I am going here

tomorrow!! gotta go pack now.

road trip through Salta

so much to tell! in November we were graced with a visit from the Fair Amy S, who came all the way from Asheville, North Carolina to enjoy springtime in Buenos Aires. Sadly, I got terrifically sick the night before she came to visit and although I’d been looking forward to her visit with great anticipation, i spent most of the first week whimpering in bed with THE WORST FLU, while Amy patiently hung around waiting for me to feel better and start having some fun.
On Friday afternoon we headed off to find adventure in Salta, a beautiful province in the northwest of Argentina. We traveled by bus, it was a 16-hour overnight ride in a deluxe double-decker sleeper bus. They are pretty comfy buses though the food they serve is always scary.

DAY 1: We arrived in the city of Tucuman (in the province of Tucuman) on Saturday morning and managed to locate an emergency Saturday dentist because Mike had woken up with an infected tooth. After filling our bags with pills and potions for all of our many ailments, we rented a car in Tucuman and drove off into the hills, headed for a small mountain town called Tafi del Valle. We drove up into lush green hills on a small twisting road, climbed switchback turns up jungle-covered cliffs, and crossed a high pass where the jungle opened up into yellow pastures.

We passed a lake on the way into Tafi del Valley, and stopped in town for a break. We’d thought about staying the night in Tafi but decided to keep driving on towards Cafayate.

The land turned from pastures to rocky desert and great fields of cacti. We crossed another high rocky pass and the road climbed back down into valley, crossing dry riverbeds surrounded by cacti and strange trees. We took a detour to visit the Ruins at Quilmes, which was once the site of a fortress city inhabited by the indigenous Quilmes people. The Quilmes people resisted the invasions of both Incas and Spaniards for centuries before they were finally defeated in 1667. The Spanish invaders forced the remaining 2000 Quilmes people to march all the way across Argentina on foot, to a reservation near Buenos Aires, where they eventually died out.

Until recently, these ruins were privately owned, with a hotel and concessions on the grounds, but in the past few years a group of locals claiming ancestral ties to the original Quilmes people have occupied the site and closed down the hotel; now they charge $10 pesos admission and offer tours of the site. Seems like progress to me.
From the ground, the ruins are a maze of stone walls, forming rooms and walkways that climb up the surrounding hills; as we climbed up through the city, we could look back down on the structures and see a striking birds-eye view of the restored ruins.
After Quilmes, we drove on through the same rocky valley terrain and arrived in Cafayate near sunset. We checked into a nice hostel called Ruta 40, near the main plaza.

DAY 2: Wandered around Cafayate, a really beautiful little tourist city with mountains all around and a beautiful pastel cathedral on the main plaza and vineyards all around.

We tried to visit a few different vineyards but found them all closed for Sunday. Stopped for a deluxe lunch and bottle of wine at a fancy inn called Viñas de Cafayate, nestled amongst the vineyards on the edge of town.

In the afternoon we drove out of town on Route 68, into the fabulous red canyons of the windy Quebrada de Cafayate. The road between Salta and Cafayate follows the Rio de la Concha which meanders around and cuts down into the dry, bright red earth.

The landscape is all intense color, with a jumble of wild green near the river, red canyons all around and dark clouds overhead. There are fields of rocks shaped into pillars by the strong winds, and there’s one great red cliff with hundreds of tiny parrot holes and parrots swooping all around.

When the road climbed up to a high point and we could look out over the whole expanse of canyons and colors, it looked primeval and I thought there should be dinosaurs roaming about, grazing on the shrubbery. We did see a herd of goats by the river, and two goat-herders rounding them up with their dogs.

Further into the canyon-lands, there are two famous spots, El Anfiteatro (an immense natural amphitheatre with a narrow mouth and high striated walls) and La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil’s Throat, a great, tilting red canyon). There were tour-buses and groups of people at both. At El Anfiteatro there was a barefoot hippie guy taking advantage of the cave’s unique acoustics by playing Astor Piazolla classics on the mandolin. At La Garganta del Diablo, we scrambled up a few levels of high, slanting ledges but didn’t get anywhere near halfway up.

We turned around and headed home on the same route, as purple storm clouds filled the sky. We passed a couple who were walking towards Cafayate on foot and decided to offer them a ride before the storm arrived. The were Bert and Gon, visitors from Holland, and we shared travel stories and salty dutch licorice candies on the way home, and then we all had a few beers by the plaza back in Cafayate.

DAY 3: We rented bikes on the main square in Cafayate and biked out of town to see some vineyards. First stop, a tiny vineyard called Finca las Nubes, 5km out of town at the end of a long gravel road. The ride was hot and dusty and hilly; by the time we pulled into sight of the vineyard buildings with their shady trees and green grass, it looked exactly like heaven on earth.

They gave us a tour of their tiny facilities and we had a tasting of a few different wines. We learned that the rose bushes growing at the end of each row of vines are functional: they give an early alert to any fungus problems because the roses are more sensitive to fungi than the grapes. They are such a small operation that they do their entire harvest in one day, and they invite all their friends and family, people from the village and even visiting tourists to take part in the harvest. Everyone gets a pair of scissors to snip the grapes and a basket to gather them. At the end of the day there is a feast and all the harvesters drink wine and dance all night! It’s called vendima. If only we could come back for vendima next year. We got a bottle of their special reserve wine as a souvenir (one of 8000 numbered bottles produced from the best grapes of 2006), and we stayed for a simple lunch of cold meat and cheese and tomatoes and olives on the terrace, drinking a bottle of their fruity Torrontes and admiring the mountains and rolling vineyards.

Rested and refreshed, we biked off to tour another vineyard Bodega Etchart, a much bigger operation that showed a more industrial side of wine-making.
In the evening we managed to find Cafayate’s main fruit and foods marketplace, a great little jumble of vendors where we filled our baskets with fresh veggies for another tasty home-cooked dinner back at the hostel.

