A graffiti photo-tour of Valparaiso, Chile

There is graffiti everywhere in the coastal Chilean town of Valparaiso and it is incredible. It’s always changing, but below are some of our favorites from July of 2010 (click on one for a slide show with larger images)

Valparaiso, Chile Graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

Valparaiso, Chile graffiti image

graffiti tour of Valparaiso, Chile image

graffiti tour of Valparaiso, Chile image

Pretty crazy isn’t it?  Even more in our Valparaiso graffiti photo gallery

Graffiti–art or vandalism?  Please discuss…

Kayak.com does more than you might think

You may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks we added a Kayak.com flight search box to our sidebar (over on the right).  You may have wondered why.  “Why would they do this?” you might have said to yourself.  You may be saying it to yourself even now.  Fear not, I am here to answer that question for you.

We decided to become affiliate advertisers for Kayak.com for 3 reasons:

1)  Travel is awesome. Everyone should do it more often.

2)  Kayak.com is one of the very best tools out there for finding ways to travel cheaply (if anyone out there doesn’t already know about Kayak.com, it compares fares against virtually every airline and aggregator (e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and helps you find the very cheapest/fastest/best way to travel.

3) We don’t want to have to get real jobs anytime soon.  Someday we’re hoping to make some money off of this blog, and if you access Kayak.com through us, we will!  Wouldn’t that be great?  To be sure, we won’t make much money, but empanadas are cheap (another reason why everyone should travel).

But wait, there’s more!!

I only recently learned about this feature and it blew my mind.  It may blow your mind too.  You should sit down.

Have you ever been sitting around thinking to yourself:

“I really need a vacation…  I wonder where I should go?”

or

“I finally have a free weekend, maybe I can plan a trip!”

or

“I only have $300 to spend, I wonder if there is anywhere I could go for that much…”

Kayak.com can answer these questions very quickly for you.  Check out this link:  Kayak: Where can I go from San Francisco in Fall of 2010 for under $1200?

This feature allows you to tell it your origin city, your price range and your time of the year and it will tell you on average what it would cost you to go anywhere in the world within that price range at that time of year.  If you want to, you can even include activities (e.g.,where can I go skiing from Chicago in Jan for <$500).  Instead of skiing, you could also tell it beach or a temperature range or a few other things.  Seriously, this is cool.

In my opinion, this feature is under-marketed… I had never heard of it before I randomly stumbled upon it.  It’s extremely useful for preliminary trip planning to spur ideas when you know you have some time off at some point, but aren’t sure where to go AND also very useful for last minute travel when you suddenly have a few days and just want to get away.

Let’s review what we’ve learned

1)  Kayak.com is awesome

2)  Kayak.com is even awesomer than you may have thought

3)  You don’t want Ryan and Jen to have to get jobs; you want them to eat more empanadas.  To enable this goal, when planning or booking travel you should consider starting with the Kayak.com flight search box here on Consulting Rehab.

Word?

Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…

Cafe con piernas: The background

So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless.  After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening).  I was wrong.

What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years.  It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost.  It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown).  At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day.  So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing.  Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.

In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops.  Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences.  As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…

Cafe con piernas: The news report/video

I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….

(sorry, just had a flashback)

Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):

Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)

Ok, can’t put it off any longer.  On to our personal experiences…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning

As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’  We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!”  As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…

Cafe con Piernas - Cafe Belen image

Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)

Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe.  These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.

Cafe con piernas -- Cafe Caribe storefront image

Looks perfectly normal from the outside

Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view.  Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).

Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand.  After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying  it was “a cultural experience”.  If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them.  Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.

I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that.  Here is a direct quote from her:  “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.”  Seriously, that’s what she said.  There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual.  I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen Chapter 2: First attempt

There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one.  Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there).  It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female.  Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated.  We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go.  If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.

That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas.  Understandably, he laughed.  Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries.  He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen.  Makes sense.  The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!

The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over.  Again, I was wrong.  We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???”  I said, “Really?  Still?”

Her: “Yes!  He said I could go!!”

Me:  “Ok…”

We decided to attempt the same plan.  We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago venue image

We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy

We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking.  About a block away we encountered this place:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio image

We have a winner

We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative.  Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.

Oh boy.

Seriously, this is challenging to write.  Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)

The room was about the size of a bedroom.  The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back.  There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space.  There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember).  Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.

We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all.  She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like.  She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing.  We ordered 2 coffees.  She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee).  Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her.  Jen gave her another 2,000.

She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle.  This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us.  It probably always will be.  Whether we want it to be or not.

At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff.  We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right.  We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers.  In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.

Cafe con piernas, Santiago 2 by 2 image

Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2

In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors.  The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance.  Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl.  And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service.  Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.

Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left.  I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me.  Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her.  We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother.  She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit.  She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol).  It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly.  We were out within 10 minutes.  Jen was no longer excited.  We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop.  Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio 2 image

2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day

It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back.  Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.

After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe

Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research.  It was a world of difference.  There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Cafe con piernas, santiago - Cafe Caribe image

I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below

This was basically just a normal coffee shop.  In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing.  This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen Epilogue

It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us.  Writing this has been cathartic.  Let us never speak of it again.

