Category: Startup Chile

My Favorite Places in Santiago

I realized I’ve written travelogues about my trips all over the rest of the world, but not where I’ve been living for the last four months.  Here’s a list of some of my favorite places, including restaurants, bars and random places to hang out.

Restaurants

Santiago has some great restaurants, but you have to search to find them.  Google doesn’t help (all the sites are flash, so google doesn’t read the content) and there’s no Yelp here.  Here’s what I’ve uncovered in my time here:

Pad Thai – Manuel Montt.  Great Thai restaurant with a good selection of beer and authentic Thai dishes.  Their outdoor courtyard in the back is a great place for a meal.  They let you order the dishes from 1-5 on the spicy scale and I got a 3.  The waiter warned me that it was going to be super spicy and tried to get me to go down one level, but in the end I wished I had gotten a 4.  Great food.

Cuidad Vieja – Bellavista.  Amazing, interesting sandwiches and not too expensive.  Lots of beer on tap and in bottles.  Plus they have this smoked, spicy red sauce instead of ketchup made in Valdivia that in unreal.

Tiramisu – Las Condes/El Golf.  Great thin crust pizza.  A little on the expensive side, but a cool atmosphere and top notch food.  It’s always packed, no matter when you go.

Fajita Express – Providencia/Pedro de Valdivia.  For $5 I can get a big burrito and a coke.  My goto cheap restaurant.

Machu Pichu – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  Jesse and I were walking around near our hostel when we first came to Santiago and ate here our first night, as it was the first restaurant we walked by.  We’ve been back a bunch of times.  Every dish on the menu is good, but the ceviche mixto is amazing.  It comes with a candied sweet potato, which is great.

El Naturista – Centro.  Vegetarian restaurant with two locations close to my office.  I love their pebre, which goes really well with all of their dishes.  My favorite is huevos rancheros with tons of pebre.

La Piojera – Centro.  I hesitate to include La Piojera, since I’ve only gone once, but it’s a great time.  They have their famous terremotos, which are made of white wine, pineapple sorbet and some light liquor.  They are good, but I loved the meat and the hot sauce at La Piojera.  And it was cheap.

Barandiaran – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  A little more expensive than Machu Pichu, but really good.  They have a swimming pool and a beautiful terrace in their courtyard.  They do a little more upscale peruvian.

El Huerto – Providencia/Orrego Luco.  Vegetarian.  The best salads in Santiago, hands down.  Their homemade wholewheat bread and their very vegetabley pebre are great.

Domino – Everywhere.  My other goto fast food restaurant.  It’s how fast food should be.  Good ingredients, lots of choices, not expensive.  They have surprisingly good salads as well.  Underrated: get the vegetarian sandwich (avocado, tomato, cheese) with a “pila” of eggs.  It’s about $4 and really good.

Kintaro – Bellas Artes.  There are a ton of sushi restaurants in Santiago, but this one has the fewest amount of rolls with cream cheese.  If you go with a big group, they have a “sushi/sashimi boat” that comes with about 100 pieces for about $45.  It’s a good place to go before going out.  You can buy a bottle of pisco for $12, which is $2 more than in the liquor store.  Every Santiago sushi spot has rolls made of avocado, which are my new favorite.  I’m going to miss those back in the US.

Fuente Alemanda – Pedro de Valdivia and Plaza Italia. The best lomitos in Santiago.  They come with lettuce, tomato, sauerkraut, avocado, mayo and I always add tons of spicy mustard.  The bread makes the sandwich.  They are huge though and you can split them between 2 people.  Kind of touristy, but worth it.

The one in the background had less mayo…

El Chaguito – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  Ok, so not a restaurant, but Jesse and I go here 2-3x per week to buy all of our fruits and veggies.  It’s 50% off from the supermarket and waaay better quality.  We can get a huge amount of fresh produce for about $10.  They get their fresh deliveries on Mondays.

A $5 produce run. Liquor not included.

Bars

Orego Luco – Providencia.  This is a small street just of Av. Providencia near Pedro de Valdivia that has about 8 bars with outdoor tables.  It’s full every night, except Sundays.  Almost every bar has 2×1 drinks until 12am.

