AI Auto Podcast Mar 24, 2026

S7E20 — From Petaluma to Patagonia: A Journey to Malalcahuello, Chile

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volcanoes

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road cuts

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Estancias

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lager

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IPA

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Today I'm here in Cura Cautín in Chile and I'm here with Matt who migrated here a few

years ago.

This podcast is about cars but cars take you places and I guess you came in a car at the

end at least, right?

We do now have a car, yes.

No, you drove in here because this is quite remote.

It is, yeah.

No, but when we originally came here we showed up on bus in Hitchcock.

We always spent a solid four months in Hitchcock.

So I didn't introduce you properly.

So Matt, what's your last name?

Barnett.

And you came from?

Petaluma, California.

Petaluma.

I was there just a few, like a couple of weeks ago actually in Santa Barbara, that's really

nearby, right?

Yeah, pretty close.

So what were you doing there and what brought you here?

That's the story.

How do you end it up?

I think originally when I came to Chile I was in the university and I was very done

in studying and I kind of made the decision that I wanted to become a guide in Kayak.

Oh, okay.

So I was looking for kayaking schools and I kind of decided if I'm going to do it, I

might as well do it big and go to New Zealand and I was looking for schools in New Zealand

and came across a school there that had a program in the south of Chile.

And that was...

Oh, the school in New Zealand had a...

They also had a program here.

So I basically organized everything for a year to come down and then I also had the

crazy idea of once I was here to ride my bike all the way back to California.

From here?

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Yeah, and I made it about three weeks and then realized it was a stupid idea.

You made it too well, like all the way up to...

You never left Chile, right?

No, I did not.

Chile is super loud, people.

It is.

One of the things that people don't realize, I mean, I don't want to insult anybody in

the U.S. but a lot of people are pretty ignorant about what's outside the U.S.

I would include myself in that before I tell you.

I want to talk about you.

I'm saying because I went to high school in Atchinson, Kansas.

Right?

I mean, when you talk about the middle of the U.S., that's the middle of the U.S.

Because there was not even a McDonald's back then, this is a long time ago anyway, but

I remember we were in the high school and there were students from all over the world.

We would play the soccer tournament against local high schools and these kids have never

traveled more than 50 miles from their own houses and they would tell them, where is

Venezuela?

And they thought it was a fruit or something like that.

I remember when I was coming down here and the school was in Patagonia and I remember

multiple different people when I was saying I was going to Patagonia.

They all thought that I was going to go work for the clothing company.

The clothing company, yeah exactly, that's what people know.

So you were studying what in California?

Originally, I had wanted to be a geologist and made it out to do field classes and I

had the idea in my mind that I was going to be climbing volcanoes and doing things like

that and I ended up looking at road cuts on the side of the highway all day.

So that was kind of the end of that for me.

But that was the original idea and then I finished just with a degree in liberal arts.

So nothing in particular.

But good enough because actually I think it's more useful because you learn a little bit

of different things, right?

So then you find out about the school here in Chile and then what happened?

Yeah, so I came down, I did the program or the school program there and then they helped

kids with jobs related to the industry.

So it was an outdoor school and there was a wealthy couple from the U.S. who were buying

up huge Estancias and turning them into national parks and they were looking for a chef at

the moment.

And when was that?

What year?

I think 2012.

Oh!

It was a while ago.

Okay.

Yeah, but I ended up cooking with them for, I did three summer seasons with them and was

also...

Were you trained in cooking or you just told them, like, I know how to cook?

That's a fun part about moving somewhere that nobody knows you.

But I do like food.

No, I don't.

We're going to get to that.

I mean, don't worry about it, I mean, that's the reason I stopped here.

I mean, besides knowing you already, I think it's my third time here and I always come

here because it is an amazing place.

So then what happened?

You worked there at the Estancia or you cook at the Estancia?

Yeah, I worked at the Estancia.

I was volunteering at a farm with a German couple who were cheese makers in Switzerland

in their off season.

