The other night I was walking back home and Santiago felt like ghost town. It was very VERY cold (zero degrees), but even so will usually find a lot of people walking around the Providencia area at this time, as it’s a…
In my lifetime, I have lived through two major earthquakes; the first in 1985, and the second in 2010. During the first, I was certain that the earth was moving because a giant was walking towards the city. I remember…
I’ve recently returned to my hometown Santiago, Chile after being away for a couple of years. Being away has made me realize some things that I once took for granted. First: the Andes. See above. They are huge! Majestic mountains that can…
People often say that Chile is a “land of poets”, and then point out that two Nobel laureates in literature have been Chilean: Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971). Indeed, they are the most popular and internationally known poets…
In a small rural village called Rari in the Chilean municipality of Colbún, in the Maule region (300 km south of Santiago), you will find the most beautiful butterflies that you’ve ever seen, with the brightest colors and the most…
Puerto Varas is a beautiful small city located in the Region de los Lagos (Region of the Lakes) of Chile. Situated right next to the Llanquihue Lake and right in front of the Osorno Vocano, this city is quite special….
Recently I discovered that Chileans share with other Latin Americans a guilty pleasure for a sweet thing that we Chileans call “manjar”. In other countries such as Argentina it is known as “dulce de leche”, or milk sweet. If you…
I had been struggling for ages to find the perfect empanada recipe. I’d tried making them several times, but I’d never been complete happy with the result: the dough was too hard, the filling was too dry, the flavor was…
Bread, you rise from flour, water and fire. […] How simple you are, bread, and how profound! Fragment, Oda al Pan, Pablo Neruda, in Odas Elementales Today I woke up wishing I could eat avocado on a toasted marraqueta. …
One of my last encounters with the amazing nature of my country, Chile, happened just a few months ago. I had the opportunity to visit the recently declared 8th Wonder of the World: Torres del Paine National Park for the…
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the best of the 20th Century. For Santiaguinos (people from Santiago), Thelonious is also the name of a restaurant and music venue that combines live jazz and…
The first memory I have of Tongoy is standing up on top of a whale on the seashore. I must have been four years old and the image is still vivid in my mind. I had traveled with my mom….
