Good Food & Cueca

Today we visited Hela and Centauro, and then we went back to the university and learned how to dance Cueca. Our first company we visited was Hela, which is a manufacturer of paint brushes and wire wheels. We got there rather early in the morning so we were all really tired for the visit. We toured their plant and saw how they manufacture the paint brushes and wire wheels. The visit was interesting, but I liked our visit to Centauro a lot better. Centauro is a manufacturer of canned goods—they are sort of like the Heinz in Chile. Anyway, we tasted some of their food like canned tomatoes, tomato paste, peaches, and pumpkin puree. All of the food we tasted was amazing, especially the canned tomatoes, which is surprising because I normally don’t like tomatoes. The best food, however, was the pumpkin puree, which looked a lot like baby food. After we tasted the food, we were given a tour of the facility and saw how the canning process and how it works. We ended our visit rather late in the afternoon, so we went out to get lunch. We got empanadas again, but these ones were easily the best yet. Empanadas are essentially like small calzones, but filled with different meats and cheeses. Our lunch lasted for a while, and we ran a little late for our Cueca lessons at the university. This dance is actually the national dance of Chile, but is common only in certain regions of the country. The dance itself was quite difficult to do, but it was a lot of fun. There is a lot of flirting that went on between the men and women, which was fun. Now I’m back at the hotel doing my blog, and going to get some Chilean Subway latter tonight.