Any outdoor bar on Pio Nono – Bellavista.  This area is sort of like a seedy version of the terrace in Madison.  There are tons of bars with plastic red tables and chairs.  You can get a litre of beer for $2-3 and hang out with friends.  You’ll see all sorts of characters walking by, but be wary of anyone who starts randomly talking to you in English right away.  They are likely shady characters.

Most of the bars on Manuel Montt, just south of Av. Providencia.  There are tons of bars and restaurants on Manuel Montt that compete for your business.  The outdoor ones have the best settings, but the smaller ones have the best drink deals.

El Kika – Providencia/Pedro de Valdivia.  Ok, so this is less than a 2 minute walk from my apartment, but it’s got good beer, cheap food and lots of outdoor seating.  One of my friends asked me “how can you possibly live there, I’d be at elkika everyday!”

Parks

Cerro San Cristobal – Cerro San Cristobal dominates the northern skyline of the city.  It’s a really nice walk up the hill and once you get to the top you get a great view of the city and the Andes to the east.  There’s also an elevator type thing if you’re too lazy to walk.  Entrance is at the end of pio nono, but I like to walk down Pedro de Valdivia to the other entrance and walk up from there.

Cerro Santa Lucia – A large hill in the middle of Santiago with a cool old castle/look out point on the top.  Great views of the city and shorter walk up than Cerro San Cristobal.

Cerro Santa Lucia

Parque Metropolitano – Connected to Cerro San Cristobal, I love to walk up Pedro de Valdivia to the foot of Parque Metropolitano and sit in the shade.  It’s a great place to get away from the noise of the city and get some work done.  It’s also a great place for a bbq during the weekend.

Mercado Central – Very touristy, but if you avoid the guys trying to get you to eat at their restaurants, they have an amazing selection of fresh seafood for super cheap.

Seafood! Check out hose prices!

Parque Bustamante – This park runs for a few miles from the Salvador metro stop all the way down town, along the river.  I love walking though the park on my way to or from work.

Parque Bustamante, near Salvador metro

 

Plaza de Armas – The Santiago Cathedral looks like it was transplanted right out of Europe.  Really cool architecture.

Plaza de Armas. Notice the police/protesters for the Obama visit.

My rooftop – I love reading, working and hanging out on my rooftop and those of my friends.  What a great feature for an apartment complex!

I have a little more than a month left in Santiago, so if I’m missing one of your favorite places, tell me!  I’ll be sure to check it out before I go.

Looking for more high quality information about Chile? Check out my book Chile: The Expat’s Guide:

chile expat guide cover

South By Southwest Chile Technology Summit

I will be moderating a panel at South By Southwest called the Chile Technology Summit on March 16th at 1230 at the Austin Hilton, ballroom F.  Twitter hashtag #chiletech.

The World Technology Summit is a new addition for SXSWi and features panel discussions from emerging technology hubs around the world including Brazil, England, South Africa, Singapore, France, India, China and more.  The goal is to share what it’s like to do business, work and live in these countries.  We’ll answer questions like:

  • How has the technology scene changed in your country over the last five years?
  • What is hottest new media technology trend in your country?
  • How is social media developing / evolving in your country?
  • What is the atmosphere / environment like for new media entrepreneurs?
  • What kind of government support is there for the new media industry in your country?
  • What is the level of education in your country? Is there enough talent for high-tech work?
  • What are the best resources / blogs / websites for people to learn more about new media in your country?

The panelists joining me at the Chile Technology Summit are Juan Pablo Tapia, Leonardo Maldonado and David Basulto.  Each panelist is a leader in his field.

Juan Pablo Tapia

Juan Pablo is the cofounder of Bowl, one of Chile’s leading social media agencies with clients like Ford, LG and others.  He is an experienced entrepreneur and loves technology and social media and also lectures at the Universidad de Desarollo. Juan Pablo will share his perspective on Chile’s developing social media and technology business scene.

Leonardo Maldonado

Leonardo is a serial entrepreneur involved in numerous projects in Chile, including Gulliver, InsumoChina, Gestion y Liderazgo, and Blue Company, a platform for creating personal online communities.  Leonardo is also involved in creating technology entrepreneurship and business opportunities for Region Fertil, a state in Northern Chile that includes the city of Antofagasta.  He will share his insights about creating businesses in Chile and what he sees as some of the successes as well as challenges still facing Chile’s rise as a technology economy.

