On September 1, there is a noticeable change in the atmosphere throughout all of Chile. The coldest weather is over. Summer is right around the corner. An anticipation begins to build. People whisper excitedly on every street corner. The word on everyone's lips is: dieciocho. September 18 is Chilean Independence Day and it cannot be overstated how large it looms on the Chilean calendar. The 18th and the 19th are both federal holidays, and according to some sources, when those days fall on a Wednesday and a Thursday as they did this year, employers are legally obligated to give employees the Friday off as well. Whether it's true or not, most Chileans take the entire week off to spend with family at home or travel. This whole week of festivities is called the Fiestas Patrias.
A Little History
Chile has two "independence days", and Sept 18, 1810 is the first one. The Spanish king was imprisoned by Napoleon, and rather than serve the French, the Chilean government declared they would govern themselves autonomously until the Spanish king returned to power. So the 18th is actually the date of an act of loyalty to Spain... But it laid the groundwork for true independence later on.
What Do You On Dieciocho?
A lot of Chileans take advantage of the days off of work to travel without using too many vacation days. Otherwise the conventional wisdom is to get out of Santiago to the smaller towns, where the festivities will be more "authentic." Many Chileans leave Santiago to attend family gatherings with their relatives in more rural Chile. But no matter where you are celebrating, you'll probably spend at least one day (maybe 5 or 6) at a Fonda- a large party with traditional food, drinks, and dance. Fun Fact: the week before dieciocho, the subway at 9:30AM was so packed, metro workers had to push people in to let the doors close. When I rode the subway at 9:30AM during the Fiestas Patrias, there were 4 other people on the platform.
Fondas
We stayed in Santiago for Dieciocho, so of course the first course of action was to decide which Fonda to attend. There are many well-established fondas, some newer ones, and generally each comuna (neighborhood) has its own. The fonda in Parque Bicentenario is supposedly the most pretentious, while the fonda in the Estadio Nacional is reputedly one of the rowdiest. Any fonda worth anything will have grilled meats, choripan (chorizo sausage in bread), anticuchos (pieces of meat on a stick), carnival games, fooseball, cueca dancers, and terremotos (earthquakes- the drink, not the natural disaster). Some have rodeos, competitions, horse shows, and parades.
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| Karen enjoying an Anticucho- meat on a stick |
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| A classic game in which you must throw a small metal weight so that it lands on a wire in the mud |
Cueca
The Cueca is Chile's national dance. There are as many different versions as there are Chilean towns, but generally the idea is that a man and a woman dance around each other, drawing together flirtatiously before dancing away. There's also some rhythmic stomping and of course, they both wave a handkerchief the entire time. The story goes that the cueca is based on the courtship movements of roosters and hens. Fun Fact: In Brazil, "cueca" is a slang-y word for women's underwear. When Brazilians visit during this time and see the notoriously conservative Chileans dancing the "cueca" and waving a piece of cloth around, they think, wow! These Chileans can party!
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| A fierce cueca competition |
Terremoto
Chile's morbidly named national drink has three key ingredients: A sweet pipeño wine, pineapple ice cream, and grenadine. From there you can add anything you like, and they do- from rum to vodka to fernet to beer. It's incredibly sweet and most fondas mass produce them with wine and ice cream that probably can't legally be sold as "wine" and "ice cream", but rather as "grape beverage" and "frozen dessert".
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| A twist on the classic terremoto- this is actually an aperol terremoto at a trendy rooftop bar |
Our Dieciocho
We chose seven fondas for our first Dieciocho. Why so many!? They're fun! Plus, pretty much everything shuts down for Las Fiestas Patrias (including grocery stores for a couple days), so if you want to do anything or eat anything, there's no real choice but to go to a fonda.