Cafe con piernas: Our advice

If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti.  If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio.   Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.

Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links

We’re settled in Santiago; it’s still awesome (and getting awesomer)

We arrived in Santiago from Buenos Aires on Friday, just in time for a cold and somewhat rainy weekend (yay winter in the southern hemisphere!).  We were a little nervous to finally see the apartment that we had committed to sight-unseen for the next month (especially after seeing a different one last week that did not quite live up to the pictures); when we saw it, we were quite surprised–in a good way.

We’ll write more about how to rent an apartment in Santiago in the future–it seems to be quite a bit easier than Buenos Aires.  There are less places for rent, but laws are more enforced here and people tend to obey them so there are significantly fewer ways that things can go badly for you.  We found this place through Craigslist from a company called CerroUrbano run by a very nice Argentine couple who has been living in Chile for 5+ years.

Santiago rental apartment living room image

This is our living room. There is a tiny patio at the end<--remember this, it will come in handy in a few paragraphs

The place is only 36 square meters (~390 square feet), so it’s tiny, but it’s very well designed and furnished to make it comfortable and livable.

Santiago rental apartment bedroom image

We miss the king sized bed we had in BA. It's a good thing we like each other...

While the kitchen is smaller than what we had in BA, it’s much better laid out and quite functional:

Santiago Apartment Rental Kitchen image

I bet your kitchen counter doesn't glow...

All of the above is great… modern, comfortable, nice building, etc.  BUT, by far, the best part is the views….  Remember that tiny patio I mentioned earlier?

Santiago rental apartment, patio view image

We are on the 20th floor. This is what is outside the patio.

In case you are having trouble distinguishing what is out there, here are a couple of shots with the door open:

Santiago rental apartment, patio view 2 image

Yeah...

Or, if you look a little to the right:

Santiago rental apartment, patio view 3 image

It's a decent view; that hill is Cerro Santa Lucia, we climb it daily for exercise

How about a zoom in just for kicks:
Santiago rental apartment, patio view 4 image

Mother F#$**r

Keep in mind from our previous post on Santiago, those mountains are ~4 miles higher than the city.

The apartment is in Bellas Artes–perfectly located right in the middle of tons of cafes and restaurants (including a number of very special cafes which we’ll tell you all about out later this week…), very close to multiple subway stops, 4 blocks from Plaza de Armas and basically perfect in every way as far as we can tell.  More on our impressions of Santiago later, but we like it more and more every day. We are paying ~US$800/month for this fully furnished place including all utilities; we heard that buying such a unit would cost ~US$50k, intriguing…

So yeah, things look like they are going to work out just fine here in Santiago 🙂

Here are some more crazy mountain pictures for your enjoyment from our rooftop pool deck and the hill near our apartment:  (click on them to enlarge)

Santiago, Chile is awesome; let’s live there!

We like Chile a lot!!

So much so, in fact, that we have added a new “Chilean Adventure” category to the blog and are going to go live there for a month starting on Friday (2 days from now).

I was there for a few days in ~2002 and remember absolutely loving Santiago.  Back then, I was shocked at how modern and sophisticated it was and just loved the energy.  Jen and I had always planned to get over there and check it out while down here in South America, but over the last 4 months of living in Buenos Aires and constantly hearing from everyone here how dull and boring Santiago is, we almost didn’t go (seriously, people in BA tend to really talk smack about Santiago–we are beginning to develop an understanding of why and will explore further in future posts).  We are so glad that my sister coming to visit provided us with a compelling reason to make the trip!

As you may know, we had been trying to figure out what to do with ourselves for the next month and been tentatively planning to fly up and check out Ecuador and Columbia, but the pricing is crazy–the last straw was when we realized it would actually be cheaper to fly back to San Francisco first and then buy flights to Quito/Bogota/Cartagena from there than it would be to buy them from Buenos Aires (by the way… did you know that you can often get tickets from Miami to Columbia for under $100??)  So, we  were left  unsure what to do next that would be feasible with our budget (like a fine wine, unemployment becomes more complex over time), but lucky for us, Chile is awesome!  Santiago seems extremely live-able, refreshingly different than Buenos Aires, affordable, a good base for some travel and exciting–sign us up!

So what makes Santiago so awesome?

Thing 1:  The insanely ridiculous mountains

Seriously, if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand how crazy this is.  The photos don’t even come close to doing it justice, but I’ll try…

Andes mountains around Santiago, Chile image

We literally didn't see the mountains for our first few hours in town because we weren't looking high enough. You have to crane your neck back. Seriously.

The city itself is at an altitude of only ~1,600 feet above sea level, the mountains that surround it on ~3 sides and are extremely close get up to 21,555 feet – that is a difference of ~20,000 feet in altitude (~4 miles straight up) that takes place just outside the city.  For comparison, if you have been to Denver and thought that the Rockies looked impressive from there, know this:  The city of Denver is already at an altitude of ~5,200 feet and the very highest peaks in the Rockies (not really visible from the city) are around 14,000 feet – only a difference in altitude of ~9,000 feet.

