, but it was just four guys using computers on stage. For one of the songs, this picture, they put robots out to play in their place. It was a bit weird.

Radiohead was everything we had hoped for. They really know how to put on a show. There was a lot of people there and everyone was recording the show with a camera or their cell phone (see all the little lights in the audience?). They have a lot of light effects too, so it's extra cool. Since it was their first show in Chile ever, they played lots of older songs that they don't play much.



Check out this crazy road on the way to the pass between Chile and Argentina. The pass reaches 11,483 feet!!! The ride was about 7 hours from Santiago to our destination of Mendoza, Argentina, but the ride we pretty scenic. Look at the next few pictures.

Plaza Indepencia is the central park in Mendoza. They have a fancy water fountain and lots of people just hang out.
Debbie tried to ask the police officers what was going on across the street. We think it was a protest, possibly by communists. Debbie is not sure if she understood what the officers were saying, but she thought that they asked for money. Hm. Maybe Debbie needs some more Spanish classes.
On our wine tour, we went to one of the biggest wineries in Argentina, Bodegas Lopez. 95% of their wine stays in Argentina because it's "affordable." Really, that just means that it's not high enough quality to export. They had a pretty cool tour though and jumbo wine bottles for us to pose with.



Carly posed with our wine tour bus when we stopped at the other winery, Cavas de Don Arturo. This was a much smaller, family owned and operated winery. They export all of their wine to...Kentucky! They have a family connection there, so all their wine goes to Kentucky and gets distributed around there. They sell very little in their shop and the area. We bought a bottle because it was quite tasty.

They also had the wine dog who oversaw all winery operations. He was pretty friendly. He also enjoyed eating cabernet sauvignon grapes. The picture below the doggy is the cellar where they age some of the wine in casks.



After making it back to Valpo, we had a couple of touristy days. We got a sweet deal on a boat tour down at the port. It gave us a great view of the city. We had been wanting to take a boat ride, so I'm glad we finally did. After our boat ride, we went up on the hill near where Carly and I spent our first day in Valpo. It has a great view of the city and port. There are several souvenir booths up there and Debbie went all out. She supported several Chileans in one afternoon.