Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 2: Drink)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Last week we covered the food category and while Santiago had a strong showing and was far and away the winner on diversity of food options, we declared Buenos Aires the winner for the Food category overall – they may have limited menu options, but damn do they do them well.  Check out the full review of Buenos Aires vs. Santiago food.

We’re ready to move on.  Today’s category is…

2. Drink

This category is almost as important as food and despite bottles and bottles of intensive research, it is very difficult to declare a winner.  Let’s start with wine.

Category 1)  Wine:  Winner – Buenos Aires/Argentina  (though these are 2 of the best countries in the world to drink wine)

This is not really a Santiago vs. Buenos Aires thing, but rather a Chile vs. Argentina thing.  Both Argentina and Chile are deservedly proud of their wine traditions and more and more, they are gaining attention internationally for the quality of the wines they produce.  Both are pretty damn good and we had a rather fantastic (though for some reason, difficult to remember) time researching this category 🙂  By the way, if you are in Buenos Aires and like wine, you should do a wine tasting with Anuva – check out our original review on them for details:  Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Argentine wine tasting research with Anuva image

We like research

In both countries, most wine is grown right along the Andes with the largest regions being almost directly across the mountains from one another (Mendoza, Argentina and the many regions surrounding Santiago).  After visiting wineries in both of these regions and doing some additional research (Jen had to write a report for Spanish class on something…), we learned that while the regions are quite close geographically, being east vs. west of the mountains actually leads to some pretty significant differences in grape growing conditions – one of the largest differences being that on the Argentina side, the climate is quite a bit drier.  This and other differences lead to different types of grapes being better suited to one side vs. the other.  It’s why Argentina dominates global Malbec productions and is one of the only regions in the world to produces Torrontes and why Chile tends to export a broader array of both red and white varietals including the Carmenere which is largely exclusive to Chile.  Before we get into our sub-sub-category ratings, let’s start with some context on both regions.

Context

Argentine Wine Industry:

Argentina is currently the world’s 5th largest wine producer.  The vast majority of the wine produced in Argentina stays in Argentina – currently only somewhere between 20% and 30% is exported.  Up until the 1970s, Argentina produced more wine than pretty much any other country in the world.  They were apparently producing 22 tons per acre whereas most quality wine regions in France and California at the time were only producing ~2-5 tons per acre.  How did they do it?  Three words:

1)  Super

2)  low

3)  quality

Everyone used to have a big jug that they would go fill up every couple of days in the middle of town at a big wine keg type thing.  It was called “vino de mesa,” or “table wine.”  Back then, Argentines were drinking more wine per capita than any other country in the world (seriously, they were drinking something like 24 gallons/year/person on average vs. less than 1 gallon/person in countries like the US and UK), but virtually none of it was exported because, you know, it sucked.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that international wine experts started taking a closer look at Argentina.  After seeing the soil conditions, the lack of humidity, the lack of pests and the altitude, there began to be a lot of talk about the incredible potential Argentina had to produce top quality premium wines.  Slowly over the last couple of decades more and more of the industry has changed their practices away from mass produced low quality table wine to export-ready premium wine.  This has been largely driven by foreign investment.  When we were in Mendoza, we were told that back in 2002-2003 after the most recent Argentine economic collapse, there was an average of something like 3 new wineries opening every day as foreigners took advantage of low prices and saw an opportunity to make great wine.  This process still has a long way to go as they still only export a small fraction of the wine produced, but I think we can expect to see more and more Argentine wines in the international market in the years to come.  It is also worth noting, that the days of jug-wine are for the most part gone in Argentina and now even most of the wine produced for domestic consumption is quite high quality.