David Basulto

David is the cofounder of Plataforma Arquitectura and Archdaily, the world’s largest and most trafficked architecture website in the world.  David graduated from Universidad Catolica’s architecutre program and decided to start an architecture blog with one of his friends.  After a few years of hard work, David and team turned Archdaily into the world’s most important architecture website.  David will share his perspective on what it’s like to build a world class business in Chile, along with the changes he’s seen in the Chilean startup community since he started his business in 2005.

 

I’m extremely excited to have the opportunity to share my experience living and working in Chile, as well as help Juan Pablo, Leonardo and David share some of their stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship and high technology in Chile.  I’m also excited to showcase Chile as one of the best places in the world to start a high tech startup.  If you’re attending sxsw, stop on by our panel!

Got questions?  Want to know more about Chile?  Put questions or topics you’d like us to talk about in the comments and we’ll do our best to fit them in.

Travelogue: Uyuni, Bolivia

After San Pedro, I took four days to explore southwestern Bolivia.  Bolivia is the poorest country in all of Latin America and it shows.  I didn’t see a single paved road, even the roads in Uyuni that connect the city of 20,000 with both of the two capitals.  Although it’s very poor, it seemed very safe.  The overwhelmingly indigenous population seemed laid back and welcoming.  The Bolivian president Evo Morales claims to be the first indigenous president of a South American country and his picture was everywhere.

Bolivia is poor in large part to losing a huge swathe of land, including its access to the sea, to Chile in a war in the 1880s.  They also lost huge mineral deposits in the mineral rich northern part of what is now Chile.  There is still huge animosity between Chile, Bolivia and Peru, much of it stemming from this war in the 1880s.

Our four day trek took us through amazing terrain, culminating in the salar de uyuni, which is the worlds largest salt flat.  I went with five people from the San Pedro trip and  we booked our trip in city center a few days before we wanted to leave.  Our package cost $180 and included all transportation, three nights accommodation, four days of meals and a tour guide.  US Citizens have to pay $140 to enter most South American countries because we slapped a fee on South American citizens after 9/11 (really dumb), but I got away with only paying a portion of the fee at the tiny border crossing with some well placed…words.

We entered Bolivia and were immediately in the Eduardo Avaroa national park, a joint venture between the Bolivia government and the European Union.  We drove past laguna blanca, a perfectly clear lake that reflects the sky.  It was a beautiful and a great start to the trip.  We drove across bumpy dirt roads, sometimes covered with water from the melting snow on the mountains.  Our guide told us he had never seen snow on the mountains in February in his three years of guiding, so again, we were incredibly lucky.  The mountains and stark landscape were stunning.

Next, we got to a hot springs at the foot of a mountain lake.  We were at 4800m, which meant that there was only about 44% as much oxygen compared to sea level.  It made breathing difficult and we all got light headed after 20 minutes in teh hot springs.  the lake was full of colors and we could see lightning over the tops of mountains far in the distance.

After another few hour drive, we got to laguna colorada, which has blood red water.  We ate homemade soup and fresh veggies for lunch, prepared by our guide.  After lunch, we took a walk to an overlook point and watched the flamingos and the scenery.  It was incredibly windy and I was glad that I bought a wool sweater the day before.

My head hurt from the altitude, so I tried chewing some coca leaves, which is supposed to relieve your headache.  You mash 6-10 leaves in between your lip and your gum and let it sit there.  You can add bicarbonate and it releases more of the drug.  30 minutes later, I felt a little like I had ADD, but my headache was gone.  We also tried coca tea, which sort of tasted like seaweed in sushi restaurants.  Both clearly helped.

We spent the night at the hostel overlooking laguna colorada.  The night sky was absolutely stunning, even better than San Pedro.  The stars twinkled and I think I could see more stars that I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world.  The combination of the altitude and lack of light pollution showed how truly small we are.  A shooting star topped it off and told me it was time to go to bed.

The hostel was cold, but my sleeping bag kept me war.  We had been warned not to drink alcohol or eat meat, but I had a very small glass of wine, maybe 2 oz, with dinner and woke up with a splitting headache.  The thin air makes alcohol really hard on your body.  The bathroom was really bad, so I just went outside when I had to go.

