Day 10: Reminiscing about Brazil
The flight itself was excellent - LATAM with a very good product. The food was served a bit slow, but also I had the bad luck to be in the last row of business class after a maintenance issue was there on my original seat, so that contributed to the length of the lunch service. The starter of smoked picanha and cheese was excellent, as was their bread. The main of tenderloin, fried cheese, farofa and zucchini was interesting in that the beef was overcooked (usually a standard for airplane beef) but everything else in the dish was great, as was the Malbec. Before I knew it, after a nice sleep in their lie flat, we were touching down in gorgeous, sunny, Santiago.
I'll talk about my evening in Santiago in a minute, but first some lasting thoughts on Brazil (of which I'll probably have many more later on):
= It is honestly my fault that it took me so long to visit. I don't know what made me put so many other places higher on my priority list than Brazil, even within South America. Looking back, I could've easily done the trip I'm doing now in 2022/23/24 when I went to Lima / Buenos Aires / Santiago. It shouldn't be a surprise that the world's 5th largest country both by population and size would have its own wonderful, unique culture, even within the context of South America
= It's staggering how helpless I feel with the Portugeuse language, especially the Brazilianized version of it (which from an accent and pronunciation, I love). There's a few key words I know and could say well enough to get by, but so often I had to quickly shift to English, or actually more frequently, shift to Spanish.
= The food is a lot better than I was expecting. Obviously, not shocked that the tasting menu stuff was great, and I knew the steak would be excellent (I preferred it here to Argentina, to be hones), but even their more street food and normal food proved much better than I was expecting - the things you can do with a bolinho I guess!
= I've never been to a place where the average person was just so cool, and to some degree as well friendly. There's just a very positive vibe about Brazil. Granted, the country does go through its economical challenges, so some of it may be putting on a good face, but it still is just a very positive place.
= I never really felt unsafe. Granted, I didn't go for long walks at night, and any time I did walk at night it was in heavily trafficked places where other people did as well. But still, I never felt unsafe, and I hope no one is dissuaded from visiting Brazil due to safety concerns.
Anyway, back to Santiago - which I started my trip by realizing quite a few of the places I was hoping to revisit are closed. First was the Patio Bellavista version of Bar SpOH (craft beer). The brewery still exists and has other taprooms, but their more far afield. So instead, I did check out a new craft brewery called Intrinsical which probably was slightly worse but still quite good. I'll get to the other closures when it makes sense.
Before Intrinsical, I did head to the Plaza Moderna, befit with its comically large, glowing in the wind Chile flag, and the always nice underground Cultural Center, which is great for some nice curious and more to it nice exhibits. The main one this time was particularly great - a giant exhibition of the art and life of Jose Venturelli, a famed Chilean artist who spent time in his life also living in China, Cuba and Switzerland. The last one was particularly interesting, as it was him living in exile after the Pinochet coup, and most of his artwork from that period was very, very dark and real.
After a quick fresh up at the AirBNB - a stunning, artsy loft in the heart of Bellavista, I hit up 99 Restaurante for dinner. What's great about teh place is how focused they are in their approach, picking a specific region of Chile and exploring the produce, meat, traditions and such of that region. This phase is the Aconcagua Valley, a region to the north of Santiago. The food was sublime - the main dish featured horse meat which I can confidently say was cooked as well and was as tasty as any beef I've had.
What's even better about 99 Restaurante is it is housed in the lovely CV Galeria in Vicatura (itself a very upscale Santiago neighborhood) and right outside it sits Prima Bar, one of the better cocktail spots in Santiago. Their rating on Google is quite average for a spot this reputed (4.0), but if you go through nearly all the negative reviews are about the food - so I guess don't go there for dinner. Do what I did and go there for driniks, which were excellent, from a coffee-infused negroni, to an old fashioned with a melon infusion, to so much else.
For the end of night adventures I headed back to Bellavista (the reason msotly I pick an AirBNB there) and this gets to the second sad closure. This really is more of just awful timing. My favorite EDM club in Santiago is Espacio 93, but they are taking this weekend off. So yeah, taht was a bummer. Less of a bummer was spending time in La Feria, which was music closer to my style than last year where it was more latin, and Club Ambar, which is interesting. The main room there is not my type (too Istanbul or Bangkok, if you will) but they have two side rooms, one playing house and one underground playing techno, and those two were excellent. Both spots are two blocks from each other so I could ping pong back and forth for a couple hours and dance away the end of a great first night in Santiago.
