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

Posted on January 23, 2011 by ryan

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?

or

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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 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 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.

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 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)

Posted on January 13, 2011 by ryan

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?

or

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

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:

Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Warning: Buenos Aires apartment scam

Posted on November 5, 2010 by ryan

UPDATE 1/9/2013: To avoid any confusion, this article/warning is NOT about the rental company DiscoverBA.com. We were recently contacted by the owner there who told us that this post has a high Google rank for “DiscoverBA review” due to a few similar keywords. While we don’t have any experience with DiscoverBA, they seem like a legit company and the scam below is definitely not referring to them.

—————————-

A reader recently emailed us asking if we could help publicize the story of how he got scammed out of getting his deposit back when renting an apartment in Buenos Aires in an attempt to shut-down the scammer (which has been remarkably successful thus far–read on…) and to help other people avoid becoming victims. We hate scams (and in Argentina, there are MANY), so we were happy to oblige.

Everything is done in cash in Buenos Aires (because no one wants to pay taxes), the police are corrupt and crime is high so you have to be extremely, extremely careful no matter what you are doing–being taken for your deposit on a rental apartment is, unfortunately, incredibly common unless you go with one of the reputable companies (which may cost a bit more, but you are guaranteed a great place and you will get your deposit back, so in my opinion, well worth it). Check out our guide on how to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires for some tips/tricks to minimize your risk and some mini-reviews of several agencies that we worked with.

The scam

Below is a reprint of the story that was just sent to us:

My six-month stay in Buenos Aires ended on a bad note this past Tuesday when I was scammed out of the deposit for the apartment I had been renting for three months starting in August. The apartment owner’s name is Valeria de Santos and the unit in question is located in Recoleta, at Larrea 1393 at the corner of French, apartment #PB2. I found it on Craiglist and jumped at the chance to live in a nice area for a relative bargain, though in hindsight renting through an agency or through a referral may have been the smarter way to go.

I had told Valeria that I needed to check out at noon because a cab would be waiting to take me to the airport. She arrived late with her mother and inspected the apartment to make sure it was in good order (it was). Valeria said that my deposit was waiting for me at her mother’s office, which was supposedly just a few blocks away, off of Pueyrredon and Santa Fe. She asked if her mother could get in the cab with me and get dropped off by her office where she would retrieve the deposit and return it to me.

I had dealt directly with the mother before when I first occupied the apartment so I didn’t find her suggestion odd. But I now realize that I made a number of mistakes. First, I returned the keys to Valeria before getting my deposit back. Secondly, I let my guard down and didn’t think to accompany her mother to the “office” after we dropped her off at the corner, opting instead to wait for her in the cab with my luggage.

The mother disappeared down the street and never returned. I waited 45 minutes and called Valeria a dozen times before telling the driver that we needed to leave because I couldn’t miss my flight. I called her numerous times at the airport and e-mailed her with no response. I was finally able to reach her Wednesday, when she assured me that she would wire the funds to me via PayPal that same day. Well, it didn’t come through, and I’ve been calling and e-mailing her since with no luck. My messages to her have gotten angrier and angrier to the point where I threatened to hop on a plane the next day and come looking for her — which I would be crazy enough to do if I was confident I could track her down.

The strange thing is that Valeria and her mother were a pleasure to deal with during my three-month stay in the apartment, responding to my calls and e-mails and showing up to address any problems promptly. It’s bizarre that they would pull something like this off at the very end.

I’ll continue to call and e-mail and harass Valeria and her mother in any way I can until I get my money back, and perhaps I’ll find myself in Buenos Aires sooner than I think. But for now, I’d just like to defame her on every relevant forum I can find and bring awareness to what I went through. Hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes.

It’s really too bad that this happened, but I will say that to get out of Buenos Aires after 6 months and only be scammed out of $200 is actually pretty darn good. In our 6 months, we encountered taxi scams (fast meter), counterfeit money scams, tour guide pricing scams, and were almost taken for $400 on the deposit for our first 2 week apartment. Good times.

The entertaining part

The above story was actually posted on the local Buenos Aires expat forum. Within about 5 hours, there were 100+ responses by the expat community. Many of them decided to use some clever online detective skills to determine that this woman and her mother had been running scams on tourists in BA for years – not only via apartments, but also through a fake Spanish school, a fake tour guide business and many others. They also found her real name, address, phone number and other personal details (including where she has claimed to be an Oxford trained lawyer on Wikipedia among other places).

