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Daily Life, Disrupted
I recently had a friend visit me in Santiago. One night, we sat down for a chat over a glass of wine while she was editing photos. I was curious to see how she was capturing the city in images. To my surprise, Santiago was almost unrecognizable. Sure, there were the...
An End Meets a Beginning
For years, I dreamed about Ecuador. I had visited before but I had a specific trip in mind that included the Galapagos. I didn't have any immediate plans to go, but nonetheless obsessively researched the hotels, the destinations, the hikes, the snorkeling, and...
The Holidays
It’s that time of year again…and a typical conversation in Chile during the holidays starts off like this: “Que atroz! How terrible! I am muuuyyy busy. You know…it is end of school year, graduation, parties, Christmas, New Year’s and summer vacation. Ayayay es...
From Garden to Table, Straight from the Heart
Terroir. You may have heard this expression before, or perhaps you might think it’s just another word overused by wine snobs. The reality it is that’s just a French word that the French use to talk about where products come from. And they use it all the time....
Uruguay’s Quintessential White Wine
Ten years ago, it would have been unfathomable, perhaps even crazy, to speculate that a white grape hailing from Galicia, Spain, would be blossoming into Uruguay’s most notable white wine variety. It has adapted beautifully to Uruguay’s soil and maritime...
The Greatest Gift
“Education is everything. It doesn’t matter what color your hair is, your race, how much money you have, who your parents are. It’s every child’s right. Without it, there’s no future nor change”. –Petit Miribel Meet Marie-Hélène Miribel—also known as “Petit”....
The Soul of Santiago
Cities are like people. They show their varying personality to the resident and traveler. It usually has to do with the lenses we project onto her. Depending on the city and person, there might be mutual love, or dislike. Friendship, or enmity. For some people,...
Back in the Saddle
In South America, there’s a serious horse culture that is an integral part of life here. It’s not just gauchos, cowboys, either. The real gauchos are actually in Argentina and Uruguay, but there are Chilean cowboys, huasos in elegant rodeos throughout central...
Recalculating
Dear Friends, It’s been over a year since the last post on this blog. In the blogging world, that basically means forever. I would start a post here and there, but never managed to finish a single one. I wrote many posts in my head, but I never could seem to...
Machu Picchu: To Marvel and Appreciate
Machu Picchu doesn’t need much of an introduction. The ancient Incan city appears on the bucket lists of many world travelers. Perched 8,000 above sea level in the dense jungle of the southern Peruvian Andes, it was once thought to be a royal estate for the...
A Patagonian Crusade
I am standing, or better said, paralyzed on a steep mountainside in the Chilean Patagonia. To the west in the distance, the Torres del Paine (the three granite towers from which the park takes it name) are shrouded in dark, threatening clouds. We are already a...
One Fall Day
The last day of our Southern Cone Sampler tour, we woke up to glorious sun streaming through the hotel curtains. A mixture of clouds and golden rays illuminated swathes of the blue-grey waters of the Rio de la Plata. It was that kind of pure light that only...
Four Young Santiago Chefs
The food scene in the Chilean capital is sizzling and truly having its moment. The catalysts? A new generation of chefs who have trained abroad, returned to their country and are digging deep roots in Santiago. They have forged restaurant projects focused on...
The Chilean Chocolatero
Meet Mark Gerrits. He’s the energy, and passion, behind Chile’s first bean-to-bar chocolate: ÓBOLO. Made right here in Santiago de Chile. ÓBOLO is provoking a long-awaited, and very necessary, revolution in chocolate here in Chile. Prior to existing, chocolate...
The Renaissance Port
February is vacation month in Chile. Half of Santiago seems to relocate to the coast, only about an hour or so away. While many are clustering on the petit stretches of sandy beaches on those rocky shores, we have been revisiting the port of “Valpo”. Ahem, I...
Dreams Can Come True
What if you could make your dream a reality? Would you sell everything you own, move to another continent, and dedicate all your passion and energy to making that happen? That’s what Michael Paravicini did. The Swiss-born owner of Vira Vira Hacienda Hotel, in...
La Marraqueta
La baguette. This slender loaf of bread symbolizes France and so much about its identity. The baguette defines the national identity, molding and giving it shape. During our time in France, nearly a month, we followed the hallowed daily ritual of la baguette....
Chilote Magic
We had no longer taken off from the southern city of Puerto Montt and we were already preparing to land on the island of Chiloé, the fifth largest in South America. Twenty minutes in the air, to be exact. As the plane descended through wispy, bumpy clouds, we...
and the meaningful