The next morning, we drove across the bolivian altiplano, stopping at strange, beautiful scenery every few minutes.  We ate a snack at a string of lagoons that reflected the mountains perfectly and continued past landmarks that looked like Dali paintings.   That afternoon we dined on llama, eggs, veggie soup in a town of 150 in the middle of nowhere.  The food was fantastic, balanced and healthy.  The eggs were from chickens running around the parking lot outside and tasted different than the factory eggs we get in the States.

We ended the day in Uyuni, a town of 20,000 near the Salar.  We ate dinner in a massive thunder storm.  I didn’t have a raincoat, so I used a trash bag, which an 8 year old Chilean on the trip thought was hilarious.  I told him it was the new fashion, straight from Santiago, and he couldn’t stop laughing.  The hotel was nice, with flushing toilets and a shower.  We had time to check out the town, which is bustling with energy.  It had rained, so there was water in some parts of the dirt roads.

Kids were having tons of fun with squirt guns and water balloons, throwing them at their friends (and random people) of the opposite sex.  I got crushed twice by 6-10 year old girls yelling “get the gringo” as they were laughing and playing.  I was really tempted to buy a squirt gun and join the battles, but we didn’t have time.

We went to bed early sot hat we could get to the salar the next day.  We first stopped at a cemetery for trains, which has a bunch of 80-100 year old trains that used to run between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.  They were cool looking and full of history and our guide told us there are plans to build a proper museum.  After a bit, we finally got to the salar.

The salar is a huge salt flat that sometimes is covered by 1-3 inches of water.  We were extremely lucky to visit while it was flooded.  It was unbelievable.  Like nothing I’ve ever seen.  It went on for miles, nothingness, like a mirror.  I could see the curve of the earth.  You loose all perspective and it looks like people are taking their next step off the edge of the world.  You can also take funny photos.  The weather was hot, the water warm, the salt crystals were sharp on my feet.  We ate llama chops for lunch while sitting on top of our jeep.  It was truly beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  It was the highlight of the trip.

We started to drive back and things got a little sketchy.  Our tour company didn’t have any pickups at the border scheduled for the next day, so they sold us to a different tour company.  They split up our group of 6 in two two groups of three, mostly so they could fit extra paying passengers into the jeeps.  They put us in separate hostels, without telling us they would and then were very light on details about what was happening with our friends.  It was sketchy, but everything was completely fine and would have been fixed with a 5 minute walk+helpful two sentences from our guides.

The next morning we drove back to the Chilean border and back into San Pedro.  It was an amazing trip that included things I’ve never seen before.  It gave me time to recharge and think about what really matters in life.  No internet, TV and other modern conveniences.  It was great.

Here’s a few tips for those who would like to go in the future:

  1. Get a good guide.   If coming from Chile, you buy your tickets in San Pedro.  We used Colque Tours and I was happy about it.
  2. Bring a sleeping bag.  The hostels can be frigid at night.  I’m glad I brought mine.
  3. Bring lots of layers.  It goes from cold in the morning to hot in the afternoon.  My $12 wool sweater was a great purchase.
  4. Bring at least 5L of bottled water per person.  We brought 7L/person and finished it all in five days.
  5. Bring toilet paper.  The bathrooms are pretty bad in most of the hostels and usually don’t have any.  I went outside and so did most of the girls.
  6. Bring snacks like chocolate, nuts and cookies for quick energy on the road.  The altitude and wind takes it out of you.
  7. Chew coca leaves and try coca tea to relieve your headaches.  Don’t drink alcohol until the 2nd or third day.
  8. Try to get a group.  There were many cars that were international mixes who couldn’t communicate with the guide or each other.  There was a car of 4 Koreans and 2 Hungarians, none of whom spoke Spanish or English.  It wouldn’t be nearly as fun as our car that had 7 people who could communicate in English/Spanish.  If you’re solo, try to join a group where you’ll be able to share a language.
  9. Offer your driver snacks, he’ll love you for it.  Tip him at the end.
  10. Get Bolivianos in Chile, the exchange rate is much better and you’ll have them to use at the border if necessary.

Edit: March 2014. I went with Cordillera Traveller and was much happier than with Colque.