DAY 4: We packed our bags and strolled to the main plaza, where we had a leisurely coffee and some very interesting sandwiches. Breakfast was further enlivened by a very drunk and talkative Argentine tourist enjoying his morning litre of beer at the next table. After we escaped from our new acquaintance, we hit the road, headed towards Cachi. It was another day of twisty, turny single-lane dusty gravel roads, winding through astoundingly beautiful scenery. We drove through La Quebrada de las Flechas, a pale landscape of jutting rock formations.

We passed few houses or signs of human habitation. Mostly we passed kilometers and kilometers of wilderness, and then saw a group of three or four small houses, a goat corral, and a church, looking very alone in the world. Most of these buildings looked a bit colonial, with rows of pillars in front. We stopped for lunch in a town called Molinos, and then carried on twisting along the side of the valley, with mountains rising up to either side.

At some points the road was just a crumbly shelf of gravel clinging to the side of the mountains, and got so narrow and precarious it felt almost impassable, but Mike did a great job at the wheel, careful and unshakeable. In the afternoon we came around a blind curve and found a great back-hoe lumbering at us down this one-lane road carved between two high rock walls. A harvester came up behind us so we couldn’t retreat and we had to do all kinds of crazy maneuvers to squeeze out from between them.
By evening we came into the little village of Cachi, a very sweet mountain town.

We hadn’t arranged a place to stay, so we were relieved to find an open room at a simple old hosteria. Mike and I took a walk up the hill to visit Cachi’s hilltop cemetery, and along the way made friends with some of the town dogs, who followed us along the path. They were all cute and playful until this big boxer got too playful and jumped up and took a bite of Mike’s arm! Mike yelled “NO!” but he was all rambunctious and kept following us and biting Mike! we eventually got really freaked out when we couldn’t make him go away and couldn’t make him stop biting! He was totally playful but they were real bites and we didn’t know what to do. He chased us up the hill and he could tell we were getting panicky, he was acting like he’d cornered a chicken and he was having the time of his life! Finally a gang of French tourists walked up the path and we were so relieved to see them, we hid ourselves in the middle of their group, and advised them not to try and play with the crazy dogs. At the top of the hill the cemetery was really beautiful, it felt pretty surreal and foreign and the views of the mountains all around were stunning.

We still felt kind of shaken about the dogs, and as soon as we saw they were distracted we slipped out of the cemetery silently and snuck back down the hill. We washed and inspected Mike’s arm and decided there was no need for panic or doctors or rabies shots. We found Amy and sat in a tiny little wine cellar/cafe and poured out our story over an excellent bottle of Cafayate wine.

For dinner we tried the local specialty, stewed goat and potatoes, which was perfectly salty and tender.

Day 5: We had to wake up bright and early to get on the road, which was easier for Mike who’d prudently gone to bed early, but harder for me because I’d stayed up late with Amy, sitting under the stars finishing a second bottle of wine and chatting about the nature of the universe. I tried to wake up with a shower but there was no hot water so I climbed in the back of the car and fell asleep. We drove out of Cachi and up into the mountains, headed straight into the clouds that surrounded the mountaintops and over a high rocky mountain pass. Inside the clouds, we were surrounded by thick wet white fog and couldn’t see much; then suddenly we emerged from the whiteness and the world dropped away; we could see across another valley, a richly green world of steep, carpeted mountainsides and ravines. We could see the road zig-zagging down the hillside below, fluffy little clouds above and below us, and yellow morning sunlight starting to warm the tops of the mountains.

The valley is called Valle Encantada, the Enchanted Valley. The drive was a little scary but we were duly delighted and awestruck by the valley itself. We passed only two buildings on this road, and we stopped at one of them for breakfast. They only served one thing and it was great: fresh, soft home-made goat cheese, crusty bread, apricot jam and milky coffee.

After breakfast the road started to level out, and unlike the past few days, the hills were green and lush and jungly again. We passed farmland and tobacco plantations and by lunchtime we were in the city of Salta (Argentina’s eighth largest city), where we said goodbye to our big car and checked into a hostel. After a nap, we walked around exploring the city and had some paella at an old Spanish restaurant. The architecture in Salta is old and beautiful and many of the buildings are neatly painted in bright colors. Some of the oldest buildings were built by 16th and 17th- century Franciscans.

At night there was a big asado at the hostel, lots of grilled meat and wine and company.

DAY 6: In the morning we set out to find the tram-ride thingy that carries you up Cerro San Bernardo, a tall hill within the city. At the top of the hill is a very pretty little park with panoramic views of the city.

After lunch, we packed our bags one last time and climbed on the bus for a 19-hour ride back to Buenos Aires. What a trip!!!

Bajofondo / electrotango

I just heard that Bajofondo is playing Central Park Summerstage tonight! I think it’s free. Awesome. Actually i’ve never seen a central park summerstage show (based on a suspicion that it would involve too much waiting-in-lines) nor have i seen Bajofondo play live but anyway, I have a few of their cd’s and I like their music. It’s more or less electro-tango, i think it’s really easy for anybody to enjoy.

Buenos Aires is s totally saturated in tango music and culture, it was weird moving here and knowing nothing about tango. At least half the time people hear my american accent they ask me “oh, did you come here to study tango?” At first all the tango everything (cds, stage shows, street performers, tango schools, tango shoes, tango apparel, tango murals, tango vacations, tango museums, etcetcetc!) struck me as touristy and schlocky but now I am totally filled with awe and respect for this intense tango culture and tradition that’s all around Buenos Aires all the time. And I’ve realized how much I love accordions.

During the military dictatorship in the 1970′s, tango dancing was outlawed (like most other types of public gathering). So tango culture became less popular and started to die out. It became an old-peoples’ culture, just a throwback to old times… but now there’s a whole new interest in tango, tons of young people are learning to dance and in addition to the milongas filled with old people dancing tango, there are now other milongas filled with young people dancing tango. I love going to a place where you can see everyone, young and old, twenty-five-year-old hipsters and ninety-year-old guys with suits and neatly greased hair, crowded together and gliding around the same dance floor. And although you can pay US$300 for a big tango dinner show, you can also go to the community center in any neighborhood and pay $2 to dance cheek-to-cheek with the local senior citizens, if you know how.
Anyway, i’m obviously neither expert nor purist when it comes to tango music; I totally love all of this electro-tango music: Bajofondo, and Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky, Tanghetto, ummm, i think there’s more but i can’t remember, i’ll check my ipod and post more later…

wall animation

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Andrew just sent me this link, an awesome video made in Buenos Aires. Wall paintings and graffiti and stencils and street art is one of my favorite favorite things about Buenos Aires. It is everywhere and it’s out of control and it’s interesting and beautiful.
Also, incidentally, I am feeling in a great mood. Not sure why, it’s a cold gray rainy day out there but I’m feeling proud for having survived the past thirty years and excited about the day ahead of me.