La Fondita de Nicanor: The First Fonda of Chile
We found the Fondita de Nicanor in a rundown in La Tercera of all the upcoming fondas. It was held at the horse-racing track on September 6 and we weren't sure what to expect, but we found the pre-sale tickets available online for 3500 CLP (discounted from 8000!). We arrived to find a large field, with a big stage and live music in one area, and a bunch of food trucks in another. There was also a long covered bar area set up to serve terremotos all night. (Event advertising touted the bar was over 300meters long.) We enjoyed one with a choripan and a handroll (battered and fried sushi roll) and settled in to enjoy the music. We'd never heard of the groups that played but the crowd was enthusiastic and we liked the music. We even saw someone throwing up from too many terremotos! All in all, this was a good way to dip our feet into the fonda culture.
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| The first terremoto of the season |
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| Handrolls are becoming a classic staple of Chilean street food. They're deep-fried "sushi" rolls, with the key fillings being your choice of protein (chicken, shrimp, or imitation crab "kanikama"), with cucumber and cream cheese. If it's a high-end hand-roll cart, they offer salmon (cooked) and avocado. |
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| The choripan are nearly ready |
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| An evening concert, featuring a famous anti-dictatorship band, Sol y Lluvia |
Otaku Fonda
We found the Otaku Fonda through the Club Metro- at select metro stations we can trade our metro receipts for free or discounted tickets to various events. This one was free! The entrance fee only cost 1500 CLP, so it wasn't a huge savings, but it did feel victorious. So on September 14 we made our way all the way to the comuna of La Florida to celebrate Chilean culture and Japanese culture at the same time. Unsurprisingly, there were many cosplayers dressed as anime characters. We also got handrolls at this fonda (it seemed like a requirement), as well as an empanada and some beer. It was not a large fonda, and it was pretty much centered around a stage with, at various times throughout the day, dancing anime school girls, anime characters singing anime theme songs, and a ramen eating contest.
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| Anime ladies showed incredible stamina dancing non-stop to song after song |
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| Otakus go head to head in a ramen eating contest |
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| A cosplayer poses next to Karen |
Cerro San Cristobal: Festival de la Patria
Since Matt's company is in many ways a US company, he gets US holidays off instead of Chilean holidays- with one exception: nobody works on Dieciocho. So the night before, on Sept 17, we went with a group of Matt's coworkers to the fonda on Cerro San Cristobal. There was a small tent at the base of the cerro where we paid 1000CLP each to ride vans to the fonda. They gave us wristbands to show we payed for the vans, which included a ride back down later. However, after a long day, communication seemed to have broken down between the base of the hill and the fonda staff, because when they saw our wristbands they let us right in. One of Matt's coworkers loudly exclaimed "But we didn't pay!" before the rest quickly hustled him away from the entrance. This fonda seemed to be winding down at first. When Karen asked a staff member why it was so empty, he told her it had been crowded in the afternoon but when the particularly chilly evening hit, most people flocked home. We enjoyed a peaceful evening of terremotos, anticuchos, and barbecued ribs before checking out the indoor cueca area. Portions were particularly generous- we suspect it was because the staff didn't want the food to go to waste with the low evening turnout. Cueca was soon replaced with lively modern covers and flashy dancers in sequined suits and skimpy outfits. We danced til we couldn't dance anymore and went home to rest up for the next day.
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| The view from Cerro San Cristobal |
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| Exciting games with exciting prizes |
Parque Padre Hurtado: Chilenidad
The previous fondas were all just a warm up for THIS, the fonda we had chosen to spend our actual Dieciocho at. It's in the La Reina neighborhood, which we often bike through on Sundays, in a nice, large park. It comes highly recommended by friends. We were able to get in for free by registering ahead of time online (normal entry: 7000CLP). We got there early- something most people apparently don't do, but which we wholeheartedly recommend. By 2PM it was significantly more crowded, but in the morning we had time to look around at all the activities before it filled up. There was a huge area reserved for horse demonstrations, a small stadium for a rodeo, a massive pavilion with food and folkloric dancing, an area for cueca dancing, and food everywhere. Anticuchos, choripan, empanadas, and ribs abounded, as did, of course, terremotos. We found Huenteleuquen empanadas- the same empanadas we ate on our road trip. After eating our fill, we took in the cueca for a while, then sat to watch some of the pre-horse-show events. There was a sheep dog demonstration in which the dogs were so excellent at their job that the show was over in about 40 seconds. I missed half of it while glancing at the program we'd been given at the entrance.