Travlogue: San Pedro de Atacama

I spent four days in and around San Pedro de Atacama, in the far north of Chile, about two hours north of Santiago by flight.  Atacama is one of the strangest, most beautiful, rugged, remote, stunning places I’ve ever been.  Normally, I really dislike tours and prefer to go out on my own, but San Pedro is the exception.  I went with my friend Katie’s business called Pathway Chile which takes mostly young people on trips around Chile. I paid about $400 for four days of hostel, flight, day trips and a few meals.  Our group consisted of 12 people from six different countries and was really fun.  Fellow startup chile-r Paige Brown of Tripeezy gets credit for most of the photos in this post.

I think it would be extremely hard to do San Pedro on your own because of the terrain, weather and impossibility to get around.  Over our four days, our guides drove rugged buses and 4x4s over mountains, volcanoes, salt flats, desserts and much more.  The network of mostly dirt roads can be deadly for even the most experienced drivers who know the area.  The roads were lined with little shrines to mark previous accidents.

San Pedro the town is a bit strange.  It’s in the middle of nowhere, with the closest airport about 1.5 hours away in Calama.  It’s made up of restaurants, hostels, bars and tchotchke shops.  It’s a tourist trap, but the scenery more than makes up for it.

I saw more weird/stunning things in four days that I think I’ve seen anywhere else in the world.  Our first day, we went for a drive to Valle de la Luna, aptly named because it looks like the surface of the moon.  We played around on huge sand dunes and sprinted down to get to the bottom.  Liberating.  People were sand boarding, which looked cool, but I bet hurt a lot.

We went to the amphitheater to watch the sun set, which was absolutely unreal.  The sky was on fire.  It was truly the best sunset I’ve ever seen, even better than Cape Town.  We hiked through a cavern and looked at the star filled night sky while the moon came up in the sky.  The night sky in Northern Chile is the best in the world and there are international telescopes all over the place.

The second day, we went for a drive through small towns and ended up at two lakes at the foot of a perfectly conical volcano.  It was beautiful.  There were lots of flamingos, which are pink because of the creatures they eat.  They eliminate the beta carotene via their feathers, hence the pink.  The redder the flamingo, the older (or fatter) he is.  We ate lunch at a tiny town of about 100 people where they grew all of the food in a garden out back.

Lunch was quinoa, rice, bean soup, followed by potato, bean and quinoa main dish.  It was hearty, spicy and good.  that night we ended up at a flamingo sanctuary, where we saw our second amazing sunset in a row.  It reflected off the water and outlined the flamingos against the backdrop of the mountains.

We got up at 330am the next day to find it raining.  We took a 2 hour ride up to about 4500m to see hot springs and geysers.  The mountains had a fresh coat of snow, which almost never happens.  We ate breakfast high above the geyser field under the cover of the snow capped mountains.  We hung out in the hot springs to warm up.  Before we left, we check out the active mud vents and sulfur vents.  Since we were so high up, it was a bit hard to breathe if we did any sort of extended exercise.

In the afternoon, we went to the eyes of the desert, which are two random holes in the middle of the desert believed to be caused by meteor strikes.  These two perfectly circular holes are about 40 meters across and super deep and filled with water.  We jumped from about 20 feet up into the refreshing, salty water.

Next, we went to Laguna Cejar, the saltiest lake in the world, even more than the Dead sea.  We floated around and enjoyed the sun.  You can’t even go under water if you try and it was comical to see people try.  When we got out, we had to get hosed down because there was so much salt on us.

We ended the day at salt flats to watch the sun set.  It was a great scene with the mountains in the background.  The salt flats had a bit of water on them, so they reflected everything.  Luckily they were only a preview to the salt flats of Uyuni.  On our last day, we went for a drive up to the Bolivian border and through the mountains.  The weather was amazing.  Rain, snow, hail, sun, lightning in a short period of time.  We saw an amazing red sunset, capped off by more flamingos and Vincuñas, which are sort of like llamas.  The beauty and force of nature was humbling and reminded me how lucky we really are.  I’ve never seen colors and such quick changing weather like that.

That night, we packed up to head out to Bolivia the next morning.  It was an incredibly interesting trip and not very expensive.  If you’re going to San Pedro, I recommend 3-4 days, it’s worth it.

near the bolivian border