So basically, imagine the view of the mountains from Denver and then move the mountains closer and add ~2 vertical MILES to them and you’ll have something similar to the view of the Andes from Santiago.  Crazy?  Yes.

Titanium Tower in Santiago Image

That is a pretty tall building. Looks pretty small compared to the 4 miles of vertical mountain behind it...

Santiago, Chile Andes views images

Seriously, look higher--those aren't clouds

Thing 2:  The culture and people

The culture of Santiago is very different from Buenos Aires in many ways.  I’ll write more about this in the future after we’ve spent more time there, but there are several things that jumped out at us right away:

  • Safety: The first night we were there, we saw people all over the streets walking around in business clothes carrying laptop bags.  This would never happen in Buenos Aires, even during the day.  If the locals have a backpack in BA, they leave it unzipped so that it’s obvious they don’t have a laptop in it.  This alone gave us an immediate impression that the city is significantly safer–this perception only grew over time.
  • Police presence (related to safety):  There are Carabineros (Chilean police) everywhere and the people seem to enjoy talking with them.  We asked around and were told that not only are they NOT corrupt, but they are consistently rated as the most trusted and respected institution in the country.  Suffice to say that the police are generally held in a slightly different regard in Buenos Aires.
  • Friendliness: People were SO friendly!  Virtually every person we met went out of their way to be nice to us and chat with us for awhile.  They seemed genuinely curious about us and proud to share their country with us.
  • Cleanliness: The city is unbelievably clean!  The sidewalks don’t have holes in them, the subways are super modern, the buses are quiet and don’t have huge trails of black smoke billowing out of them.  It’s very impressive; and it’s not generic either… they definitely have a style all their own, they just like it clean.
  • Efficiency: Things just work well.  They have good systems in place and clearly seem to value efficiency–this is exceptionally rare in Latin America and, while there may be pros and cons associated with valuing efficiency, it certainly was a refreshing change of pace for us.
    Santiago subway sign image

    This sign basically means something like: " For a nicer subway, please stay to the right to make it easier for everyone." In Argentina, walking is more like playing a game of chicken at all times.

    All of the above and other things left us feeling that Santiago is a place where we could really enjoy living.  It’s likely less of a tourist destination than Buenos Aires is (as BA is very much geared towards leisure activities), but it felt more the kind of place where you could have a real life.  Obviously, nowhere is perfect though, and it will be interesting to see how our perspectives of it change over time.

Thing 3:  The seafood

Chilean seafood platter image

That's what I'm talking about

Chile has a lot of coast line.  That means a lot of fish.  While we’ll likely miss the Argentine beef, we are very excited to diversify our diets a bit.

Chilean fish market image

Lots and lots of fish, and some other stuff...

Chilean King Crab image

This is Chilean King Crab. It will F you up.

Thing 4:  Proximity to amazing coastline

We’ll write a separate post detailing our trip to Valparaiso on the coast and will certainly be visiting  more coastal cities in the month to come.  Just know that within a ~1 hour drive from Santiago, there are views like this:

Valparaiso view of the Pacific image

This is from a patio in Valparaiso--not a bad view if you're into oceans and stuff

Vina del Mar, Chile image

Off in the distance is Vina del Mar, a very popular beach vacation destination

Thing 5: The fantastic artwork

We are big fans of trying to buy local artwork when we travel–especially paintings.  We have had trouble finding much that we liked over the last several months, but Chile really delivered.  In Plaza de Armas (a big plaza in the middle of Santiago), every day there is a large group of local painters selling their wares (and in many cases painting new ones as well).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painters image

See, lots of painters. Why don't you ever believe me??

We splurged a bit and ended up buying 4 spectacular paintings to send home with my sister (they were ~$40 each!).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 1 image

Yeah, he painted that, we bought it 🙂 He actually wasn't finished with it yet when we bought it, so we watched him put all of the finishing touches on it. Also bought another one that goes well with it. Great paintings and really cool guy--he gave us his home phone number (I told you they were friendly!)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 2 image

We bought the one on the bottom, Ashley got the one on the top. We'll match! The guy in the middle is the artist--everything of his was gorgeous... we're lucky that one of his others wasn't dry yet otherwise we would have spent another $100. (he also gave us his home phone number)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 3 image

Got that one in the middle... Had to wait until the next day for it to dry. Very excited about it. Now that we own 4 paintings, I think we have officially become Chilean art collectors--we should get business cards...

Thing 6+:  ??

I’m sure we’ll keep finding more exciting things over the next month as we begin our Chilean adventure, stay tuned…

Thank you!!! Also, we wanted to offer up a special thanks to our new best friends in Chile  who we met through Trip Advisor and this blog (we’ll leave out their names to protect the innocent).  Their suggestions for places to stay, things to do, etc. were invaluable and we loved meeting them and exploring a bit of Santiago off the beaten track together. Thanks so much, we look forward to another round of Pisco Sours and some good Chilean empanadas!  🙂

Lots more pictures in our Santiago album:  Santiago photo album