OH GOD THE SMOKE!

……….. i promised myself not to post any more boring whiny quality-of-life posts (see: internet disaster) for a while, but OH MY GOD. this is so so so so intense i can’t not write about it. Buenos Aires is totally filled with foul, evil-smelling, thick smoke. It’s been here for 3 days and it’s really hard to live. I mean, it’s stinging my eyes and hard to breathe, and it hurts my throat and it makes my head hurt and it makes me feel sick and it wakes me up at night when I can’t sleep for the stench. It’s like an evil thick thick milk fog in the streets outside, but it goes all the way up into the sky and it comes inside the houses and buildings. Last night we went to see a movie at the mall, and the mall was filled with smoke and inside the theater you could see the smoke, thick in the beam of the projector. I am praying that there is no smoke in Montevideo because I can’t stand it any longer. Also, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get to Montevideo this afternoon because I think they’ve closed down most of the city’s roads and transportation, and maybe the port, due to low visibility.
The story is that farmers in Entre Rios have been burning fields and pastures, and that the fires have spread out of control, and the wind is bringing all the smoke straight into the city. Fires have spread to islands in the river delta, now most of the fires are on islands, which are hard to reach and extinguish. Clarin says that only a “change in the weather” can put out those fires, and firefighters are now just fighting to contain the fires from spreading further. The thing is that last week we also had one day of intense, fierce smoke, and it barely hit the news – though the brief statements said it was also attributed to farmers burning land. At that point i was all freaking out already, like “why doesn’t someone do something about this?” and the president and the mayor were totally silent and there was no mention of, say, putting out the fires, or prohibiting intentional burning of farmland. Last week they just ran a statement saying it was no big deal and the smoke’s not toxic. NOW the smoke is back, and it’s much worse, and the government’s all “oh god, it’s out of control, we’re doing everything we can but we can’t put the fires out! we’ll never allow this to happen again!” So it makes me feel like they just ignored the problem until it became too big to control, and now it’s too late! Not sure if that’s really accurate, but everybody knows it makes you feel a tiny bit better if you can blame someone for your suffering. The paper says the smoke is not toxic because it’s coming from organic materials, but I am skeptical about that, I’m pretty sure this is not good for living creatures.
Anyway… this sucks. Really really sucks. Can’t breathe. Head hurts. I wish I could get out of this smoke, I wish I knew somewhere to go. I wish I could go up to Maine and breathe fresh air for the weekend. I hope this isn’t giving me brain damage or something. I read that the smoke has reached Montevideo too, but I’m hoping maybe it’s not as bad there. And hoping they will open the port in time for our ferry this afternoon! HELP! got to get out of here. “Buenos Aires,” my ass!

Buenos Aires without beef!

Things are getting kind of crazy here because of a national farmers’ strike that is making it impossible to buy beef and difficult to get milk and flour in the capital! Farming is a huge part of the national economy, and Argentina is one of the world’s main exporters of beef and soya and wheat, while grains are becoming increasingly precious recourses throughout the world. So President Cristina Kirchner is raising taxes on farming exports (I read that some taxes have increased as much as 45%) and in response, the farmers have gone on strike. Protesters are blocking highways and not letting allowing trucks through, or dumping out the produce on the highway. I believe the strike has been on for like two weeks now, but it’s just starting to be a really big deal in the Capital, because there is no more beef left in the stores! The shelves are empty! And people here are accustomed to eating a LOT of beef, like every day! (well, the ones who can afford it, anyway.) What will they eat? Luckily for me, I eat more vegetables and grains than meat or dairy, and for some reason there are still plenty of vegetables for sale. According to the paper, milk and dairy are disappearing too, because trucks full of milk have been stopped in roadblocks for days, the milk is going sour in the trucks and not reaching the factories or stores. Yikes.

On Tuesday evening, President Cristina Kirchner gave a public address which was apparently intended to comfort and calm everyone, but it had the opposite effect, and after her speech there were huge protests all around the city, with people banging pots and pans in the streets. It’s interesting to note that there is a special name for these protests, the banging of pots and pans in the streets, CACEROLEZOS, In 2001, when the Argentinte peso was devalued and everyone lost their life savings, housewives famously took to the streets with pots and pans to protest. I’m not sure if that was the beginning of the tradition, or just the most well-known example.

Anyway, Cristina says she will not negotiate with the farmers until they end the strike, and the farmers say that they will not end the strike until she backs down, and the beef-loving residents of Buenos Aires are caught in the middle. It seems like public sympathies are generally leaning towards the farmers, this based on two casual conversations and the results of a readers’ poll in Clarin.

Cataracas del Iguazu

Last weekend we went to see Iguazu Falls! it was kind of an impulse decision, because our friends Eamon and Lucy were going that weekend and we decided to meet up with them there. Iguazu Falls is probably the most popular natural-wonder tourist attraction in Argentina. At least once a week somebody has asked us “have you seen Iguazu yet? It’s amazing, you have to go!”

Iguazu is the world’s second-largest waterfall, after Victoria Falls in South Africa. It’s in Misiones province, north of Buenos Aires (about 16 hours away by bus or 2 hours by plane), on the border between Argentina and Brasil. The mighty Iguazu river just spreads out and falls off a cliff. When the river is full, there are 275 individual falls. The biggest is called el Garganta del Diablo, the devil’s throat.

