Meeting "s Mami" in Antofagasta

 La Portada, a natural arch. It's the only real sight in the miner's and industrial town of Antofagasta.

We came to this city to pick up my mom : ) Here she is and she'll be travelling with us for 2.5 weeks!

Small fisher port next to the fish market. Very busy on Easter weekend.

Ocean view from our hotel window.

Pisco Elqui

The Valle Elqui is the birth place of Pisco and their Pisco Sours are delishes!

The valley is really green and full of fruit and grapes. The mountains surrounding it are dessert brown and crumbely dry.

The place we stayed at had a huge garden with lots of fruit to pick, like these figs.

The Mistral Pisco distillery right in town.

Lots of Pisco at the Los Nichos distillery, another Pisco distillery in the Elqui Valley.

Our first real Pisco Sour.


Another Pisco Sour. I'm a big fan : )!

Santiago de Chile

In the big city for a weekend! 

 Plaza de Armas

 View from Cerro Santa Lucia, a nice hill in the middle of the city.

 View from Cerro San Cristobal, a bigger hill and huge park in the city.

A hat shop at Barrio Bellavista.

 Loving the "Completo Italianas" without salchicha but lots of different toppings. This one had mayo, mustard, garlic sauce, aji and queso crema.

Fine Wine

Mendoza is the Napa Valley of Argentina.

 To get there, we had to go up this serpentine pass to cross the boarder from Chile into Argentina.

 

Semu on our wine and bike tour in the Maipu valley, close to Mendoza. We stopped at four different vinyards to do some tasting.

 Glass bottom tasting room at Trapiche vinyard.

Our first tasting of the day.

 Big barrels

 Vinyard Tempus Alba

 At Tempus Alba we got to taste all 6 reds on the right. Argentina is famous for it's Malbec, which is pretty good but we still prefer our good ol' Cab.

Our day of wine tasting was pretty fun. We didn't get too drunk because of the large streches of biking between the different vinyards. The wind on that day was super strong as well. We almost got blown off our bikes at one point. No worries though, the tourist police that looks out for drunk bikers didn't have to drive us home.

Valparaiso Continued

Valparaiso is a town of steep hills and colorful houses. Something like San Francisco meets Berlin. It's at the beach about two hours by bus from Santiago.

View over Valpo and Viña del Mar, the ritzy neigbour of Valparaiso.

 The Chilean specialty "Chorrillana", a mountain of fries and all kinds of stuff including an egg. We call it the instant heart attack.

Valparaiso is an UNESCO world heritage site, for it's bohemian part of town as well as for it's super steep "ascensores" (funicular, or elevator meets Polibaehnli).

Valparaiso Street Art

Man, there is cool mural and grafitti art EVERYWHERE in our neighborhood here.  Here are some samples: