Wednesday, April 16 – Day 121
Went to the Parque Arauco, shopping mall today. It’s on the east side of town in an area called Las Condes, which looks like any major city in America. This is the wealthy part of town, and it is full of gleaming new hi-rise office buildings and condos. The Harley dealership is nearby, so I picked up a t-shirt, and then stopped by the bar at the Ritz Carlton for a very nice wine tasting and a cigar. After blowing a couple hundred bucks on some fabulous vino that I’ll never be able to get back home and hanging out with the beautiful people, the pisco sour happy hour back at my hostel provided a stark contrast in lifestyles.
I’m staying in pretty cheap places because, well, it’s cheap. There’s always a lot of people coming and going, so its’ easy to meet and exchange information on various places. The downside is that they are all tourists, and most are trying to get by on US$20.00 a day while I’m more like a US$20.00 bottle of wine with dinner sort of guy.
Anyway, pisco is the “national liquor” of Chile, kind of like the Brazilian caschaca or the Argentine fernete. It’s a 35 to 50 proof, and distilled from a particular grape that was imported from Peru a long time ago. The grapes are grown specifically in the Elqui Valley in the north, and there’s even a town there called Pisco. The drink is made with lemon or lime juice, sugar, ice and a small amount of egg white. The whole concoction is blended into a foam, and then topped with cinnamon or bitters. Properly made, they are really pretty good. Lean too heavy on the pisco or the lemon, however, and they taste like crap.
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