Alice and Randy Live in Chile: Arin and Ash Arrive and Alice Learns to Use the New Camera

With the help of Rosa, I bought a new Nikon camera. It is not nearly as good as the one that was stolen but it is small and cute (it is red) and was pretty cheap (60,000 CP). Let's hope this one makes it back to the U.S.

Rosa helps us at Paris department store to buy the Nikon camera

The second of Alice's seminars on facility layout on Thursday - Rosa and Hermando (a new faculty member in Transportation from Argentina)

A first selfie at the seminar with the new camera

Graduate student Diego who is working on the port project and did all of the legwork in identifying the best place to buy the new camera

After getting the money from my CONICYT grant for expenses (all in pesos, cash) at Scotia Bank downtown (the banks in Chile close everyday at 2 PM by the way), Rosa, Jimena and I had lunch at a great restaurant on Conception Cerro (hill), Dimalow. The food was so tasty and the building quite antique and a bit quirky.

The main branch of the Scotia Bank in the financial center of Valparaiso

Parking Jimena's monster SUV on Conception Cerro - the road is much, much steeper than it looks and you can see the big cobblestones. Rosa helps direct.

Three amazing women - tres fantastico mujeres

A close up

Some colorful buildings on Conception Cerro

Our yummy lunch spot

That evening before eating leftovers in the flat, we walked along the beach and up through the city. The views were great as usual.

Ships from our apartment balcony

Along a boardwalk on the beach

The scene at dusk

Another view of the ships waiting to unload at the Valparaiso port

Friday morning we drove to Santiago to pick up Arin and Ash. They breezed through immigration and customs so they had to wait about an hour for us. Oh well, the sun was shining and they didn't seem unhappy about the wait. We loaded up and headed towards Vina stopping at Casas del Bosque, the winery and excellent restaurant in Casablanca. Since we were early for lunch we signed up for the deluxe tour which they did privately for the four of us. It is a standard winery tour but the guide, Lara, was perky with good English and the grapes were almost ready to harvest so we were able to sample Pinot Noir grapes from the vine - tasty! Like blueberries almost. We then sampled five of their top wines and none of them disappointed.

In the vineyards of Casas del Bosque

Lara explains about the grapes in a field of Pinot Noir

Detail of the healthy vines nearly ready to pick

We got to taste these beauties from the vine

Some of the barrels - all French oak

The stainless steel holding tanks

Casas del Bosque is the only vineyard in the Casablanca valley with its own bottling machine

Sparkling wine ferments in the barrel and we listen and smell

At the tasting Lara pours the top end Cabernet Sauvignon using a very cool aerator (we bought one for ourselves even the price was ridiculously high)

Afterwards we ate lunch in the sunny garden (cerviche and salad for me and Randy, pasta for Arin and steak for Ash). We bought a few bottles and traveled on to Vina and showed them a bit of Valparaiso. The afternoon was spent lounging drinking beer or wine, watching March Madness, which Ash managed to hook up using our Chromecast and his ESPN on a VPN on his Mac. The things we go through to watch U.S. TV abroad! Arin was amazed by our apartment's terrace and spent his time calling friends and showing them the view on Skype or FaceTime.

Arin and Ash admire the view from a look out in south Valparaiso - next land out there to the west is New Zealand and Australia

The famed flower clock of Vina del Mar

We walked downtown in Vina to dinner at Don Vito e Zanoni, a top rated Italian restaurant. It was pretty good but not my favorite in Vina. We all had pasta and it gotten mostly eaten up. The walk back was refreshing and burned a few of the calories we imbibed this day. Then, bed for everyone!