5 Best Bars in Bellavista, Santiago

If you're itching to dance salsa or merengue plus enjoy food and a show, come to this club Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. It starts with an all-you-can-eat buffet of Cuban specialties, and at midnight, there's a 40-minute show with sensual professional dancers. Only after that does the dance floor open to the public.

Located within Patio Bellavista, La Casa en el Aire is a great place to catch live bands. There's also a larger venue with a terrace at Antonia López de Bello 0125. If your Spanish is good, you can listen to storytelling and stand-up, too, or even perform. There's a happy hour daily from 4 to 9.

This brightly colored house in Bellavista is a great place to take in local music with a down-to-earth and generally young, local crowd. Peñas are traditional watering holes where la nueva canción chilena, a kind of Latin American resistance folk music, was first popularized. Due to their historically political nature, peñas became clandestine during the dictatorship.

This gay-friendly small club gets full quickly, but salsa dancers say it's the best in Santiago. Classes for beginners to advanced are 3,000 pesos and run Wednesday through Friday from 8. Come alone or with a partner. Pisco cocktails from 3,500 pesos. 

Three floors of fun await at Sarita Colonia, the only Peruvian drag bar and restaurant in Chile. Named after a Peruvian saint for the poor, Sarita Colonia is brimming with kitsch religious artifacts and is one of the most fun places in Bellavista for a night out. Order a ceviche or the Peruvian classic lomo saltado. The bar serves delicious pisco sours.