Beer tasting at Cerveza Austral (Punta Arenas)

Together with our friends Camille and Ryan, we went on a tour at the local brewery Cerveza Austral in Punta Arenas

Cerveza Austral was founded by the German, Jose Fischer in 1896. He named the brewery Cerveceria la Patagonia, and the first beer produced at the brewery was the Lager, which is still produced and sold today. In 1990’erne the name of the brewery was changed to Cerveza Austral.

The Cerveceria la Patagonia only produced two different kinds of beer, but after being sold in 1960, the new owners developed 5 other kinds of beer.  Today the German roots are still a part of the brewery, that still import the hops from German. The barley grain is from the Santiago area. Special edition “Torres del Paine beer” was produced, it became so popular, that the brewery is still producing the beer today It comes in a bigger bottle because it is a tribute to Torres del Paine (you can see the difference in size at the upper right picture).

The tour took us through the producing of the beers, and we got to taste the liquid base for the beer. The liquid base is made from the boiled grains

The tour lasted 2 hours a an price of 6000 pesos per person (10 USD per person), and was really good – I would give it (5 stars out of 5). The first hour was a tour of the brewery, learning about producing the beers and the history of the brewery.

The second hour was beer tasting! There was plenty of beer

After all that beer we needed something to eat, and when you are a little bit drunk… you really want fast food. So we went to the local Chilean “Dinner” called “Kiosko Roca”, that is famous for serving chori-pan with banana milk. Oh, we added some hot sauce on the top.

Beer tasting was not the only thing we did in Punta Arena, because… THE HISTORY: once upon a time we were traveling on our two motorcycles, but decided to sell the motorcycles. We were enjoying the life in Ecuador, when a buyer in Santiago de Chile bought the motorcycles. So we drove the last 5000 km (3000 miles) from Ecuador to Santiago de Chile. We rented an apartment in Viña del Mar, a really nice city just north of Santiago. The owner (Jorge) of the apartment invited us to his Sunday “parilla”, where we got to meet his family. Jorge and his family was from Punta Arenas, and recommended the chori-pan with banana milk at Kiosko Roca, but they also told us to visit the cemetery. Famous for sculptured trees!

It is a different and beautiful cemetery

Looking at the individual graves it was like a sneak peak into their former life

They love plastic flowers!

Here in Punta Arenas we met up with Diego, who also is a family member of Jorge’s family. Diego and his girlfriend took us to a local bar, where we had the famous Chilean Pisco sour cocktail (A grape brandy mixed with fresh lemon juice and sugar) and pizza! Yes, the pizza is long, and you can buy it by the meter

Diego gave us a small tour of Punta Arena. We stopped by the famous foot… yeah, you are suppose to kiss the toes, to make sure that you one day will return to Punta Arenas. It is not because I don’t want to return, I am just not that much into feet.

“BUG SLUG!” – just love the two old beetles next to the flower garden

The next day we were sitting in the living room, where Diego was living with his mother, father and sister. His sister really has a talent for the Rubi cubes – she has them in 3 different sizes and a pyramid. I tried just to figure out the small one… nothing happened! I don’t think my brain works that way. In Punta Arenas we also bought a mountain bike, and Diego had a bicycle rack, which he wasn’t using anymore. So we got a free bicycle rack.

We love to meet the locals when we travel, because we feel less touristy and very welcome! Also it turned out that Diego was a mechanic, and off course into cars! So he recommended a mechanic, that could change the break pads and disks on Lance. Thank you for your hospitality Diego and for letting us meet your family . From Punta Arenas we sailed to Porvenir, and finally we were on Tierra del Fuego. We are only 425 km from reaching Ushuaia, a destination we haven been taking about since we left California for just over a year ago.

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