So in one of those, I went to Switzerland and tried to learn how to make cheese and learned

just enough that takes about 20 years to learn how to make cheese.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean...

Wow.

I think at this point, like, I could make cheese, but if anything happened to go even

slightly wrong, I'd be totally screwed.

So...

Well, you can name it something fancy and people will buy it.

Yeah, exactly.

That is true.

I remember I was at a dinner one time, I think it was in Sweden or somewhere, and we had

a whole dinner, the Estacian dinner with different kind of beers at a brewery.

So they were talking about all the different kinds of beers and all that, and apparently

I don't know anything about making beer or anything else, any liquor or wine or anything.

But apparently, lagers are kind of difficult to make, I don't know exactly why.

So they were explaining the whole process and all that, and so I asked them, so what

happens when you mess up on a lager, oh, we call it an IPA, I don't know their name at

the end of people will buy it anyway, I guess that's the same with cheese, no?

Same with all the products here in the bakery, you know.

So bakery, we're here, so we're here at El Canasto, and in you here, I don't know,

this is the main, this is the main street of this town, right?

Well, yeah, so we're right here on the highway, which is the road up to the ski resort in

Malucuello, Coralco, and then it's also in the road to the big park here, the Congigillo.

Yeah, so tell me the story about this place, because that's a very cool story, from my

Yeah, no, so when I was working for the couple in Cochrane, the lady had mentioned that she was

interested in having like hearth style breads, and so that kind of was the start of my journey in

bread, and then I traveled all over the place to, I went to Canada, luckily where I grew up in

Petaluma, there's a lot of great bakeries also close by, but the bread bug bit me and kind of

ran with it, and when we came to Curacao team, we brought like a little semi-industrial crappy

little oven that we had in the house as a plan B, if we bought that we bought the oven in Santiago,

but it was it was kind of like if nothing else will make pizzas in the evening and try to sell

pizzas, but we we started making sweets, like little brownies and cookies and breads, and we're

walking around, we were walking around town kind of showing what we were trying to do, and it ended

up turning into a thing where we would publish on Facebook the night before of what was going to be

in the canasto del gringo for the next day, so the name of the canasto that means a basket,

and el gringo obviously is you, and I would walk around with like milk crates, and I spent about

five years really walking around with milk crates downtown going into all the businesses

right here yeah yeah yeah yeah it was a long it was a long road to to get the products known and

and kind of set up a a clientele base, but but luckily too when we opened the actual bakery it

was kind of like seamless the transition from already having you know like a solid a solid

I have to say I mean the the the things that you eat here and I enjoy and everything are

amazing thank you and every time I come here and I'm gonna tell my little story in a bit but

it's gonna be my my my bakery when I move down here and do something here so

um tell us I mean try I mean it's it's difficult I guess but uh a lot of people in the U.S. again

to the point like a lot of people don't travel a lot and they don't when they do they go to common

places or really the typical things like in in the U.S. oh let's go to Paris let's go to but like

not many people think about Chile and I don't know maybe the Chileans don't want people to come

they don't want it to be over visited right I don't know but like how I mean Chile is such

an amazing place but you've been here much longer than me so I mean what what what uh

you already told us the kayak story but like there are many other things that attracted you right

yeah I mean having spent I spent the first five years here when I first came here in

Patagonia and I mean every single place that you go there is kind of amazing yeah take I remember

take the breath right out of you everything was just so vast and humongous and open I don't know

wild's the right word but I mean it was really kind of untouched you know and then you then you

start going around and you're seeing you know like I remember going in all of my like specialized

synthetic technical gear clothes going up mountains and you come across people that have

been living up there forever with their with their farm and you know stoked to have a visitor come by

the maybe they don't see somebody in a month so yeah end up staying a couple weeks with people

random people on the side of a mountain amazing yeah as far as nature goes here it's unbelievable

and then and then if you go into access to to like raw like raw materials in the sense of

ingredients chili unsurpassed in and access to produce and what it uses here so can meet too is

unbelievable so I guess the the the reason for not being more popular I guess at least in the U.S.

