The cruise ship Norwegian Sun had beaten us to port so it got the only dock space large enough for us.
Therefore we had to launch the tenders from the ship.
It is nice to know that they use them occasionally since they also serve as the lifeboats.
Here is a closer view of the huge cross on the hill overlooking the city.
Would you like fresh seafood?
How about even fresher
Some denizens of the harbor.
They are the only ones with access to even fresher seafood.
Some of our group took a bus tour to Vicuņa.
On the way we saw vineyards covering thousands of hectares, more on that later.
The top line of trees on the hillside follows a pre-Columbian irrigation canal.
The green fields below show that it still works.
The local government council meets here.
This guy was pushing his bike through town yelling the name of the newspaper he was selling.
He seemed amused that we all wanted his picture.
We have been known to go half way round the world to see an eclipse.
Imagine our surprise when we found this one.
There are a lot of observatories in the mountains of Chile.
Once we caught on to that we where no longer surprised to see several astronomical themed businesses.
This family ws on their way into a church for the christening of their son.
Dad wanted to be sure we got a picture of the guest of honor.
Order a driveway and this guy shows up with a cart load of gravel.
The town was the birthplace and childhood home of Gabrela Mistral.
She won the Nobel prize for literature in 1945 for her poetry.
In the entryway to her home there was a stone basin that was used to pruify water for drinking .
Water placed in it would slowly seep through and be collected in a bowl below.
I don't know whether it worked just by filtration or if some mineral (silver?) in the rock served to kill bacteria.
A printing press in the museum.
After lunch we visited the destination of all those grapes we saw growing along the way.
Their first stop is an auger that samples the truckload to determine sugar content etc.
Then they are dumped into this hopper where another auger moves them to a crusher.
Stems are separated and the juice goes to these tanks before it is moved to the next stage.
Fermentation in metal or wooden tanks.
The stills where the alcohol is concentrated
before it is but into barrels for aging.
One of the old stills, now used as decoration.
An unidentified bird hanging out in the parking area.
It seemed very calm.
Do you suppose that it had found something dripping from one of the casks?
We made a brief stop at this dam.
The sculpture was an aeolian, a wind harp.
If it's performance when we were there is any indication it is perfectly situated.
The strong steady wind had it singing.
A view of the valley below the dam.
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Another panorama of LaSerena before we leave.