Bad Argentine jug wine

That said, we did experience some pretty bad jug wine up in Salta

Chilean Wine Industry:

Chile produces only a little more than half of the total wine that Argentina does and drinks only a small fraction of the wine that they produce; they export the rest.  In fact, they export 70+% of the wine that they produce which, despite the relatively small size and population of the country, makes them the 5th largest wine exporting country in the world (under France, Italy and Australia – Argentina is #8 at about 63% of the export volume of Chile).  It wasn’t always this way.  Similar to Argentina, the wine industry in Chile largely produced low quality wines for domestic consumption up until the 1980s.   Once they solved some political and economic issues, they recognized that they had the potential to turn wine into a big business, and they did.  Starting back in the 80s, they began using modern wine techniques from around the world and geared up their wineries to start producing great quality wines designed primarily for export.  They rapidly climbed the export rankings and continue to be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

You may have seen our earlier post on our visit to the Concha y Toro winery in Santiago – it’s the largest winery in Latin America and the 8th largest in the world.

Concha y toro wines image

You may recognize these labels... they are sold all over the world

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’m not sure really.  The important thing to remember is this… Chile is big in the business of exporting wine and Argentina is big on the tradition of making and drinking wine.  They both make great wine, but this context leads to some different outcomes.

Enough information, onto our totally subjective opinions…

Sub-category 1)  White wine – Winner: Chile (by a lot)

Argentina: Our experience was that Argentina focuses far more on red wine, and while we did find one Chardonnay that we liked, the vast majority of the whites that we tried there we thought were terrible.  Obviously this is subjective, but I’ve yet to hear anyone rave about a white Argentine wine nor have I ever seen one for sale in the US – if you have a different opinion, please let us know.  There is an exception to this… Northwestern Argentina is quite proud of their own unique white varietal known as Torrontes.  Many people talk it up as being a fantastic alternative to the more traditional varietals and the Argentines from the region (Salta) beam with pride whenever it is discussed.  We wanted to like Torrontes.  We really did.  Sadly, we could not.  After tasting several versions of it at a few of the wineries in Cafayate, the best way we can describe it is that it smells like very sweet dessert wine, yet somehow tastes like water.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not good.

Chile: Chile has fantastic white wines.  Virtually every white that we tried there we thought was excellent and if you are ever staring at the 100s of bottles of wine in a liquor store wondering what Chardonnay to buy, your odds of picking a good one are pretty good if you grab pretty much anything from Chile.

Sub-category 2)  Red wine – Winner: Too close to call

This is too close to call.  They both have fantastic red wines.  Some of the Malbecs from Argentina are absolutely amazing (others taste like kool-aid) and Chile has some fantastic big Cabs, Syrahs and others.  We are going to take a pass on this one.  Suffice to say, you can acquire fantastic red wine in either country.

Argentine Wine tasting picture image

This is just a random yet classy picture of wine glasses that I thought fit well here

The difference is in how much you have to pay for it, which leads us to the next category…

Sub-category 3)  Value for $ – Winner: Argentina

Value for the money is a pretty important dimension in determining what wine you’ll actually be able to try wherever you go and a big part of the reason why I provided so much context on the histories of the wine industries in each country up front.

Chile: Prices in general are a bit higher in Chile than Argentina for pretty much everything at the moment (though, with ~30% inflation per year, Argentina is rapidly catching up – until the next economic crisis).  The difference in wine prices is remarkable.  The reason for this is that Chilean wine is for the most part produced for export and priced at export pricing levels – we often saw the same bottles of Chilean wine that we’d bought here in the US for sale in Chile at the same or higher prices.  It’s not that it’s super expensive, it’s just that it’s internationally priced.  Argentina is different.