As the expats diligently uncovered more and more information about this woman, strangely enough all of the websites and references to her many ‘businesses’ started disappearing from the internet. Clearly many of the expats are software developers though and they were able to backup pretty much everything and rehost on alternate off-shore servers. The thread on the forum showing this whole thing unraveling is long, but extremely entertaining and worth taking a look at: http://baexpats.org/expat-life/11930-stay-away-apartment-rental.html

A summary of what was uncovered

One of the members on the expat forum put together a nice summary of many of the facts uncovered which I’ve reposted below. Note: this isn’t interesting reading, I’m just reposting it so that there is yet another website that has all of these keywords in hopes that any future potential victims do some googling before doing business with her.

So, in summary this thread is a warning about Florencia Marina Daud (aka Florencia Daud Othacehe). It is strongly advised that you avoid any kind of business dealings or financial transactions with her. If you do enter into financial dealings with her it is recommended that you proceed with extreme caution. She has disappeared with the deposits of several visitors to the city who entered into temporary rental agreements with her.

Florencia Daud
DNI: 26260151
CUIT: 272626015115 (click on the green arrow to see a picture from the website http://www.nic.ar/entidades.html)

She has gone under the names Valeria de Santos and Veronica and often uses the username flormarina on the internet.

Her mother has used a name similar to Maria Eugenia

She has had various businesses registered to her addresses:
Discover BA
Florencia Marina Daud (discoverba@hotmail.com)
+1.5411480527
Fax:
Av Pueyrredon 2261
Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1119
AR

D&A Daud & Asociados
Av. Pueyrredon 2261 2nd floor
BUENOS AIRES – ARGENTINA
tel/fax +54-11-4805-2742

Recoleta Spanish School
Pueyrredon 2261, 2nd floor
Entidad Registrante: Florencia Daud
País: Argentina
Actividad: Otra
Domicilio: Chenaut 1967 4 A
Ciudad/Localidad: Buenos Aires
Provincia: Buenos Aires
Código Postal: 1426
Teléfono: 4776 3188
Fax: 4776 3188

D&A Daud & Asociados Buenos Aires, Argentina
Address : Av. Chenaut 1967 4 A, Buenos Aires 1426, Argentina
Phone No. : +5411-4776-3188

According to the Colegio Público de Abogados de la Capital Federal, she’s licensed to practice law here in Capital. Click the green arrow for a picture from the website.

Other phone numbers she has used:
15-5346-4957
15-5259-1319

And email addresses:
sweetmarina2007@hotmail.com
valeriadesantos@hotmail.com

She has advertised her apartments on craigslist
She appears in wikipedia
She has an account on EchangeVacances.com (click for pictures)

and has had various personal and business web pages of her own most of which have been taken down since these accusations have appeared:
http://www.buenosairesguest.com/
http://florenciamarina.blogspot.com/
http://daudlegal.com/

If you have been a victim of a scam as a visitor you can contact the following authorities:

Defensoría de Turista, 4302 7816. Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1835 (Museo de Bellas Artes “Benito Quinquela Martín”) La Boca.
Mail: turista@defensoria.org.ar

Comisaría del turista
Av. Corrientes 436
0800 999 5000 / 4346 5748
mail: turista@policiafederal.gov.ar

If you have returned to your country and are unable to retrieve funds owed to you by identifiable persons as a last resort you can tell them you are going to contact AFIP (the revenue authorities) to have their tax records reviewed:
http://www.afip.gov.ar/contacto/
Centro de denuncias : 0800-999-2347

There is also another thread about the activities of Florencia Daud on TripAdvisor

In Summary

Be careful in Buenos Aires (and/or wherever you are traveling) and if something like this happens to you, let the online communities know about it – they may or may not be able to help you directly, but they can certainly help get the word out so that it’s harder for scammers like this to be successful.

Thanks again for the tip!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Posted on September 7, 2010 by jen

Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro. (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.) If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float. A lot. This sounded cool, so we signed up. What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold. Really, really cold. We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna. Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset. This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum! Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long. One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour. Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English. With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish. We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away. We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?). This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon. They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude. They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car. And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van. Not exactly adventure travel.

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat). Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around. And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit. The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature. After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all. Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it. Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust. He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING. Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago. It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music. The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak. There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon. Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks). Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome. By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!). This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka. They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours. We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!! We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant. This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag. It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done. We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert. We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude. Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had. He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered. The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy. We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table. It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day. The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good. We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added. Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter. We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town. We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation. It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95). The room was pretty, done in adobe. But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors. The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have. For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value! Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!! All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast. The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun. The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here. It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible. We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again). Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

Posted on September 6, 2010 by jen

We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat. San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world. We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen. Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below). This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went. We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome. This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon! (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions. We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor. Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up). Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro. It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one. We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this. Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed. We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding. We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing. Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria. Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over. We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset. Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town. First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am. The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark. The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there. We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing. And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing. I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own. The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air. But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning. The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up. But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs. Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there. It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places). It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill. It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later). The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary. And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year. What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro. A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky. We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away. We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars. Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible. He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard. Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars. He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries. He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them. We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!! And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly. And lots of other cool things. We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les. He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip. It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done. I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!! Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro? Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update: Part 2 is posted: Trip Report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Meet, Plan, Go! September 14th in thirteen cities. Be there. Seriously.

Posted on August 17, 2010 by ryan

Listen up. This is important. We want to tell you about an outstanding event that will be taking place on Sept. 14th in thirteen cities across the US and Canada called Meet, Plan, Go! Its entire purpose is to provide you with inspiration, contacts and resources to “plan the trip of a lifetime” – and then go. You’re probably wondering how much something this awesome would cost. Well, I hope you’re sitting down: this event is free. If you live anywhere near one of these cities, we think you should go. To be honest, we’re pretty bummed that the fact that we’re already traveling prevents us from going. Please go and tell us about it so that we can live vicariously through YOU (seriously, it’s the least you could do). 🙂

If that wasn’t enough to convince you, read on…

If you’ve followed this blog at all in the past, then you know a little bit about our story–we were management consultants with intense jobs for a long time, now we’re hanging out in South America applying our high-intensity, driven personalities to enjoying life rather than making PowerPoint slides. We won’t be doing this forever, and we wouldn’t want to. Even if we had the finances to enable doing it forever (which we most decidedly do not), we’d eventually need to go back to doing something that felt like it gave us a purpose. Going on a long-term trip like this doesn’t mean abandoning your career or even your current job, it just means taking a break. That’s why we like the term “Career Break”, which we keep coming across more and more during our adventure.

The more we reflect on our experience and the more we learn about what others get out of taking Career Breaks (whether they last 2 months or 12), the more enthusiastic we are about suggesting them to others–everyone really. I can’t think of anyone that wouldn’t benefit from taking a step back for a little while. It brings perspective. It allows you to see more clearly what it is that you want. It may lead to you returning to your previous job/career with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose, or it may lead you to new epiphanies about who you are and what you really want to be doing. Regardless of where it leads you, by the end you’ll know yourself better, be more excited about life and probably have some great photos and crazy stories that you can use to make your friends jealous.

If you read our recent post on career option-value and identified with anything in it, you’ll agree that one of the very best ways to remove the stress from your life is to embrace and enjoy failure rather than running from it. There is no better way to feel like a failure on a daily basis than to immerse yourself in a foreign culture–trust me, it’s pretty fascinating to go from being a senior client advisor to only having the ability to communicate at the level of a 5th grader! Not only will you be humbled on a daily basis, but you’ll be away from the constant influence of your friends and colleagues who, in an attempt to be supportive, tend to reinforce the idea that you should stay on the path you’re on. They may be right, but it’s more important what you think–and it’s almost impossible to get real perspective without getting away from it all every so often. Long-term travel is the best way I know to do it.

Still not convinced? We’ve got reinforcements…

I could go on and on (and you’ve seen me do it!), but instead I’d like to turn it over to one of the founders of Meet, Plan, Go! who also happens to be the host of the event in San Francisco to tell you more. Her name is Tara Russell and she is someone you should get to know. Here’s a quick snippet of her bio from the Meet, Plan, Go website:

TARA RUSSELL is a “Life Sabbatical & Long-term Travel Coach” – a Certified Life and Career Coach with a passion for working with clients who dream of taking time off to travel, live, work, study or volunteer abroad. As the Founder and President of Three Month Visa Coaching and Consulting, her mission is to empower her clients to change their lives (and ultimately the world at large), through meaningful international travel experiences.

Let’s talk about this Meet, Plan Go! thing…

Tara, tell us more about the origins of Meet, Plan, Go!… How did it get started and why does it exist?

