Jun 26
If any of you remember, we walked into Chile way back on January 28! Since then, we have had a great love affair with this country. Chile has some of the friendliest, most interesting people. People who are innately curious and who offer much in terms of their culture and of course their food! Let's take a walk down Chilean food memory lane.
Did you know that there is a war going on? Well, here in Chile, the war against Peru is alive and well and it has been going on for 400 years! Esepcially in the town of Pisco Elqui, when in 1936, the name was changed from La Union to Pisco Elqui just to prove how passionate the Chilean's are about 'their' national beverage, Pisco. Corner any Chilean and ask if Pisco is Peruvian or Chilean and you will likely get a heated, passionate response that will naturally end in favor of Chile. Both Peru and Chile lay claim to fame to this controversial beverage. So who wins? The war rages on!
Now that I have your attention, no there wasn't an ACTUAL earthquake here in Chile, although the drink we tried is named for Chile's notorious past with these natural disasters. The earthquake we experienced was the 'Terremoto drink'. It's definitely not fancy enough to be called a cocktail!
What's up with that title? Crazy with may? What does that mean?! Have I completely lost it? 6 months of traveling and now I've gone mad? No, I am simply referring to 'locos con mayo' and one of Chile's more humorous translations.
Who or what is Mapuche? Mapuche refers to the indiginous people in Chile comprising about 10% of Chile's total population (a smaller amount live in parts of southwestern Argentina too). The AraucanÃa region in Chile is home to the largest concentration of these people with 80% of the Mapuche people living there
After Cochamo, we ventured out to Valdivia. I was told that I shouldn't miss the market there because it's full of fresh seafood and it's true. Although small in size, it's a market lovers paradise. You can purchase different types of fresh fish & get it cut up right on the spot to take home & cook up a feast
We finally made it to Puerto Montt, beyond exhausted. We were pretty disheveled at this point. The ferry arrived at 6 am and we made our way through a real city! Puerto Montt has just about 200,000 people, so not such a big city by real world standards but for us, it was the largest city we had seen in a very long time. Huge, real double-decker (!) buses rushed passed us. After seeing just minibuses for the past month, these buses looked heavenly.
Infused exposures 