We arrived in Puerto Iguazu on Thursday afternoon, in the middle of a rainstorm, and checked into the Hostel Park Iguazu, near the bus station downtown. Puerto Iguazu is the closest town on the Argentine side to the falls. It’s pretty small, kind of simple and shabby and sweet, a bit touristy but not nearly as much as you might imagine. We took a walk down the main drag, looking for some dinner, but every single restaurant looked like standard-issue boring argentine food (steak, pizza, bla, bla, bla) and more expensive than the same thing would cost in Buenos Aires! So we ended up getting some fresh ravioli and sauce at the grocery store and cooking in our hostel kitchen. We had a nice dinner on the patio, played some cards and talked to some German tourists who were nearing the end of a year-long round-the-world trip.

In the morning we took the yellow city bus, El Practico, into the park and paid our $40 pesos entry fee. We started out on the Macuco Trail, a 7 km hike through the rainforest. It’s the only trail that doesn’t take you near the main falls, it’s just a flat, easy trail through the jungle with a tiny waterfall at the end. It was a great peaceful way to see flora and fauna, away from the crowds at the main falls.

We passed only three other hikers on the trail all day. At the end, you can go out on a walkway over the waterfall and look down the cliff, and then you can scramble down a steep path to the bottom of the cliff and look up at the fall. We were hot and sticky from hiking in the jungle and we stripped off and jumped in the pool at the bottom of the falls! it was amazingly chilly considering that it’s late summer in the northern jungle! mike climbed right under the waterfall and took a shower.
On our way out, we passed some cute cute little nutria peeking out from the bushes. We also took pictures of jungly vines, scurrying lizards, ginormous ants, and a bright-striped snake crossing the trail.

We got back to the park entrance hot and sweaty and tired and hungry, and went for the $32 pesos lunch buffet at “la selva” restaurant, which was actually way way tastier than we expected. they had brazilian black beans with sausage, and tangy hot sauce on the side! (you never get black beans anywhere in Buenos Aires, nor decent hot sauce!) also they give you a free caipirinha with lunch, yum!

After lunch we were full and lazy so we got on the “ecological” train and rode out to el Garganta del Diablo. From the trolley stop, you walk out for ten minutes on a walkway which takes you right over the wide river and marshy islands, to the very lip of the biggest falls. All around the park they’ve built steel and wood walkways that allow you to walk out to the edge of the cliffs, and look right down over the precipice, with a bazillion tons of water hurtling down the falls right under your feet. It’s absolutely awe-inspiring standing there and seeing this rushing falling water all around. You get completely soaked in the mist and spray, and when you look down you can’t see the bottom of the falls, just a great cloud of spray. There are little rainbows all around when the sun shines.

Supposedly Eleanor Roosevelt said “poor Niagara!” when she first saw Iguazu Falls.

We hiked on the “green trail” back to the park entrance and got out around closing time, 6:00 or 7:00. We ended up in a different hostel on Friday and Saturday night, the garish Hostel-Inn Iguazu ($36 pesos per night, mixed dorm), on the highway closer to the park entrance. It’s this enormous super deluxe “hostel” with fancy landscaped grounds around a huge curvy swimming pool (and pool-side bar), with cabañas and a great big main hall with a cafe and bar and lofty activity hall and hang-out zone with kitschy chandeliers hanging from the rafters. It seemed like pure heaven for the college freshmen Abercrombie & Fitch crowd, but it’s kind of a weird place to be if you’re over 23 and you’re not wearing a Hollister t-shirt. Anyway, once i got used to feeling like i was on the set of an ad for something stupid and expensive, I could hardly complain about swimming in the pool, watching the sun set while reading on the patio under the palm trees, and playing ping-pong after the sun went down. It’s not easy to get into town from the Hostel-Inn, so you end up having to hang out “on-campus” all night and buy their overpriced beer and eat the food they serve you. Again, we expected the food to suck but it was not too bad at all.

We got into the park early the next morning and took a boat ride up to the falls! For $120 pesos, we got a land-rover ride over red mud roads through the jungle, with a park ranger pointing out flora and fauna along the way and telling us about the park environment. Then we got to the river and climbed in a boat, taking off all our clothes and shoes and packing them in waterproof bags, just wearing swimsuits and life-jackets. The river started out calm and quiet, and then our speed-boat started barreling up rapids and soon we were in sight of the falls. We passed a great set of falls called Los Tres Mosqueteros, hurtled towards el Garganta del Diablo, going straight under a smaller cascade, then we turned around and drifted back into a quiet pool at the base of Los Tres Mosqueteros. We could see bright dots all around the cliffs, visitors looking down at us from the various walkways traversing the falls. The boat took us straight into Los Tres Mosqueteros falls, under the pounding water so even when I opened my eyes I could see nothing but water pouring down on me! They did some crazy speedboat loops around the falls and then left us dripping at the landing on the lower trail.

Once we got wrung out and dressed again, we took a very boring 2-minute ferry ride to the Isla San Martin, the steep island sticking out between El Garganta del Diablo and Los Tres Mosqueteros. After a steep climb, we walked around paved paths atop the jungly island, and got some breathtaking views of the river and all the falls.

We took the ferry back and went around the lower trail loop, which lets you see all the falls from below. Then had some lunch at a little “food-court” sorta plaza within the park. We caught an up-close glimpse of the jarringly ugly white concrete Sheraton Hotel, built within the national park in the seventies, with some rooms facing the falls. It’s so out of place, and nearby is another building, a beautiful one which apparently used to be a hospital. The old hospital is so charming, and looks like it fits inside the park, while the Sheraton looks like a slap in the face. Luckily it’s not visible from most of the park.

After lunch we went out on the Upper Loop, which takes you on walkways across the tops of all the waterfalls, so you can look down on them from the edge of the precipice. There are great flocks of butterflies frolicking all about, and the mist coming up in the sunshine makes rainbows all around.

We looked for unicorns in the forest but could not see any. After the upper loop, we’d covered all the trails in the whole park! so we retired back to the Spring Break 2K8 hostel and washed the red mud from our tired feet in the swimming pool.
We actually never set foot on the Brazilian side of the falls, because we’re US citizens it would’ve cost us US$100 to get a one-day visa to cross the border, and most of the park is on the Argentine side so we were told we didn’t miss too much, except for a panoramic viewpoint on the Brazilian side looking across at the Argentine side.
That evening our friends Eamon and Lucy arrived from Buenos Aires, along with some visitors from England. The hostel put on a gigantic asado on the patio, and we ate mountains of grilled bife and fresh veggies and played travel scrabble and enjoyed all-you-can-drink caipirinhas.

