Terremoto... tasty!

A long-forgotten quiet bubble of solitude enveloped me as I checked out of the Mendoza hotel on my own. I was alone again: my LTC (lovely and talented companion) had at last run out of stalling tactics and was at that moment taking off on the first leg of her journey back to Canada. It was a different solitude now than at the start of my trip, and I was not as comfortable with it now. Before, it was characterized by self-sufficiency and expectation; now it was characterized by absence. In this quiet mood, I headed to the terminal to catch my bus over the Andes to Santiago. I was going there to meet up with a friend from home who had extended a business trip to Santiago in order to see a bit of Chile, who was going to be back in Santiago for a few days prior to returning home. This was just the thing to cure my blues. We met up for lunch on the first day I was there, after which we hung out with some contacts he had made at his conference. They, and eventually various additional friends of theirs, did an excellent job giving us a tour of Santiago's nightlife over the next three nights, taking us to an expat pub in Providencia, a tiny hole in the wall in Lastarria that was right up my alley, an excellent dance bar in Bellavista, and (inadvertently) a gay night at another Bellavista bar, the last of which naturally had the best dance mix of the lot. More importantly, however, they introduced me to an amazing Chilean cocktail: the Terremoto.

Here's how it works: you take a huge slosh of disgusting cheap white wine, preferably from a five-litre jug; one generous unmeasured pour of Fernet, that horrific bitter spirit so popular in Argentina it's something like the national drink; and one giant scoop of pineapple-flavoured ice cream. Insert straw, and serve. This results in a dangerously delicious concoction which gets its name, which means earthquake, from the fact that when you stand up after finishing one, the ground tends to seem a little unsteady. The most pernicious aspect of the drink, though, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you _don't_ happen to stand up after finishing your first one it seems like the best idea of all time to order a second.

Our initiation to this drink was in a tavern located in an alley behind Santiago's Mercado Central known as La Piajera Piojera, which translates to something like "the lice-ery". It's the dodgiest dive I've been to in a long while, with sawdust on the floor, scribbles on every wall, a drain at the bottom of a tiled wall for a urinal, a closing time at 11 to allow patrons to make their way out of the neighbourhood while the chances of being mugged are still this side of 50%, and a terrifying if always second-hand reputation for fights and flying chairs. We were advised to leave everything of value at home. And so, with nothing on us of value except our lives and enough cash for the evening, we headed there for an after-work cocktail with our hosts and some of their colleagues and friends; stepping past the marginaly raffish crowd at the entrance we found a table, and I was astonished to find the place absolutely packed -- with students. Boisterous but seemingly innocuous packs of twentysomethings crowded virtually every table; there was even the odd hipster. Where were the brawlers? The pickpockets? The toothless old wasters? Nowhere to be found, as far as I could see. We sat down, and were introduced to the others, and followed their lead in stirring our drinks vigorously and continuously, and then we sipped. It was odd, but tasty. Sipped again. It was less odd, more tasty. By the fifth sip it was just plain delicious. A third of the way through our cups our cheeks were flushed. By the bottom of the cup I was quite happy, though by no means unsteady; still, a chorus of strong cautions from the veterans convinced me not to get a refill. Instead I contented myself with sharing in the pitcher of chicha (apparently some kind of boozy concoction made from the grape stems, seeds and skins removed during the wine-making process) that one of our hosts had settled for instead of the pitcher of beer she'd actually ordered (I should mention, our hosts were Americans, not Chileans). Shortly after, before it was all the way dark outside, we left half the group behind and went our to find a taxi to Bellavista and dinner. We found a cab without a problem, and sped away to the other side of town without having been witness to (or victim of) any of the advertised dangers, which, as far as I was concerned, was a-okay.