The seed for Meet, Plan, Go! was planted back in January of 2010 when Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott who founded Briefcase to Backpack were in town and we met up for coffee. We realized that there were so many cool ways that we might work together that what was meant to be a half-hour meeting turned into a 5-hour brainstorming session! Our goal working together has been to take this conversation about Americans and career breaks and start building some critical mass behind it – get it out from the underground and take it national. One thing that came up was the success of a group I have been running for a few years now in SF – SF Travel Book Club and Lectures Series – and we started to wonder what it would look like if we could take the strength of that in-person group dynamic and expand it nationwide by doing a day of coordinated events across the US. From there, Michaela and Sherry were able to leverage the strength of their online network to recruit hosts and panelists from across the US and that’s how Meet, Plan, Go! came to be!

Why do you think that taking a Career Break and traveling is beneficial for people?

I would go beyond even saying “beneficial” – I think career breaks are absolutely essential for people…perhaps now more so than ever. Consider that our office desks are no longer stationary items that we can leave behind after 5pm…with the introduction of cell phones and PDAs, many of us are forever wired and always accessible from the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night. In an age when we are hearing more and more about work /life balance, it seems increasingly difficult to truly “unplug.”

Career breaks and travel give us that opportunity to unplug…to really take a step back, get perspective and regain balance in a way that we just can’t do while we are caught up in the pace of our hectic 9-5. (Or – let’s be honest – given the crazy hours many of us work, our 5-9.)

Travel gives us fresh and new perspectives, expands our horizons, strengthens our sense of adventure, pushes us to challenge ourselves, feeds an appreciation of our own strengths and abilities and provides us with space and time to examine who we are and what we truly want out of life. I’m passionate about helping my clients find that and taking that message national is what MPG is all about!

Who is this event for?

Well, it’s pretty simple, really. Here’s a quick and easy exercise to help readers determine if MPG is right for them…

Close your eyes and imagine taking time for yourself to do exactly what you have always wanted. Do you see:
* Surfing lessons in Costa Rica?

* Taking classes at a local university?

* Hiking the Himalayan Annapurna Circuit in Nepal?

* Renovating your house into the home you dream of?

* Volunteering at an orphanage in Brazil?

* Japanese lessons in Kyoto?

If you came up with anything other than “I’d like to be right here where I am…in my beige cubicle.”, then Meet, Plan, Go! is definitely for you.

This event is for anyone who has ever had a travel dream and wondered how to make it a reality. Anyone who has ever thought “Oh, I would so love to do something like that, but… Anyone who is currently reading this from their tiny little corner of cubicleland and thinking “Man, I wish I was lounging on the beach in Fiji right now.”

You get the picture…if you close your eyes and dream of being somewhere other than where you are, this is the event for you.

What exactly will happen at the event?

We have put together a stellar panel of travel experts – travel writers, photographers, podcasters and bloggers as well as me wearing the hat of Travel Coach. We will be presenting on the big Whys and Hows of career breaks and long-term travel and helping participants get an idea of resources that they turn to when they can start planning and go for support as they move forward.

What do you expect that people will get out of it? Why is it worth their time?

I would say this really breaks down into the “big three” of what you need to make your plans for a career break a success – inspiration, resources, and community. People who attend will be inspired by a panel of speakers / travel industry experts, they will be connected with some of the resources they need to start making their travel dreams a reality and they will be surrounded by a dynamic, supportive community of people who “get it”. Each element of that formula is really key for us.

Ok, let’s talk about the San Francisco event for a minute…

What are the logistics (e.g., when, where, how long, how do people sign up, etc.)?

The SF event is being held on Tuesday, September 14th from 7-9pm at NextSpace in downtown San Francisco. The event is free but participants do need to reserve their space and print and bring their ticket with them. RSVPs can be made at: http://meetplangosanfrancisco.eventbrite.com

Switching gears a bit, let’s talk about you…

How and why did you personally get involved in this?

When I met Sherry and Michaela back in January, there was such a cool synergy there when we combined our skill sets. Given their professional and personal backgrounds and their experience running Briefcase to Backpack and also blogs of their own, they are incredibly savvy about the internet, blogging, online networks and marketing, etc. What I brought to the table was years of experience running in-person travel-related events and also working with one-on-one coaching clients as they prepared for career breaks of their own. From that, (coupled with my own experiences planning and realizing a year-long career break of my own,) I had a keen understanding of the self-imposed limitations and perceived obstacles that often deter people from taking the sabbaticals that they really want. When we put our heads together, in short, I saw the opportunity to work with really cool people on a project I was extremely passionate about – how could I say no?