So, in all an amazing experience. I wouldn’t recommend that crazy hostel unless you’re REALLY into that kind of thing. The park is really not a total nature experience, with the walkways and trolleys and speed-boats and food-court. But it was mostly nature, totally beautiful and wasn’t as crowded and congested as we’d imagined. It was never annoying or too crowded to get around or see the falls. It was actually cool being surrounded by visitors from all over the world, we heard more different languages on the paths at the falls than I’ve ever heard in one day before, even way more than any day in New York! The wood-and-steel-grate walkways that carried us out over the falls let us be atop and inside the waterfalls in a totally dramatic way (and easily-accessible for people with limited mobility) that would’ve been impossible if the park had only dirt paths going around the outside of the falls.

Buenos Aires eats

I was thinking I should really make more posts about Buenos Aires and life here. The easiest thing to start with is food. We started going out to eat a lot more when we moved here. Of course it’s cheaper to go out to dinner here than it was in New York, but I think we also didn’t know many people or things to do when we first got here, so hunting for great restaurants was like our primary entertainment for the first few months. It still is, sometimes. Also, I’m a little homesick for the world-wide cuisine of New York. Porteño cuisine offers some of the world’s most delicious steak, malbec, empanadas, dulce de leche, etc, and i’m sure lots of people can write about porteño foods much more knowledgeably than I can, so my list reflects my fondness for variety and international flavors. And even most foreign restaurants in Buenos Aires have lots of Argentine influences, such as a focus on great beef and not much spice. We don’t go out to eat now as much as we did in our first months, but we love it when people come to visit from out-of-town so we can take them out to our favorite eats. I’m starting a short list of our favorite restaurants and I’ll keep adding on as I have time (or discover new yummy places!).

Sarkis is a huge middle-eastern restaurant on the edge of Palermo/Villa Crespo. The prices are great and the food is really delicious. The menu is huge – we always pick a half-dozen different appetizer-type things (favorites: puré de remolacha=grated beets; laban=delicious yogurt-type dip; couscous; baba ghanoush; keppe=ground meat with mint; not hummus because it tastes like peanuts), plus their tasty falafel and unbelievably delicious grilled lamb kebabs. If the menu is overwhelming you can usually ask the waiter to just bring a bunch of food to share, and they’ll bring you a great selection of good stuff. Sarkis is always crowded, always noisy, and usually has a long line to get in. Show up early, put your name on the waiting list, maybe bring a beer to drink while you wait in line. They’re good at accommodating big groups since the place is so huge.

Bangalore is a British-style pub serving tasty curries and pub food downstairs, and more formal Indian dinners upstairs. Since it’s right around the corner from our new apartment, we have been eating and drinking there a lot. It’s homey, comfy, delicious and relatively cheap. Maybe not a spectacular highlight if you’re just visiting BA for a week, but if you’re here for a while, you’re feeling homesick for some decent beer and spicy curries, Bangalore is so perfect. The pumpkin curry and jalafrezi are so delicious. The prices for the daily curry specials are pretty good (as of 2/10, $28 for lots of curry, jasmine rice, and soft warm indian bread) and there’s a curry sampler that’s even cheaper! ($16 for four different curries in little dishes, with pita slices which are usually a little dried-out but hey it’s cheap!) though the quality can be a little inconsistent, especially for the bargain curry sampler. We also love the Thali dinners for two, both vegetarian and non-veg options that include four different curries, rice, bread, good salad and these tasty sweet-corn fritters. If you order the spicy curries here, they are actually spicy!!! unlike most other restaurants in Argentina. The beer selection is better than average – they have tasty Antares Scotch on tap, and the pitchers of gin & tonic are delicious and also a great deal. There’s also other pub food like nachos, burgers, wraps, etc. Bangalore gets mad crowded on the weekends and basically every night after 9:00, so if you want to eat in the pub downstairs, show up early, like 7:00, or else expect to wait an hour or two at the bar and drink a few pints standing at the crowded bar while you wait to pounce on a table. Upstairs they have a different menu, a bit pricier. You can’t get the cheaper pub-food items upstairs. Best to make a reservation if you want to sit upstairs on the weekend.

Cusic is a cute, quiet, homey cafe with some lovely outdoor spaces. It’s on a deserted block in Palermo Hollywood, and you have to ring a big old metal bell to be let in. You enter through the front patio, passing under the boughs of a beautiful willow tree (when the weather is warm you can eat at one of the tables under this tree) and inside is a nice big open space with plenty of tables, the menu is hand-written on giant chalk-boards and there is also a pair of comfy couches around a coffee-table with magazines, an upstairs loft with larger tables, and a sweet little backyard with an herb garden and another table where you can eat outside. I think the drinks are the best thing here – they have great fruit juices and smoothies, ginger lemonade, iced tea, a great big frappuchino, hot teas, submarinos, coffees, etc. The food is pretty simple cafe / comfort food, not amazing but decent. I usually like their vegetarian food better than their meat options. I mostly get the Frida Wrap, which is cream cheese, american cheese slices, tomato, cilantro and avocado, inside of a homemade flour tortilla, with a generous green salad or delicious potato wedges. They have great breakfasts with eggs and smoked salmon and the potatoes are always great. They have nice cinnamon rolls (uncommon in argentina!) and bagel-like things. The prices are okay, if not very cheap… like $8 or 10 pesos for a big smoothie, $20 for a sandwich with salad, or $20 for an enormous breakfast with eggs, salmon, tea, juice, etc. If the price isn’t rock-bottom cheap and the food isn’t always spectacular, they hit a good sweet spot where the food is generally satisfying, the prices aren’t too bad and it’s totally worth it just to sit there drinking tea and enjoying the beautiful space and friendly staff. I come here a lot to work, just to have a cup of coffee and a muffin and sit quietly working for hours on end.