Argentina: Argentina exports only a small fraction of their wine and that wine is often labels that aren’t even sold domestically, so when you go to buy wine in Argentina, you are confronted with prices that were designed entirely for the local, relatively low-income, wine-loving market.  The vast majority of the wines in any store are priced at AR$15-30 which is US$3-7.  The staple wine that we drank all the time in Buenos Aires literally cost ~US$4/bottle.  That wine was awesome, and a bottle of that quality would easily cost $15-20 in the US (or Chile for that matter).  The value got even better if you were willing to spend a little bit more… we took back with us a few extremely expensive (on Argentine standards) bottles of wine that are easily some of the best wine we’ve ever had (and when we were consultants, people used to give us some pretty fancy wine from time to time!) – these super expensive bottles cost ~US$20, I’d put them in the ~US$100 range for something of similar quality here in the US.  Another great thing is that it’s easy to experiment with different high-end bottles in restaurants as the mark-up tended to be only 10-20% over store prices vs. the 2-3x mark-up that is common in the US (Chile also had a high restaurant mark-up).

Awesome Argentine Wine image

So good AND so cheap! Just look how happy we are.

On value for $, Argentina is impossible to beat.

Sub-category 4)  Variety of new wines to try in-country: Argentina

There is no question that Chile has great wines, but because they export so much of their wine, the wines that you’ll see in Santiago are pretty much the exact same wines that you’ll see in the Chilean section of a wine store in the US.  I’m sure that there are wines that you have to be in the country to experience, but in general, you can sample most of the Chilean wines from pretty much anywhere in the world.

On the flip-side, the vast majority of Argentine wines are currently impossible to purchase outside of the country.  You can be certain that a trip to Buenos Aires will expose you to an awesome variety of wines that you’ve never seen before.

Category 2)  National drink:  Winner – Santiago (by miles and miles)

Chile: Chile’s national drink (other than Nescafe) is the Pisco Sour.  It’s made from Pisco which is a grape based liquor and varying forms of sour mix.  Often there is egg white put on top, but the Chilean version usually skips that part.  It’s important to note that Pisco Sours are also very popular in other parts of Latin America (most notably Peru), but the Chilean version is their own.  The Pisco sour has the remarkable quality of tasting almost non-alcoholic – kind of like lemonade – yet having the ability to absolutely knock you on your ass in a very short period of time.  They vary in alcohol content depending on the type of Pisco used, but at one venue we had one drink each at around 5pm and were not able to walk straight again for about 4 hours.  The girl we were with threw up upon walking out of the bar.  After one drink.  Three hours later, we still wished that we had thrown up wih her.  They are dangerous, but we love Pisco Sours.

Pisco Sours in Santiago image

Pisco Sours make us happy

Argentina: Buenos Aires has an obsession with a very special kind of liquor called Fernet.  It’s made out of grapes and a variety of spices.  It’s often mixed with Coca Cola.  We tried a Fernet and Coke one time while in Buenos Aires.  Despite the fact that it was mixed with a fair amount of Coca Cola we could not drink more than a few sips.  It was without question the worst tasting thing we have ever put in our mouths.  This is of course subjective; there are many, many people that claim to love this drink – we suspect this is merely a form of hazing.

Fernet image

Fernet makes us sad

Category 3)  Coffee:  Winner – Buenos Aires (unless you are looking for a little something extra with your coffee..)

It may seem odd to have a category devoted to coffee, but the coffee/cafe cultures in these two cities are so remarkably different, we thought it was worth mentioning.  For us, we preferred the leisurely cafe experiences in Buenos Aires, but to each their own as these are very, very different.   Here’s the deal…

Buenos Aires: Cafes are a big deal in Buenos Aires.  The strong Italian roots of the city are likely the reason behind the strength of the cafe culture.  There are usually several cafes on every block and for the most part, they all serve fresh ground, strong and quite tasty coffee.  The standard ‘cafe’ is actually what we would call an espresso shot in the US, but there are several variations involving more or less amounts of milk (e.g., cafe con leche, cortado, lagrima).  It’s all good.  Pretty much any cafe you go to will serve some cookies and a glass of water with every coffee you order.  The locals spend lots of time hanging out in cafes sipping their espresso and reading the news.  There is no such thing as a to-go cup… when you’re going to have coffee in Buenos Aires, you are going to sit down and drink it for as long as it takes.  That’s just how it’s done.   Coffee is a big part of the culture here and a good deal of pride is taken not only in producing top quality drinks, but also in providing a great cafe experience.  If you’re in a hurry, it can be pretty difficult to get a quick cup of caffeine in this city, but then again we found that we were rarely in a hurry in BsAs.

