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Well, it's definitely winter. This is the most snow we've ever seen on a PBA tour. We layered up to head to the Andes. It's a couple of hours to the mountains, and we stopped once on the side of the road for a photo op and once to rent 50 pairs of snow boots. Many guys who didn't follow the packing list had to buy gloves so they didn't get frostbite. The terrain to me looks a lot like Arizona in general, but it got extremely snowy practically instantly. Fortunately it wasn't bitterly cold, maybe 40F. We got to the Aconcagua vista point, and started a snowball fight. Mt. Aconcagua is the highest mountain in either North or South America, over 2000ft taller than Denali in Alaska. Our lookout point was nearly 9000ft as it was, and we were 15km from the Chilean border.
Unfortunately the snow was either really dry and dusty (not good for snowballs), or icy (easier to throw but a problem for obvious reasons). The snowball fight stopped after a couple people, including myself, got an icy snowball to the face. It was all in the name of fun, though now I do have a souvenir black eye of my visit to the Andes. We played around some more, took some photos, and then went to lunch, then to Inca's bridge, a natural stone bridge next to a hot spring. We definitely needed the boots, as you can see there was lots of snow, and slush and dirt.
It's an interesting change from our summer tours, especially Italy last summer where it was 100+ degrees every day, or even Brasil in July where we were on the beach. Though our schedule isn't overly stressful, there is less of a "vacation" feel about the towns since nobody is on vacation here. In Italy, we were part of summer concert series' wherever we went, and tourists would come to hear us a lot. Here, it's the middle of winter, and there's a lot more of a sense that we're one of the more interesting things going on for people to break up their work weeks. It also makes us look more professional I think; who would, unless they're serious about giving good concerts, choose to come tour to a country when it's quite cold. It's an adventure for us no matter what the season, and today we got snow, so the season isn't that important to us.
All our concerts are quite late, and people seem to eat dinner about 11pm, so even in the winter people are pretty relaxed. We can tell we're in a country with origins in Italy and Spain, but the people here don't get overly stressed about traffic or such things, whereas in Italy they would take the oportunity to honk and yell and argue.
The boys are asking about the general cleanliness of the streets. It's not as if you're walking in trash, but it's not at all clear there's any sort of street cleaning plan. Civic planning just doesn't seem to be a big priority here. There are lots of unfinished buildings, but the architecture doesn't seem as agressively blockish as Sao Paulo. Mendoza is a big city, and the people seem most interested in keeping warm and going about their business. Not too many people ask who we are when we're walking, though if we're at a restaurant or something they deifnitely ask. A lot of people tell us they're in choirs when they hear we're a choir. The dogs wander about, the stores stay open until 9pm, and there are a lot of places to shop where we are.
We've had a couple days to relax somewhat, and in the next two days we have all sorts of singing to do.
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Creeping up on the Andes mountains
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Getting our boots |
Max picks up a hat |
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Calvin with Aconcagua in the background |
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The icy snowball faces. Doesn't show too much in this photo, fortunately |
Hot pasta for lunch! |
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This dog was huge. Not stray, we don't think |
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Aaron at Puente del Inca |
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Gathering for dinner |
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