Arevalito is our other neighborhood super-favorite spot. It is literally just a spot, not much bigger! Basic little vegetarian hippie bistro kind of place, they only have about 8 chairs and it feels a bit cramped inside – since we live around the corner we often do take-out. But on warm days they put tables out on the sidewalk which is actually pretty fantastic and comfortable. The food is home-cooked vegetarian, almost always quite delicious. They do great, filling casseroles, stews and pasta dishes, good salads and sandwiches, and a tasty ginger-mint lemonade. They have good coffees and breakfast options, awesome desserts and baked goods, great lunches and dinners too. The prices are excellent!! Very affordable. The menu is smallish, they hand-write the menu each day with different (whimsically named) items every day. Any variation on a moroccan stew is usually great. The “DF” meal is not authentic mexican by any stretch, but is usually a tasty, fun assortment of good fresh stuff. Their pastas are always excellent, especially the creamy mushroom pasta. The kitchen is open so you see your food being cooked next to you, and while the service can be “argentine style” (that means occasionally slow and forgetful), the folks are generally friendly and lovable. The chef used to run a vegetarian cafe in Holland in the seventies! Added bonus: unlike most places, Arevalito is open during the afternoon, they may not have a full menu during the afternoon but they can always come up with a sandwich or something delicious and filling.

Bi Won: a Korean restaurant in Once (Junin 548, 4372-1146, cash only, closed sundays). I think it’s pretty authentic Korean but i’m not an expert. The star of the show is Korean barbecue, unbelievably tender and delicious marinated strips of beef or pork. They’ll bring you a grill to cook it yourself on your table, or they will cook it for you in the kitchen. There’s also tasty noodle soups, dumplings, bi-bim-bap, soju, and lots of other stuff I’ve never ordered. As soon as you sit down they will bring you a delicious array of 10 or 12 little dishes, like Korean tapas, ranging from pickled spicy cabbage kim-chi to potato salad to seaweed and sometimes a dish of tiny crispy whole fishes. It’s a little expensive but totally totally worth it. The ambience and decor are a bit weird, but the waiters are always really nice. ::EDIT: since posting this, we’ve discovered WAY more exciting Korean food in Flores. Bi-Won is still good though if you’re in the neighborhood and don’t have time/energy to go all the way out to Flores::

Green Bamboo: a fancy spot in Palermo Hollywood that serves an Argentine version of Vietnamese food. They have lots of special cocktails; try the Green Velvet, a basil-ginger-saki-vodka cocktail. The entrees are huge and very tasty, though they are more “vietnamese-inspired” than authentic. Mike has gotten excellent beef dishes, such as “Bo Luc Lac, sauteed tenderloin beef cubes marinated with lemongrass, honey and sweet chilli,” and I’ve tried a few seafood and vegetable dishes which are all delicious. There is a dessert, ripe bananas wrapped in thin super-crispy warm fried flaky dough, involving chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, and an awkward cloud of hair-thin spun-caramel perched on top, which is unbelievably delicious! I am drooling just thinking about it. The prices are a bit expensive ($35-$50 pesos per entree as of 2/08, which I’m sure will continue to rise) and the kitchen is VERY VERY VERY slow and it’s painful having to wait an hour for the food to arrive, but it’s always really tasty when it does turn up. We really only go to this place when we need a place to bring guests, since it’s too expensive (and slow) to eat here all the time. It’s a comfy place with kind of cute and kitschy decor, a few fake bamboo plants and beaded curtains and pretty paper lanterns.

Antigua Querencia: our favorite basic Argentine neighborhood parrilla. It’s right around the corner from our house in Almagro, and delicious and cheap. We can share one bife de lomo, a punto, with sweet potato fries and a lettuce-tomato-onion salad. They serve ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. Everything’s perfect, the only sad thing is that (like almost every other restaurant in BA) they don’t have ketchup for the fries. We usually make a reservation because it’s pretty popular.

Artemisia is a vegetarian-and-fish restaurant on Cabrera in Palermo Soho. It’s great to visit an oasis of flavorful, fresh, healthy, veggie-centric food in a city of steak and pizza. The best part is before dinner you get a plate with different kinds of warm, freshly-baked homemade bread! and some tasty white bean spread to put on top. The ginger lemonade is really really delicious, sweet and tart and spicy! We’ve loved the salmon raviolis (no dough – each ravioli is made of two thin slices of salmon, stuck together, with a little packet of mushrooms and veggies inside) and had a few delicious polenta dishes, one of them included sauteed greens, tomatoes and brown-sugar-candied garlic. The salads are always great. The only mediocre thing was an “indian rice” or “hindu rice” or something like that which was salty, boring and bland. But everything else is always great. They have a nice list of organic wines and an impressive selection of herbal teas. The menus are cute but a little hard to read; they are handwritten on a stack of small brown paper bags. ::EDIT: as of 2010 there is a SECOND location of Artemisia opening up in Palermo Hollywood, at the corner of Gorriti and Arevalo, conveniently located two blocks from our current apartment!! can’t wait to go check it out::

Olsen is a “nordic” restaurant in Palermo Hollywood, one of the few places here that we’ve found a satisfyingly huge and tasty weekend brunch. (They offer a long list of imported vodkas, but I’m not such a vodka person, so I’ve stuck to the food.) My favorite favorite dish here (i think it’s only available on the dinner menu) is smoked pork neck with cranberry sauce (or maybe it’s lingonberry sauce, to go with the Ikea theme?) which is more flavorful and tender than any pork I have ever tried before. If you like bacon, you will be very happy with their pork neck. It’s not all chewy and greasy like bacon though. It’s just purely awesome. For brunch, they have a cute and tricky menu/placemat which offers different-sized combinations of tasty brunch options. Their crispy golden chunky potatoes are my favorites, although (of course) i wish they could give me ketchup with that. They have a pork option for breakfast which is basically as delicious as the pork neck dinner entree. I have good luck ordering the daily special for brunch, it’s always been super tasty and very very big. Last time we ordered waffles but were a little disappointed with small, hard, waffles and of course no maple syrup (why am i so obsessed with sauces?). They have nice fresh green salads, and a cute “smorgasbord” which is 5 little nibbles, small bits of bread with spreads and toppings, it’s expensive and not filling at all but it’s cute. Olsen is kind of pricey in general but it’s always really satisfying! The scandinavian-modern design of the space seems kind of overly dramatic, but I do like the feeling of walking in off the street into their front garden, which has some tables and seats in it, and usually if the weather is OK they open up the front wall of the restaurant so that the front of the restaurant feels kind of like it’s in the garden too.

