Valparaíso, Chile

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Neale Donald Walsch

Chile is a huge country; roughly 4,200 km or 2,650 miles long, and it would take over six hours to fly from top to bottom. The area of focus for my friend Haley and I during this trip to Chile was the central region, starting from the capital of Santiago. Here, we rented a car so that we could drive towards the coast and have a road trip.

So far, everything in Chile was proving to be quite expensive, and getting a car was no exception. That being said, the road conditions are excellent, probably in part due to the frequent tolls we had to pay. We probably spent over 30$ just on tolls across a six hour drive! 

Our first stop on the road trip was to the colorful port city of Valparaíso. We had our reservations about coming here though; several days prior to our arrival, a tourist was murdered during a mugging. This really shook us up, even though I normally try to avoid thinking about these kind of things when I travel alone.

Upon further research, we saw various articles warning about dangerous areas of Valparaíso, so we became quite paranoid on where we would go and leaving expensive items at home. By the end of the trip, we really needn’t have worried so much. As long as you stay with relatively touristy areas and avoid wandering the streets at night, you’ll be fine. Pretty common sense in all travel destinations, but back then, we couldn’t help but feel worried.

My absolute favorite thing that Haley and I did in Valparaíso was take a cooking class. I think this is a great activity to do while traveling, and really lets you learn a lot about the culture. A group of 8 of us women met in the city square with the chef and her husband. We began the class by first taking a bus to the local market and buying all of our ingredients for the meal. Best of all, we all agreed to make vegetarian and fish-based dishes.

By this point in the year, I was actively working on transitioning to a pescatarian diet, and it was going well. After having traveled to so many continents, I was beginning to feel guilty about my environmental impact as a traveler. I became much more conscious about my plastic usage, methods of getting around, and diet.

While nothing really makes up for the emissions produced from a flight, I wanted to try to offset my carbon footprint by becoming vegetarian/pescatarian. Having been raised in a meat-heavy household, I expected it to be more difficult than it was. But after several weeks, I stopped craving meat as much. I still eat it occasionally nowadays, but pretty rarely.

But back to the cooking class – the market we visited was bubbling with vendors and buyers and you could see vegetables and fruits everywhere! So many varieties of avocados as well, as they are native to South America! We were told that all of the appealing vegetables and fruits are exported around the world, and the locals keep the uglier ones for themselves.

After loading up on groceries, we headed to the kitchen to start cooking. We would be preparing a five-course meal. The first was an appetizer of Chilean salsa, called pebre. This salsa is frequently found at Chilean tables before each meal. It consists of tomatoes, onions, cilantro, green chili, lemon juice, olive oil, sugar, cumin, and salt mixed together. The longer you let it sit, the more flavorful it becomes. It is such a refreshing and light snack, and when I made it for my family, it was loved by all.

Next we made empanadas! A healthy variation as well; we baked them in the oven rather than frying them which is the more traditional way. We stuffed them with eggplant rather than beef to keep it vegetarian.

Next up was my favorite, ceviche! As it turns out, ceviche is very easy to make on your own; the key is to get fresh enough fish, since you eat it raw. The Chilean version of ceviche is to scrape the meat off the fish with a fork, so it has a mushy consistency; the Peruvian version is chunks of fish sliced up. Then you mix it with peppers, red onion, cilanto, salt and pepper. Finally, you soak it in lemon juice for at least one hour, and then it is ready to be eaten! But you have to finish it in the next few hours because since it is raw fish, you cannot store it overnight.

Next, our main course was a corn pie dish called Pastel de Choclo, which is a staple in most Chilean households. This ingredient list of this one is a bit more lengthy, but in short, the filling is the same as for Spanish empanadas, sitting inside the crust of a corn mixture.

And finally for dessert, we made little cookies with decadent dulce de leche filling in between. The dough for these cookies was so simple, consisting of only flour, egg yolk, and cream. I stuffed myself with these at the end, which is generally something I tend to do when I’ve had a bit to drink.

During the evening of cooking, we were treated with two bottles of wine, and then we also made Pisco sours, so each person drank two glasses of these. I was feeling quite happy with the world by the end of the class, full of alcohol and delicious food. At one point during our cooking, the power even went out in the building, so we cooked as much as we could with the gas stove, until power returned. It was a jovial night, and we had a blast. I highly recommend cooking classes during traveling! 

On our last full day in Valparaíso, we embarked on a free walking tour of the city. This is another great way to stick to a budget, yet see all the main attractions of a place! Valparaíso is known for its hills and street art. It is such a vibrant city, and we had a great tour guide give us a history lesson.

We ended the day with dinner in a restaurant on the hill overlooking the city, and it was a great way to wind down. We realized at the end that the city is not as dangerous as we had anticipated it would be, and we wished we spent a little bit more time in the city center. 

-Anastasia