Eating our way through Chile!

The last few days for me have been a huge blur, actually truth be known they feel like one huge, long, exhausting day!

Our last few days in Chile were pretty low key.  We mostly stayed in town at home eating delicious food, practicing our Spanish on anyone who would talk to us, and trying to make this vacation as restful as possible.

I think Jonathan (Daryl's IT guy in the office) loved his job this week as it mostly consisted of taking care of a few things in the office in the morning, having a great lunch with us in the middle of the day, carting us around shopping in the afternoon, and then taking care of a few more things in the office before going home.

One of the days, I can't remember which one, he took us to Coquimbo to go shopping.  According to locals the Ferria in Coquimbo was just as good as the Recova in La Serena but cheaper...and you all know I am ALL about cheaper!  They were right too, although since it was a weekday in the middle of winter we didn't get the full experience and a lot of the booths were closed but we did get everything we had on our list and were able to buy fresh fish from the fish market.

A before picture.  Those are our fish whole.  They weigh them for you and calculate the price whole and then fillet them right there.  Obviously you don't get the whole weight back in fillets but the extra cost is for them actually doing the work for you.

Here is a picture of them cooking.  Esparanza made both fried fish and some pan seared fish that was AWESOME!

After:  This was lunch people.  We had a huge meal like this every day for lunch.  It was great!  I had never had fish that was so fresh, I had also never been to a more disgusting place in my life.  Well maybe I have but I have certainly never eaten anything from a place like that.  The floors were sticky with yucky stuff, it smelled to high heaven, it had stray animals running around all over (and doing other things all over), and it almost closing time so most everything was gone.  It was also the most tasty fish I have ever had!  P.S. Chris is looking over my shoulder while I type telling me to tell you that it wasn't that bad..it was a FISH market for goodness sake!

Here is a look of Penny's house from the back.  The weather while we were there was gorgeous, even though it was winter it was still perfect to us.  The lot the house sits on is huge and there is a big garden behind where I took this picture.  She's the master gardener so every inch of the yard is planted with something either beautiful to look at or delicious to eat.  The house itself is very large, large enough to accommodate a family and an office.  Even though it looks very "American" from the outside there are some very "Chilean" things going on!  First is the water.  I have to say that I did not have a hot shower the whole time I was there (some would beg to differ because I consider a hot shower near boiling), the water heaters are very small and take a long time to heat up.  The showers themselves were also tiny in comparison to the one we have here, no bending over in the shower for me!  Penny's washer and dryer are also very small we had that thing running 24/7!  Things are done on a smaller scale in Chile.  Also the dryer is not vented at all, there is a container that catches the water from the loads and has to be emptied out every few loads.  The windows are only one pane, they only had wood stoves to heat (until they installed a small wall heater in the living room), no central air (which is not needed because the weather is great), the walls have what Penny called "house cancer" the paint peels on the bottoms of the walls because of the humidity no matter how you paint or what kind you use and all houses have this.  I thought it made it look kinda cool like an adobe or something.  They also have 2 water systems, one for the house that is fit for drinking (I didn't take any chances with that though) and one that is used outside for watering the garden, pretty smart if you ask me.  

Some other differences in the US and Chile are they don't use ice in their drinks, they think it will make you sick.  They don't feed their babies table food until they are around 2 years old, only baby food and puree'd things, I think they thought  I was crazy.  They don't let their babies feed themselves and got a little upset when I made poor CH fend for himself at meals! Chileans didn't like that we weren't wearing shoes in the house (again making us sick!).  They don't have their babies in hospitals they have them in clinics (I asked).  Bag boys at Super Markets don't get paid an hourly wage they work off of tips, so when you buy groceries you are expected to tip the person bagging your groceries.  You also tip the person helping you park, and there is almost always someone to help you park, whether it's on the street or in a lot.  There are also a lot of bathroom attendants in public restrooms, again they work on tips.  Driving to La Serena on a major freeway there are people trying to flag you down and get you to buy their home made stuff...on the freeway!  They don't have Highway Patrol officers, they are called Cabaneros (I'm sure I spelled that wrong), they are the police, highway patrol, crime unit all rolled into one.  At their stations on the road they are waiting for you and if they need you to pull over for a ticket they just motion you over and you stop and get a ticket so if you slow down before you get to the station you are usually fine.  Daryl said he was waved over one night on the way to Santiago even though he wasn't doing anything wrong and one of the Cabaneros was getting off work and wanted a ride into town!  So he and Penny had a "hitchhiker" of sorts for about 4 hours!  I'm sure there are many differences I could list, I was just so curious at how things worked there, and it was good for the kids to see.

AAAHHHHH now on to Completos!

If you have never seen Kid History then you MUST!  It's a hilarious show of sorts on Youtube you have to see one to get the whole thing.  Anyhoo they talk about "Completos" (pronounced Come-play-toe) in one episode and they say they are hotdogs.  Well in Chile a hotdog is just that, a hotdog, but a hotdog on a bun with condiments is a Completo...a complete if you will.  They have places to eat in the Mall dedicated just to the Completo!  We had the original which was topped with onions, cilantro and tomato.  We also had others topped with mayo, tomato, and avocado, some with bacon, cheese, and BBQ sauce.  They were all delicious!  Now go to Youtube, watch Kid History (be sure to start with episode 1), and eat a Completo!