or pretty much anywhere else is that I mean it's far I mean it's not it's not like let's go to Canada

yeah and it's definitely not like resort style vacation yeah it's come to kind of kind of checks

out exactly it's not developed but the better experience you get for the same reason yeah so

that the my story here is I started coming here in 2000 around to Portillo to ski and then I started

like knowing more people and more people and initially I will just go to airport Portillo

Portillo airport and then I say oh come to Santiago come to El Colorado let's go to Valparaiso

let's go to and I started to over 25 years or more now the circle has been expanding and expanding

and here we are and I came here to Malalcabuello because my friend Roberto who is I think still eating

something else inside the el canasta here he invited me and we're building a little house

but it started like at the tiny house and the architect told me you cannot call it a tiny

house anymore it's stupid so this visit in particular we came to check the final check

final adjustments before finishing up like next august september so we're going to be coming here

much much often much more often and the great thing is like you keep meeting more people and

that's the amazing thing about traveling and being here but now you have a Chilean family I

understand right I met my wife working at the park in the south who's Chilean uh our son he was

born in california but he turned one in california and we came a week after he turned one so he's

basically grown up here this is what what he remembers at the very least so talking about the

other aspect of the tourist or the marketing I think that he is correct me because you're gonna

know much more than me you mentioned the patagonia brand and I think on the argentinian side the

argentinian start calling the region patagonia much further north than the chilean it's totally

right is that true yeah and you think that's the reason they probably or they know that

good at marketing or they don't want to market it that much I mean like I think argentina has done

an incredible job as far as branding itself and and taking advantage of the brand of you know

branding patagonia too yeah but it works and too I would also give credit in argentina the

infrastructure yeah it's definitely far more advanced and here here is getting better every

every single year and and too I think the more people that come here give give more reason for

people to have desire to continue to develop also so I think it's kind of an inorganic situation

that it's gonna stay keep happening well I'm here now one more and maybe many many many others so

when you're here I mean you're always working all year because I guess you never close or I mean

holidays or anything like that that's the bad part of that yeah of the bad part of the business

I guess right because people demand you to be open all the time they want your stuff right it's the

achilles heel yeah so when you travel from here to chile where do you go I mean back home I guess

but besides that like where do we travel in chile we go I mean we go all over the place but we try

to stay here in the region because I think too I'm guilty the same thing where I think of vacation

and I want to go here and there and you forget we live in an incredibly beautiful area too and there's

so I mean we've been here almost 10 years now and you know haven't barely gone around there's so

much more to do right where we live yeah so you wouldn't try going on a bike again too back to

California maybe driving not even right I think I learned a lot yeah so an amazing story a happy

story and that's that's what I've been loving about this whole process and people ask me like oh

it's cool but it takes time and effort right like like in your case how many years what was the first

time you you came to chile I came originally in 2010 and I went back and forth between chile

in California for five or six years so it's not easy but it's totally worth it right yeah

yeah I'm definitely happy with the with the life we've created here I think I think it's

obviously hard when you're from somewhere else and you're always gonna have family and friends

elsewhere but yeah and and the other thing you make people happy with yourself so that's like

that's an amazing part of it and the fun part about going somewhere where you know nobody

with a lot of people in the same situation was that hard was that hard for sure absolutely it was

definitely a solid couple of years of you know I mean not even wanting to be here in the beginning

oh really yeah definitely but you know at this point now there's a lot of people in the same

situation so you end up forming communities out of necessity and meet a lot of really great people

in the end excellent well thank you for your time and more importantly thank you for what you make

because it's delicious even though we might gain a couple pounds before the ski season but

we'll burn it off thank you Matt congratulations thank you that's it for today's AI auto podcast

with Javier Moda hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did tune in next time for more on how AI

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0:00

15:52

S7E20 — From Petaluma to Patagonia: A Journey to Malalcahuello, Chile

Progressive

car insurance discounts

paying in full discount

volcanoes

road cuts

Estancias

lager

IPA

semi-industrial oven

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