Carlito’s: Corrientes 3100, close to Abasto Shopping (there’s a whole strip of Peruvian restaurants here, but we were told this is the best one and we are willing to believe it). A very popular Peruvian greasy-spoon serving amazingly delicious and cheap rotisserie chicken with spicy sauces on the side. They also serve aji de gallina (shredded chicken in sauce that’s actually spicy), ceviche, jalea (an enormous mountain of fried seafood), lots of seafood, fried-rice dishes, and even salchipapa, a giant platter of french-fries mixed with hot dog slices. Really, though, it’s all about the rotisserie chicken. I think it’s around $18 pesos to get a half-chicken with salad and french fries, which can easily feed 2 people and probably three. How do they make that chicken so juicy and tender and flavorful?! Everything is served with two different creamy sauces on the side, a sweet tangy watery one, and a hot spicy exciting one that tastes like green jalapeños. Mike is so obsessed with Carlito’s that he actually wants to eat there every day. Really. Every day. My favorite thing is chicha, a thin sweet dark purple clove-flavored drink which is supposedly corn-based. It reminds me of Christmas-flavored kool-aid, plus little sweet fruity chunks in the bottom. Only $1 a cup. The eating experience at Carlito’s is usually a little intense, it’s one big room, brightly lit, plastic tables and chairs, always completely packed, lots of kids running around, loud cumbia playing on the jukebox, guys squeezing between tables selling bootleg DVD’s and the waiters somehow scurrying through it all, bringing your tasty chicken very quickly.

Sudestada is an uber-minimal, clean, modern place in Palermo Hollywood that serves slightly-more-authentic Southeast Asian food. It’s one of my favorite places to eat, although on a few occasions we’ve had serious disappointments there. Dinner is pretty expensive so we mostly stick to the reasonable lunch special. $28 pesos gets you a drink (choose the tangy Thai lemonade!) and a salad or dumplings, plus your choice from a limited menu of entrees. We always always always go with Bo Xao which is a smoky lemongrass stir-fried beef with potatoes and peppers over rice, and the noodle dish, I forgot the name but I think it’s the only noodle dish on the lunch menu. Sometimes I get the battered, deep-fried sweet & sour fish, which is actually REALLY delicious despite its alarming raspberry-kool-aid color. The waiters here are so serious and the decor is so serious, the whole package initially came off as cold and inhospitable, but after many many many happy lunch-hours spent here, I have grown to love almost everything about this place. Except for the vegetable fried rice, do not order that unless you are a fan of the cubed-carrots-corn-and-peas veggie mix from the freezer section, plus rice and no flavor. Go with the noodles or beef!

La Cabrera: favorite place for niiiiiice Argentine beef. It’s a fancy parrilla, prices are way higher than the average neighborhood parrilla but the meat is SO. GOOD. And they’re accustomed to foreigners so they ask how you want your steak – “a punto” means medium-rare. (traditionally argentine beef is cooked aggressively, leaving no trace of pink whatsoever, and leaving the meet too tough for my taste.) La Cabrera’s bife de lomo (i believe in English that is tenderloin) serves two people easily. The bife de chorizo could probably serve three. Usually we order only two or three steaks for four people, and expect to have leftovers. Bife de Lomo con Tomillo (thyme-rubbed beef) is fantastic. On top of the great beef, every steak comes with a half-dozen little side dishes, you never know what you’ll get – they’re often delicious, sometimes a little odd. Common sides are roasted garlic in a brown sugar glaze; pickled quail eggs; homemade warm applesauce; garlicky mashed potatoes; black and green olive tapenades; some of the weirder ones involve mystery vegetables with too much mayo. The service is usually friendly and many of the waiters speak some English. They only take reservations for an 8:00 seating, so if you have no reservation, or want to eat later, you show up and wait in line, usually a long wait but with a little luck they will give you a glass of champagne while you wait.

ok, got to get back to work. coming soon:
Casa Felix amazing vegetarian, closed-door restaurant in the chef’s private home. interesting indigenous ingredients. expensive.
Oui Oui french-style cafe & bakery. great breakfast & lunch, crowded on weekends. good for sitting and working on weekdays – they have wifi.
Thymus expensive, indulgent, incredibly delicious prix-fixe dinner. argentine / european food.
milion beautiful, cool bar and restaurant in an old mansion in Recoleta. I think it’s best to come here for cocktails, the bar is great. Dinner in the back yard can be awesome, it’s a gorgeous building, but the service can be weird and the food isn’t cheap.
status peruvian food, nicer than carlito’s (they have tablecloths!) really good prices.
osaka asian-peruvian fusion. kind of pretentious and super-modern, expensive, but delicious!
ocho 7 ocho “speakeasy” bar, really fancy whiskey selection, all kinds of interesting cocktails, and pretty good dinners – great lamb burger. kind of expensive.
Home boutique hotel with a cute little bar/cafe that caters to foreigners. very cute garden, gorgeous place to sit for a cocktail or a cup of tea. they also have amazing wallpapers, and a spa where you can get a little massage. cafe prices are OK (massages are pricey)
Olivas i Lustres really fun and weird and interesting place with a fixed-price tasting menu for two. The place is really cozy and cute, the tiny little dishes on the tasting menu are all about unusual presentation and some of them are excellent, though not all.The food is sometimes delicious and sometimes a bit odd, but it’s as much about the aesthetics and the experience.
Bereber moroccan food. beautiful place, indulgent food and atmosphere, kind of expensive
La Reina Kunti super-hippie place with vegetarian “indian” food that’s not consistently indian-like nor all that great. But some things are tasty, the atmosphere is lovely, it’s in a beautiful old house, it’s a cozy and fun place to hang out with friends.
Spring weird vegetarian buffet place.
bio famous vegetarian cafe in Palermo. food is good but more expensive and not as good as arevalito!
la dorita good Argentine steak place. Less expensive – but not as good as – La Cabrera.
casa china “health food” store in Chinatown (Belgrano) that serves hot, tasty, asian-style vegetarian takeout food from a window, only on weekends at lunchtime. tasty dumplings, rice buns, excellent soup, other good stuff. there are a few other places around chinatown that have similar tasty street food/takeout stuff.
chungo = BEST ice cream in a city full of amazing ice cream. crocatta de mani = crunchy peanut brittle ice cream. SO GOOD. ask to sample flavors – it’s free and you can try as many as you want!