Buenos Aires Cafe image

Coffee, cookies and water

Santiago: The cafe culture is very different in Santiago.  There are 3 main differences:  Experience, quality and legs.

1)  Experience:  There are still many cafes, but for the most part they are designed for getting a quick cup of coffee rather than as places to leisurely hang out for a couple of hours.  In fact, a large percentage of the cafes downtown don’t even have seating… everyone just quickly drinks their coffee while standing at a bar.  We found that getting coffee was typically a 10 minute experience.  This is not really better or worse than the BsAs style, just different.  On top of that though, we also found that many of the cafes were favorite destinations of smokers and sometimes there was so much smoke billowing out of them that we couldn’t breathe.  Starbucks is actually doing quite well in Santiago and many of the people we talked to suggested that a big part of their success might be that they are one of the few non-smoking cafes.

Stand-up coffee bars in Santiago image

Stand-up coffee bar

2)  Quality of coffee:  For various historical reasons which we never quite fully understood, Chile has a national obsession with Nescafe instant coffee.  Upon ordering coffee, the default offering you will get even in a fancy hotel or restaurant will be an empty cup and a plastic single-serve container of Nescafe.  After which, they will offer to fill your cup with either hot water or hot milk.  While instant coffee can be convenient when you need some coffee and don’t have any alternatives, it seems odd to order coffee in a coffee shop and get it.  To be clear, you can definitely order an espresso drink if you’re in the right kind of place, it’s just not the standard-Nescafe is everywhere.

3)  Legs:  We covered the Coffee with Legs/Cafe con piernas phenomenon at length in a previous post (see it here:  Cafe con piernas = coffee with legs).  Coffee shops that are part strip club or even brothel are not representative of the coffee culture in Santiago, but are certainly a significant part of it.  If you are into this, then the incredible number and variety of cafe con piernas establishments in downtown Santiago may well trump all of the other drink categories and make Santiago the city for you.

coffee with legs cafe rio santiago image

Ah the memories...

Overall winner for best Drink:  Buenos Aires (barely)

There is plenty of good drinking to be done in both cities.  If you’re all about trying new red wines that are really cheap and good you should prioritize Buenos Aires.  If you prefer white wine, go Chile.  If you like drinking gasoline, go to Buenos Aires and try some Fernet.  It really depends on you.  We happen to love red wine and were blown away by the incredible value we got in BsAs on awesome wine, so despite how much we miss Pisco Sours, we’re going to award this category to Buenos Aires by a slim margin.  We can’t declare a strong overall winner in this category, but hopefully we’ve at least given you some good context to draw your own conclusions.

Quick recap on the cage match thus far…

Round 1)  Food – Buenos Aires came out strong and won round 1 with best overall food despite Santiago’s superior variety

Round 2)  Drink – Buenos Aires barely edged out Santiago driven by the incredible value for your money on unique red wines

So far Buenos Aires has Santiago on the ropes, but the first two categories have definitely played to Buenos Aires strengths, so we expect big things from Santiago in the coming rounds. Next week, we’ll get into round 3 and tackle the issue of which of these two cities would be more attractive to live in as an expat.

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Disclaimer:  Keep in mind these are just our opinions based on our personal experiences and we’re very happy to have people disagree as this is quite subjective – if you do disagree, please speak up and tell us why!

Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 1: Food)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Research wasn’t easy.  We worked relentlessly day in and day out to try as many restaurants, go on as many day trips and explore as many on and off-the-beaten-path attractions as possible.  We’ve also done an extensive wine comparison.  I don’t know how we stayed motivated.