What do you do with your time when you’re not working on Meet, Plan, Go?

I am thrilled that I get to spend a great deal of my time working with one-on-one travel coaching clients, helping them work through the logistical and emotional preparations that go into making a career break possible. In addition, I’ve been able to do quite a bit of speaking in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond on topics revolving around career breaks, life sabbaticals and long-term travel. Loving my work makes it something I am pleased to dedicate a lot of time to.

When I’m not coaching, reading travel books or arranging events for SF Travel Lit & Lectures or working on MPG, I do my best to get out in this gorgeous city with friends to enjoy all the great sights, music, food and museums that SF has to offer. I also dedicate as much time as possible to my passion for photography and some of my work can be seen at www.greentaraphoto.com

And (of course,) whenever I can, I travel!

A few things to summarize…

This event sounds awesome. It is unbelievably inspiring to me/us that a few people got in a room together and conceived a plan to put something like this together for the sole purpose of inspiring others to get out there and pursue their travel-related passions and that now, in a few weeks, it’s going to happen simultaneously in thirteen cities. We are at the same time impressed by the ambition and execution of the coordinators, inspired by the concept and, perhaps more than anything, jealous that you get to go and we don’t. Don’t miss it-we’ll be angry with you.

Check out the Meet, Plan, Go! website for more info

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

Posted on August 9, 2010 by ryan

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..

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.

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…

Everyone out enjoying this beautiful winter day

Also, there were some very cool sand sculptures.

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:

We woke up in the morning ready to go skiing.
We determined that it was snowing too hard to go skiing
Rather than driving an hour east for skiing, we drove an hour west to the coast
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).

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…

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.

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.

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 – 1.5 hour drive from city
Amazing powder skiing, wide-open runs, not crowded, warm
Incredible glacier views
Incredible city views
Incredible sunset
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).

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.

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).

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…

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 - Like guachos, but Chilean

Once again, let’s recap:

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

Kayak.com does more than you might think

Posted on August 2, 2010 by ryan

You may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks we added a Kayak.com flight search box to our sidebar (over on the right). You may have wondered why. “Why would they do this?” you might have said to yourself. You may be saying it to yourself even now. Fear not, I am here to answer that question for you.

We decided to become affiliate advertisers for Kayak.com for 3 reasons:

1) Travel is awesome. Everyone should do it more often.

2) Kayak.com is one of the very best tools out there for finding ways to travel cheaply (if anyone out there doesn’t already know about Kayak.com, it compares fares against virtually every airline and aggregator (e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and helps you find the very cheapest/fastest/best way to travel.

3) We don’t want to have to get real jobs anytime soon. Someday we’re hoping to make some money off of this blog, and if you access Kayak.com through us, we will! Wouldn’t that be great? To be sure, we won’t make much money, but empanadas are cheap (another reason why everyone should travel).

But wait, there’s more!!

I only recently learned about this feature and it blew my mind. It may blow your mind too. You should sit down.

Have you ever been sitting around thinking to yourself:

“I really need a vacation… I wonder where I should go?”

“I finally have a free weekend, maybe I can plan a trip!”

“I only have $300 to spend, I wonder if there is anywhere I could go for that much…”

Kayak.com can answer these questions very quickly for you. Check out this link: Kayak: Where can I go from San Francisco in Fall of 2010 for under $1200?

This feature allows you to tell it your origin city, your price range and your time of the year and it will tell you on average what it would cost you to go anywhere in the world within that price range at that time of year. If you want to, you can even include activities (e.g.,where can I go skiing from Chicago in Jan for <$500). Instead of skiing, you could also tell it beach or a temperature range or a few other things. Seriously, this is cool.

In my opinion, this feature is under-marketed… I had never heard of it before I randomly stumbled upon it. It’s extremely useful for preliminary trip planning to spur ideas when you know you have some time off at some point, but aren’t sure where to go AND also very useful for last minute travel when you suddenly have a few days and just want to get away.

Let’s review what we’ve learned

1) Kayak.com is awesome

2) Kayak.com is even awesomer than you may have thought

3) You don’t want Ryan and Jen to have to get jobs; you want them to eat more empanadas. To enable this goal, when planning or booking travel you should consider starting with the Kayak.com flight search box here on Consulting Rehab.

Word?

Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

Posted on July 30, 2010 by ryan

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…

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:

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.

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

A female expat’s experience and perspective on cafe con piernas: http://eatwineblog.com/2010/03/26/coffee-with-legs-santiago-style/
Another blog with some interesting thoughts on the sexism of it as well as some conversations with an owner and a bit on the economics: http://www.chipsites.com/chile-travel/fun-activities-cafe-con-piernas.html
A food blog’s perspective: http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/snapshots-from-chile-cafe-con-piernas.html
Additional perspective from the Travel Tart: http://www.thetraveltart.com/starbucks-coffee/

Where to eat in Buenos Aires: A few of our favorite BA restaurants

Posted on July 28, 2010 by jen

Now that we’re settled into Santiago, it’s time for some reflection on our favorite places to eat in Buenos Aires. While we may have mentioned from time to time that the food choices in Buenos Aires can be a bit repetitive (cycling through the 5 major food groups), there are definitely some amazing places to eat in the city. In addition to the things listed in Time Out and on Trip Advisor, we’ve been lucky enough to find a few lesser known restaurants that we think are awesome, and you just happen to be lucky enough that we’re willing to share them with you!

Note: We’ve indicated the price we usually pay for the two of us, typically including wine (we like wine) and either an appetizer or dessert; we’ve noted exceptions. Take these as rough estimates, not absolutes.