We later spent some time watching the rodeo- in which a pair of riders tries to drive a cow around the outside of the arena, first one way, then the other way, then back the first way and into a small gate. One unwilling cow sat down and someone had to walk out and pull it around by the tail until it got up.
The horse show included some impressive acrobatics, like jumping off the horse and back on again while it was running, riding a horse while standing up, and generally riding a horse in positions most people don't ride horses in.
The entire experience was very reminiscent of state fairs in the US- unhealthy but delicious food, animals, and carnival-type games.
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| Viva Chile! |
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| Our favorite cheese empanadas |
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| A brilliant device to keep children occupied for hours- there are two inflatable barriers, one high and one low, that spin and force children to jump and duck. |
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| Matt enjoying an anticucho |
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| A branch of the Chilean military performed acrobatics on horseback to pop songs, including Bruno Mars and Pirates of the Caribbean |
Parque O'Higgins
The Parque O'Higgins fonda is pretty divisive. It's one of the biggest most classic Santiago fondas, but it can apparently get rowdy- and some have even said sketchy- at night. Some people love it, others say not to go. We decided to go on the Saturday after Dieciocho, so that we could see it during the day. We arrived way earlier than most people, as is our wont. This turned out to be a fantastic move, not only for the reason mentioned earlier (exploring before the crowds arrive). This fonda included several stands selling craft beer, from craft breweries in and around Santiago. Since the day was just getting started, the beer vendors were willing to stop and chat with us. We got several good leads on craft beer in Santiago, and more free beer than we could carry- literally! We had to leave one cup behind because we didn't have enough hands.
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| Our beer haul |
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| Getting the first empanadas of the day. Note the vendor is pouring the oil into the frying pan for us. |
We indulged in some shrimp and cheese empanadas while the empanada vendor told us that this fonda used to be more traditional but now it's 80% foreigners (which must be an exaggeration, but maybe it's 20%?). This fonda was huge and full of lots of fun unexpected surprises, like an asian snacks booth, a karaoke booth sponsored by Heinz, more craft beer tents (this was a *very* unusual amount of craft beer for Chile), a free games area sponsored by the Lipigas gas company, and a stand selling "fancy" terremotos made with real wine and real ice cream for double the price of the normal terremotos. One craft beer place offered to make any of their beers into a michelada. Karen jokingly asked if that included the Scottish Ale and the vendor said that not only would they make that, it's actually so good that it was what they were currently drinking. We got one and it was the best thing we tasted all day.
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| The entrance to the Parque O'Higgins fonda. We a arrived few before before it opened at noon! |
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| Firing up the grill |
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| A shipment of pipeño wine for terremotos |
Sabores del Mundo
There's some debate as to whether or not the "Sabores del Mundo" event counts as a fonda or not. It felt more like an arts and wine festival, but we heard several people refer to it as a fonda. It was held September 18-20 on a closed-off street in Providencia. For the event, several restaurants along the hip street setup seating in the road, alongside live music, games, and artisan stalls. We enjoyed a particularly affordable wine-tasting hosted by a vineyard and enjoyed watching a colorful marching band with dancers walk up and down the fair.
Private Fondas
In addition to the large-scale organized public fondas, we went to one fonda organized by Start-Up Chile. This one was held on the rooftop terrace of the Start-Up Chile cowork and had a more personal, company BBQ vibe. Unfortunately, the grill couldn't seem to stay hot enough so it took about 3 hours for the anticuchos to cook through. Other than that, this fonda was a hit! It was a good time to catch up with other participants from the program and watch friends compete in silly games.