There are five high-level categories to this competition, each of which will be thoroughly analyzed in it’s own post with a winner declared:

  1. Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
  2. Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
  3. Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
  4. Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
  5. People/Culture – What are the people and culture like and how open are they to foreigners

Obviously, much of this is very subjective and our opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.  You may agree or disagree with our conclusions; our hope is to provide enough context such that you can draw your own conclusions based on your own preferences and priorities.  Our other hope is that this series of posts becomes a useful reference so that next time someone asks us the question of which city to spend more time in we can just tell them to read this rather than rambling about it for an hour–sadly, the rambling will likely continue.

Let’s do this.

Today’s category is…

1. Food

We like food.  We like food a lot.  Trying authentic foreign cuisines is one of our very favorite things about travelling, so this category is a pretty important one in our minds.  Let’s break it down:

Most crave-worthy:  Winner – Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires: We’ve been back in the US for a few months now and we haven’t bothered eating steak.  We know that it could never measure up to the Buenos Aires version that you can get at places like El Estrebe, Dada and a number of other stellar places (see our where to eat in BA post for recommendations).  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Beyond just the steak, we can’t forget the empanadas…. oh, the empanadas.  The empanadas were unbelievable.  Also, Provoleta is missed.  We crave these things often and if/when we go back to visit BA, food will be one of the biggest reasons.

Argentine steak image

Want

Santiago: It’s not that the food was bad in Santiago, it was actually pretty good.  That said, we certainly don’t crave anything we had there.  Food is not as core to the culture of Santiago as it is to Buenos Aires.  It’s fine, but it’s unlikely to blow you away.  However, if you are a fan of giant hot dogs, Santiago is the place for you.

Chilean hot dog completo image

Yep

Best food diversity:  Winner – Santiago (by a landslide)

Buenos Aires: Virtually every restaurant in Buenos Aires has an identical menu.  As we’ve written about previously, there are really only 5 types of food in Buenos Aires (steak, pizza, pasta, empanadas and Dulce de Leche).  They do those 5 things quite well, but that’s pretty much all they do.  If you head into some of the more touristy areas you can find a handful of foreign cuisine options, but not many.  Despite the high quality, after a couple of weeks the monotony of eating the same thing every day does get to you.

Buenos Aires food pyramid image

Sometimes it's possible to combine all 5 food groups in one meal

Santiago: Santiago, on the other hand, is full of all kinds of different cuisines.  Peruvian and Japanese are probably the two most common (and quite good), but we also had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, there are lots of Chinese restaurants (which the locals strongly suggest avoiding), Seafood, Italian, American, French, you name it.  From a dining perspective, Santiago offers far more international options than Buenos Aires.

Peruvian ceviche image

We do kind of miss the Peruvian ceviche

Best dining experience:  Winner – Buenos Aires (if you have a few hours)

Buenos Aires: In BA, dining is definitely an experience–whether you want it to be or not.  For dinner it is usually a 3+ hour experience.  This is not (usually) the result of bad service, but rather is intentional.  In BA, dining isn’t really about eating, it’s about being with your friends and family.  Service is usually quite efficient and impressively formal up until they finish bringing your food; after that, you will have a very hard time tracking down your server to get your bill.  This is by design.  They would never want to give the impression that they were rushing you out and fully assume that you will spend another hour or 2 sitting around the table after you finish eating.  That’s simply how it’s done.  At first, this can be a bit unsettling for those of us from countries that tend to be in more of a rush.  After you get used to it though (and assuming you are not in a hurry), it’s pretty awesome to allow yourself to fully experience a meal with your fellow diners.

Santiago: In Santiago, the dining experience was far more similar to what you would find in the US.  Servers are interested in turning tables fairly quickly and in some cases may even clear your dishes and bring your check while you’re still chewing your last bite (update:  we have it on good authority from someone who has spent much more time here than us that this is usually not the case and perhaps we were going to the wrong places.  Either way though, they definitely value efficiency more in Santiago and meals were much quicker relative to BA) Great if you’re in a hurry, but otherwise nothing special.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but even/especially the fancier places we tried were not that memorable.