if anybody’s coming to visit Buenos Aires, it’s good to know a few things about restaurants here. Few restaurants accept credit cards, so bring cash. Try to make reservations, as lots of the best places will be booked up if you just wander in at dinnertime. A dinner reservation usually gets the table for the entire night. Prices go up all the time because of inflation. Service is generally slower than it is in the usa, waiters in the less fancy restaurants aren’t used to a lot of tips and therefore don’t kiss ass or hustle too much. and people usually spend a long time over a meal, drinking coffee and chatting afterwards. Waiters will never bring your check until you ask for it, and you should hand money to the waiter rather than leaving it on the table. Sometimes a place can have great service and food one day, and poor service and bad-quality food another day! I think these things are not as consistent here as they are in the usa. Most restaurants close after lunch, around 2:30 or 3, and stay closed until dinner-time, around 8:00 or 8:30. If you’re hungry between 3:00 and 8:00 it can be hard to find a place to eat! Mostly only the standard-issue corner cafe-type places are open. www.guiaoleo.com is a great resource to help you find almost any restaurant (or type of food) you’re looking for. And this blog can be an interesting resource too.

Mar de las Pampas

This weekend we had a few days off for the holiday so we took our first trip to the Atlantic coast south of BsAs. Although Buenos Aires is technically a port city, it doesn’t have the kind of relationship with its water that most port cities do. It’s not a city built around the water; I only catch a glimpse of the river every few weeks and I miss the water. I miss boats and tides and seashore! So I was looking forward to exploring the Atlantic coast relatively near the city. The biggest beach city is Mar del Plata, but we wanted less city, more nature, so we looked a little to the north of there, and went for a cabin in Mar de las Pampas, a few miles south of Villa Gessell. I would’ve loved to camp, but we weren’t sure how to secure a camground reservation and don’t have a tent yet.

The towns of Villa Gessell, Mar de las Pampas, Las Gaviotas and Mar Azul are all in a line along the sandy Atlantic beach. They were just sand dunes, still drifting, until enterprising developers bought the dunes and planted pine forests to stabilize them, with the idea of creating peaceful little towns in harmony with nature. Between the nineteen-thirties and the sixties they developed into picturesque little vacation towns and became famous hippie towns in the sixties and seventies.

Now Villa Gessell, the biggest, is a city of high-rise tower blocks looming over the beach, while Mar de las Pampas is a posh little vacation town with a kinda Hamptons feeling (complete with little wooden shopping malls and a Havana store, the Argentinian version of Starbucks). Mar de las Pampas is touted as a “slow village,” with unpaved roads and 30km/hour speed limit to encourage walking, but we found an awful lot of cars and not a whole lot of walkers. There are also a lot of kids on four-wheelers zipping around the beach and town, which was noticeably un-peaceful. Las Gaviotas and Mar Azul are smaller and seem less overdone, a bit less posh and commercial, a bit more nature. Beyond Mar Azul is just sand dunes and forest.

The combination of wide beaches, pine forests, sand beach roads and posh cabins reminded me of Fire Island. Sitting by the water, looking towards the empty end of the beach, it looked amazingly like any beach in Maine.
Anyway, we had a nice weekend, both went swimming a bit (the water was a bit warmer than Maine! but there was a stiff breeze all the time), took long beach walks and cooked tasty dinners in our little cabin. We found some camp-grounds right next to the beach in Mar Azul, so I like to imagine that we might come back again with a tent, as I could have enjoyed the beach quite as well without the Kountry Kute cabin and the posh restaurants.

Patagonia

I spent last week in Patagonia with Mike and his friends! it was really really amazing. I’m trying to do work right now so I will just make some notes and maybe come back later to fill in the details.
1. flew to Bariloche on Tuesday morning

2. rented a car and drove to Villa La Angostura and stayed in a little cabin in the woods.

3. wednesday morning took a ferry ride from Villa La Angostura to the end of the Quetrihué Peninsula.

4. visited the Bosque de los Arayénes, a very special forest which grows at the end of this peninsula.

5. hiked back up the peninsula, 12 km, back to Villa La Angostura. Mike and Mat and Jan jumped in a lake for an icy swim! We hiked through magical forests and met horses and cows in grassy clearings under the trees.

We got lost in the woods on a very steep mountain. We enjoyed breathtaking views from the top of the mountain.

We made it to the end of the trail, hot and tired and hungry.

6. Thursday we drove the Ruta de los Siete Lagos (that’s the Route of Seven Lakes) which actually passes nine lakes and winds between the mountains

from Villa La Angostura to San Martin de los Andes. It turned out to be a rough dirt road, sometimes one lane; it was a little scary but an amazing day of picture-postcard views.

7. Friday morning we went back to Bariloche and met our cabalgata guide, Carol Jones, and four other gringos and saddled up for our two-day horseback expedition!

This was one of the most amazing experiences EVER.

Also it was one of the most painful, because apparently my butt is not made like other peoples’ and I am too bony to ride a horse without excruciating pain. We rode mostly through fields, across creeks, up and down foothills, with the Andes all around us, and camped at around 1200 meters elevation. Carol served us steak from her own cows, cooked over the campfire, and it was delicious.

After the second day of riding, Carol drove us in her 1968 Land Rover over treacherous dry(ish) creek beds and dirt “roads” for at least an hour until we got back to the paved road to Bariloche. We collapsed into our hostel, took long, hot showers and slept a lot. Flew back to Buenos Aires first thing in the morning.