El Estrebe: If you’ve followed our blog, you know that we LOVE El Estrebe. We found it around the corner from our apt. in Recoleta and noticed that it was always packed (after 9pm anyway – don’t dare try to go to dinner before then in Argentina). They also have a couple of fabulous wines for around AR35-40 (that’s US$10) by bodega Viñas de Narvaez, on the first page of the wine menu (our faves are the malbec and the syrah). Read our review here and our photo essay here, but suffice to say that this is probably the one restaurant we’ll miss the most when (or if) we go back to the US.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR 200 – we usually share a steak since they’re massive (see below) but have 2 appetizers, dessert and a bottle of wine
- Best for: Dinner
  Incredible bife de lomo from El Estrebe
Don Julio: Another great parrilla, this one located in Palermo. It’s a classic, and classy, kind of place – great service, great wine list, fabulous meats. Another parrilla in the neighborhood is really popular with tourists (La Cabrera) but we think this is much better. Try the Flecha de los Andes malbec – awesome.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR250-300 (the above-mentioned wine is ~AR100, bumping our total up a bit)
- Best for: Dinner
  Us with our favorite bottle of wine at Don Julio (yes, we know we look like we've had too much)- sometimes they'll let you sign it and they'll put it up on the wall
Dada: This one is a bistro located in centro, near Florida street. The space is a little funky and casual with only about 10 tables, plus a bar. They have amazing beef dishes (the ojo de bife is our favorite – amazingly flavorful – they actually appear to use seasoning it which doesn’t happen much in Buenos Aires and may be considered cheating…) but also a bunch of other good stuff, including a langostine risotto. Smaller menu than most places, which we’ve found to mean that they do all of it well, rather than much of it poorly. Call ahead for reservation, especially if you’re going on the weekend.
- Neighborhood: Microcentro
- Cuisine: French bistro
- Price: AR250
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Funky, low-key place with amazing food!
Pizza Piola: Trendy environment, often playing techno or other clubbish music, and really good thin crust pizza – not only the typical Buenos Aires pizzas, but more creative modern cuisine style as well (think California Pizza Kitchen, but better). Two of our favorites are the Carbonara and the Avandaro. Best to get a reservation Thurs/Fri/Sat.
- Neighborhood: Barrio Norte
- Cuisine: Pizza
- Price: ~AR120 (~AR50 for a large pizza, AR20-30 for a small)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Thin crust, proscutto, brie and arugula - yes!!!
Pizza y Espuma: If you want a good set lunch with pasta or a simple pizza, this is a good bet. We stumbled across this place on our walk home from Spanish school – they have a couple of locations, including Palermo Viejo and Recoleta. They also have pretty much the only white wine in all of Argentina that we really like, and it’s their house wine – San Felipe. It comes in a funny short, fat bottle, and you can sometimes find it in the grocery store too.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta, Palermo Viejo, others
- Cuisine: Pizza and pasta
- Price: AR80-100 (lunch price; variance based on whether we order wine or not – we highly recommend a bottle of wine for lunch)
- Best for: Lunch (good fixed menu options)
  Location in Palermo Viejo - 2 levels, with plenty of TVs for football (and we think a rooftop deck too)
Cumana: This is a Buenos Aires institution that draws tons of locals and tourists alike. They’re famous for their empanadas and cazuelas (stews/soups), and also happens to be the site of my unfortunate run-in with mondongo. As such, we love their empanadas and some of their stews, but just be careful what you order. There’s often a line out the door for this place during the lunch rush or dinnertime, but we’ve had better luck with a late lunch, around 2ish.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Traditional Argentine
- Price: AR100 or less
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in
La Morada: Not exactly the greatest ambiance, but this is our go-to empanada delivery place. They have carne suave as well as carne picante (thank god for a little spice, finally!!), as well as some awesome caprese empanadas (we think of these as appetizer empanadas).
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Empanadas
- Price: ~AR50 for a dozen (empanadas only, no drinks–usually covers us for 2 dinners)
- Best for: Delivery (dinner)
  After much searching, our favorite empanada place in our neighborhood
Miranda: We tried this place for lunch soon after arriving in Buenos Aires on the recommendation of a friend (see our full review here) – good decision! Every time we’ve gone, this place has been packed with businessmen and trendy Palermo Hollywood-goers (you know, the ones who leave their sunglasses on indoors). The set lunch options here include an appetizer (try the chorizo or polenta), a main dish (we especially like the lomo sandwich and chicken kebab with tower of grilled vegetables) and drinks (includes house wine- yay!!). That’s a LOT of really good food for not that much. We’re guessing dinner’s pretty good too, but we’ve never been since the lunch option is such a good deal.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Hollywood
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR90 (lunch with wine)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Only go here if you're hungry and you like meat
La Fabrica del Taco: Having come from California, we’re used to Mexican food being plentiful and cheap, and thus ate it around once a week before we came to South America. Turns out, Mexican is hard to come by here, but this place makes some awesome (and pretty authentic) tacos, as well as good guac and pico de gallo (try saying that with a Buenos Aires accent and not laughing). Margaritas are expensive (like most mixed drinks in Argentina), so we usually stick with beer or sodas here. When we get that craving for good Mexican and food with a little heat, this is where we go. Just be prepared for the kind of creepy collection of Mexican wrestling masks covering the walls . . .
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Mexican
- Price: ~AR120 (AR12-15/taco, 1-2 should fill you up)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Just wait until you get inside . . .
Cluny: This is our fancy place where we go when we want to pretend like we can still afford the dinners we used to buy when we had paychecks. It’s a beautiful, elegant space with fabulous service – we’ve been lucky enough to have the same server, Marcelo (and ironically, the same table) every time we’ve been. It’s been described as “modern Argentine” as well as French, but we just call it delicious. After trying a number of different things on the menu, our absolute favorite is the mushroom risotto topped with a incredibly flavorful hunk of lamb – best we’ve had anywhere, not just in Argentina. Extensive (and somewhat expensive) wine list. Great for a special evening out.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: French/Argentine
- Price: ~AR300 (includes ~AR100 bottle of wine)
- Best for: Dinner
  You can sit on the couches, or they have regular tables and a loft upstairs
La Salamandra: This is one of our favorite cafes, located in Palermo Soho. The company is actually a producer of high-end dulce de leche that they sell in their cafe as well as in grocery stores throughout the country – it’s good. They also make their own fresh mozzarella and use it in lots of their dishes – stuff like grilled vegetable salad, foccacia sandwiches and fresh quiches, definitely not your standard Argentine fare. And if you order a coffee, they serve it with a ceramic spoon full of their dulce de leche!!
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Cafe, sandwiches, salads
- Price: AR80 (no alcohol)
- Best for: Brunch, lunch
  Be sure to order a coffee after lunch so you can try their fabulous dulce de leche
Lo de Mateo: This is another neighborhood parrilla that we stumbled across one afternoon while wandering around Recoleta. We’ve been for both lunch and dinner, pasta and carne, and our favorite is the pasta lunch menu. They have an awesome scarparo sauce – a red sauce with various types of onions, a touch of cream and then a bit of pesto in the middle – great with their stuffed pastas. And the lunch menu includes dessert – their flan is my favorite.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta/Palermo Viejo (it’s right on the line)
- Cuisine: Pasta and parrilla
- Price: AR80 (lunch, no alcohol)
Best for: Lunch, dinner
Nothing too fancy, just really good pastas and flan!!

Any other favorites out there??