Things to do in Chile before you die

Things to do in Chile before you die… or leave, never to return again.  But how could you ever say you’re never coming back to Chile?

This is an open article, meaning everybody writes it. The idea is to make the big list of the best of the best, unconstrained by the requirements of travel guide [...]

Gift-wrapping

Retail consumers in Chile don’t have many rights to speak of, but one we do have is the right to get our purchases gift-wrapped in the store for free.  Supermarkets, department stores and toystores have gift-wrapping counters year-round, and during the holidays so do the rest– drugstores, hardware stores, you name it.  A store that [...]

Manjar

This heavenly stuff gets translated into English in Isabel Allende novels as “blancmange” and into American ice cream flavors as “dulce de leche” (read with hard d and gutteral l), which is its name in most of the rest of the Spanish-speaking world.   Manjar literally means “delicacy” and is what you get when you [...]

The Andes after it rains

The upside to all that smog is that it makes you really appreciate Santiago’s spectacular views of the Andes (since you don’t get to see them very often).  A good winter rain clears out the air for a while and leaves a fresh blanket of white on the mountaintops.  I took this photo a stone’s [...]