- Cocktail bars are somewhat common but cocktails follow a different philosophy of flavour in South America compared to North America/Europe. For example, what I’m used to is that if you like an Old Fashioned and you see a menu offering a Vanilla Old Fashioned what you’ll get is a traditional Old Fashioned with just the lightest hint of vanilla. I found, very consistently, that in Latin America if a cocktail bar features a Vanilla Old Fashioned you will get an Old Fashioned with an endless and often overpowering vanilla syrup kick in the mouth. Whatever the feature flavour of a cocktail is, it will be a HUGE PUNCH IN THE FACE amount of that flavour.
- Most bars will not have bar seating. It’s just not a thing. The concept that the bartender is part of your outing, that you chat with them, include them, etc, does not exist. Likely again related to the concept of customer service not existing.
- Street food is safer than you think, if you have a brain. I travel with penicillin and I wouldn’t call my guts particularly tough at all but after 5+ months of eating from every kind of street food vendor all over South America I only got slightly sick one time (you were right Candise, it was totally that soup you skipped). I use common sense, go to places that are busy and are cooking things to order, and am rarely concerned.
- Rough areas are safer than you think, if you have a brain. Every single city I spent time in is considerable more dangerous than any city in Canada yet I never felt unsafe a single time, not once. There were times of being more aware of my surroundings, there was a night when I had to walk home through a rough part of Rio around 2am and kept my head on a swivel, etc. But really, use your brain and you’ll be fine almost every time. You’re safer in the worst part of the city at 2pm in a market with 1000 people around than you are in the nicest part of the city at midnight with empty streets all around.
- Time I: Time works very differently. I knew this going in but it’s different to be immersed in it day after day, restaurants and businesses are just kind of open whenever, they all post hours but there appears to be little connection between posted hours and if they will or will not be open. I did my best to adjust to this, with limited success. One night I walked to a bar that claimed to open at 6pm, it was 6:40pm and they were shut tight, a guy was setting up chairs inside up so I asked him when they open…. “6pm”…. cool cool.
- Time II: Subway time…. in more than one city the train platform signs counting down the time until the next train turned out to be completely random. They just say a number of minutes and count them down until the next train until the train actually comes, then they jump to “1 min”, lol.
- Both Ecuador and Panama use only the US Dollar. However they each issue very different $1 coins, I arrived in Panama City with a lot of Ecuadorian $1 coins and every single time I used them people had a reaction and I had to demonstrate that it was real American money.
- Latin America is obsessed with “Viking Bars” and I cannot fathom why. Every city will have at least one, usually many more. A “Viking Bar” is an extremely vaguely Norse-themed burger and beer place. Basically it’s a bar with a Viking helmet hung up somewhere.
- You MUST tip your grocery bagger. In most of Latin America the bagger is not a store employee, the only pay they get is tips.
- Further to my earlier point about awful customer service I also noticed that a second visit changes everything. No matter how I was treated in a business the first time I would invariable get a warm welcome the second time. The places I ate at for a week or more started to feel incredibly welcoming.
South America – Ten Small Thoughts & Things – Part 3
Published
A Bit Gone 