Overall winner in the food category:  Buenos Aires

Santiago is no slouch, but dining is core to the entire culture in Buenos Aires and as long as you eat meat and can handle the lack of diversity, they do it extremely well.  So, if your single top priority in choosing between these two cities is food (and you like meat), you should definitely prioritize Buenos Aires.

As important as it is though, food is unlikely to be the only factor in your decision making process, so stay tuned for future posts to see which city wins in the remaining categories!

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Beaches and mountains and wineries, oh my!: More reasons why Santiago rocks

While Santiago is a great city in and of itself, possibly its most compelling feature is its proximity to an amazing variety of incredible day-trips, ranging from beaches to wineries to mountains and more.  This is a tale of some of those day-trips.

Context

I thoroughly enjoyed writing about career related topics (e.g., Career Option-value) and will absolutely be writing a lot more involving evil mongeese in the near future, but I didn’t want to go too long without offering a little travel-related inspiration…

We’ve been in Santiago, Chile for a couple of weeks now and we continue to like it more and more (see our original post on Santiago).  So much so in fact that we are now seriously considering getting jobs and living here for the foreseeable future.  Anyone have any good leads?  🙂

We may sound crazy.  You may be wondering why we would consider living so far away from home.  There are many reasons.  In this post, I’ll discuss 3 of them: beaches, mountains and wineries.  Oh my.

Santiago day trip 1: Beaches

About a week ago we made plans with some friends to go skiing in some of the gigantic mountains hovering just outside/over the city.  We headed over to their house at around 9am to meet up.  When we got there, they told us that they had heard the weather was rough and it might be snowing too hard in the mountains for skiing to be much fun.  We are fair weather skiers, so skipping the slopes for the day was fine with us.  After some discussion about possible alternate destinations, we decided to drive to the coast for the day.  It was drizzling for most of the ~1 hour drive, so initially we weren’t all that optimistic about the beach.  We were in for a surprise.

We started at Isla Negra, which is a small beach town a bit south of Valparaiso and the site of one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (he’s kind of a big deal here).  The tour of the house was very worthwhile (this guy collected all kinds of crazy stuff, including a narwhal tusk!).  Beyond the house, the beach was fantastic which was helped by the fact that the rain stopped..

Isla Negra beach image

This was Pablo Neruda's backyard. I wish it were my backyard.

After our tour, we decided to drive a bit further up the coast to Viña del Mar.  Viña is a popular beach destination for a good reason.

Viña del Mar coastline image

It's always a beautiful day in Viña del Mar

The weather was significantly better at Viña.  We had an awesome lunch on an outdoor patio (keep in mind that it’s the dead of winter here) and then took to the beach…

Viña del Mar beach image

Everyone out enjoying this beautiful winter day

Also, there were some very cool sand sculptures.

Viña del Mar beach sand sculpture image

Such as this crazy dragon thing

We got some ice cream, hung out on the beach for a few hours and eventually headed back to the city.

Let’s recap:

  1. We woke up in the morning ready to go skiing.
  2. We determined that it was snowing too hard to go skiing
  3. Rather than driving an hour east for skiing, we drove an hour west to the coast
  4. We spent the day enjoying a sunny, warm and beautiful day at the beach and eating ice cream (because it was snowing too hard to ski).

Does this seem strange to anyone?  Is this sequence of events possible anywhere else in the world?  If so, let us know!  If not, join us in basking in the awesomeness that is Chile.

Santiago day trip 2: Mountains

This weekend it wasn’t snowing too hard.  With our friends at the wheel, we managed to make the ~1 hour drive east (though ‘up’ is the more accurate direction) and hit the slopes at Valle Nevado.  It was our first time skiing in the Andes and it was unlike any skiing we had ever done before (in a good way).

Valle Nevado ski lodge image

This is the lodge down at the base (yep, that's the bottom...)

Aside from the incredible views and massive amounts of snow in every direction, there is something quite unique about skiing in the Andes…

Valle Nevado slopes images

Hmmm... what's missing from this picture?

