A female mutt called "Perla" (Pearl) is abandoned by her owner on the top of the San Cristobal hill, in the capital city of Santiago, Chile. Without knowing what to do, soon Perla is part of the huge amount of street city dogs. Until the day she meets Samuel, a troubled man, and they both start the way of mutual recovery.

Ivan is a kid whose family decides to go back to Chile from New York, after at least a decade away. Ivan of course is not quite the Chilean kid his grandparents would like him to be: he sulks, misses the Opera, finds things odd and ugly, acting like a real "little gringo" (hence the title).