Trees.  There are no trees.  I’ve never skied without trees before.  They pretend that there are separate runs, but really it’s more of a free-for-all where you can pretty much go anywhere–there is nothing but snow and mountains for miles and miles and miles.  At the lodge, you can conveniently pay for a helicopter to drop you off further out if you’re crazy (we saw it go back and forth more than a few times), or some people apparently take a lift up and just head off in a different direction and have a friend pick them up near the side of the road somewhere down the mountain (or just hitchhike from there).

I’ve skied all over the US, but I’ve never seen this much fresh powder–certainly none that is this light and fluffy.  Also, it doesn’t get that cold (rarely below freezing) and apparently the day we were there was the most crowded our friends have ever seen it–sometimes we waited in lift lines for up to 2 minutes.

Valle Nevado lift image

This is the 'most' crowded it's ever been...

And another thing…

Echaurren glacier at the top of Valle Nevada image

At the top of one of the lifts you get an incredible view of the Echaurren glacier (top left) which is hanging out at around 17k feet

If glaciers aren’t your thing, there are also some spectacular views of the city way down below.

Santiago view from Valle Nevada image

That's Santiago city down there in that valley. If you look closely you can see the buildings... completely surrounded by mountains

Not only that, but the drive home offered some pretty spectacular sunset views.

Sunset on road to Santiago from the Andes image

Sunsets in Chile do not mess around

Let’s recap:

  1. 1 – 1.5 hour drive from city
  2. Amazing powder skiing, wide-open runs, not crowded, warm
  3. Incredible glacier views
  4. Incredible city views
  5. Incredible sunset
  6. If we were feeling lazy, we could have gone to the beach instead

Convinced yet?  If you still don’t agree with us that Chile is awesome, that’s fine.  There’s plenty more…

Santiago day trip 3: Wineries

On another day, with some other friends (people are friendly here), we headed north to the small town of Los Andes.  It’s about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours north, nestled in between the Andes and the Coastal Range (more mountains) and more or less surrounded by the vineyards of the Aconcagua Valley (you have to be specific because there are like 7 wine valleys within an hour or so of the city).

Los Andes, Chile vineyard image

The views were ok

Frankly, there wasn’t really any need to have a particular destination in mind, you can basically just start driving and stare in awe out the window at the amazing scenery beyond every turn.

We had been pretty fixated by the Andes, but we learned about a whole new mountain range on this trip.

Coastal range from Los Andes image

Those are part of the Coastal Range. Also awesome.

We stopped at one point and did a little hiking through vineyards to get to the top of a hill (which happened to be the site of some very interesting petroglyphs).

Los Andes winery and mountains image

This is what we saw

After we managed to tear ourselves away from these incredible views (and of course buy as many bottles of wine as we could carry after some wine tasting) we headed to our friends’ favorite lunch destination in the area…

Los Andes lunch spot image

Decent place to have lunch -- try the drunken chicken

As if the above wasn’t enough, we also were treated to a brief performance by these guys:

Huasos image

Huasos - Like guachos, but Chilean

Once again, let’s recap:

  1. 1 hour drive
  2. Spectacular scenery along the way
  3. Not one, but 2 mountain ranges (Coastal Range and Andes)
  4. Cool wineries that make great wine in unbelievable settings
  5. Drunken chicken for lunch
  6. Chilean cowboys

What more could you want?

In Summary

We used to live in San Francisco.  San Francisco is known for having lots of incredible day trips you can do near the city.  While we are big fans of San Francisco, the day trip possibilities around Santiago make San Francisco day trips look a little silly (in diversity, intensity and proximity).  We’ve only just begun exploring this city/country and so far we are blown away.

Where else can you do all of this and more so close to a major city?  Why doesn’t everyone live here??  🙂

Check out more photos in our gallery:

Beach day photos

Ski day photos

Winery day photos

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)