Carmelo, Uruguay

Went to Carmelo, Uruguay for the whole day on Sunday. I have to leave the country every few months, because I’m not a legal resident of Argentina. I just have to cross the border and then come back again. I usually just go across the river to Uruguay for a day. This time I went alone, and it was my first time visiting Carmelo. I like traveling by myself every now and then. I just walked around all day and sat around under trees, reading and drawing pictures.

Carmelo is a quiet, small-time tourist town on the wide brown Río de la Plata. It has a sandy river beach and a few hotels. I imagine it gets a little busy with Argentine and Uruguayan tourists in the hottest months of the summer, but it’s early spring now, everything was pretty empty. One one side is the town, lots of cobblestone streets and typical one-story houses, lots of great art deco architectural details and great old signage. There are a handful of old hotels and nice old theatre buildings.

There’s a central plaza with a church and a few businesses, two restaurants and the deserted Club Uruguay. Across the bridge, there’s more grass and trees, horses and goats grazing in peoples’ yards, a few boat clubs and if you walk about 20 minutes you get to the beach, it’s in a big park with campsites and a few desolate-looking beachside restaurant type places. Everyone here seems to be riding a little motor scooter, I think if I came back again I would totally look into renting a scooter too.

I left home before dawn to catch a train out to Tigre, and then in Tigre I caught a ferry, it’s a three-hour ride out through the delta and across the river to Carmelo. Stayed there all day and then caught the 8:00 ferry home, got into Tigre around 10:45 and then finally got home around midnight. Long day. But a nice one.

a(n incomplete) designer’s guide to buenos aires

stencil/graffiti mural in Carabobo subte station

every now and then friends ask me about art-and-design-related stuff to do and things to see in Buenos Aires. It’s fun answering this question; the city is bountiful of eye candy. I’ve been sticking together a rough and of course incomplete list of memorable places and things to suggest to like-minded design enthusiasts, here’s what i’ve got so far:

DESIGN SHOPS:

Papelera Palermo = Palermo Soho. beautiful space selling handmade and hand-printed papers, notebooks, art books, etc… retail store at Honduras 4945. they also have a workshop where they give classes (and make most of the stuff sold in the shop) at Cabrera 5227

CouCou

CouCou = gurruchaga 1783. Palermo Soho. very cute little shop that carries lots of fun objects made by independent designers: home goods, stationery, jewelry, lots of cute tote-bags, baby clothes, etc. The owner Emi is very nice and friendly! She has a great eye, the store always looks super cute and she has a wonderful selection of interesting things!

Fabrolab = Nicaragua 4677. Palermo Soho. big space with some of everything.

Calma Chicha = Honduras 4925. Palermo. home & interior stuff, modern poppy vibe. i think they specialize in argentine-made goods.

Pic Nic = Nicaragua 6080. Palermo Hollywood. patterned wallpaper, pillows, etc. Not really original designs, but fun and colorful.

Cualquier Verdura

Cualquier Verdura = Humberto 1º 517. San Telmo. a beautiful house filled with good-quality vintage stuff, tchotchkes, kitsch, toys, games, a few clothes, mid-century modern furniture, fun stuff. Even the bathroom is fitted out with fun vintage stuff for sale.
Wussman = Venezuela 570. San Telmo. art gallery in the front and a wonderful stationery shop with fine papers and gifts and a letterpress printing operation in the back and an art-books-store downstairs.

El Mercado de las Pulgas

El Mercado de las Pulgas = Niceto Vega y Dorrego. Palermo Hollywood. Flea market with lots of modern home stuff.

La Pasionaria = Godoy Cruz 1541. Palermo Soho. wonderful warehouse filled with a jumble of vintage 20th century objects, , Palermo Soho. (open 4pm-8pm mon-fri, 11-8 sat)

Canasta = Delgado 1235. Colegiales. a tiny little gallery/bookstore/shop. minimal, eclectic and cute. open tues-sat 2pm-7pm.

CLOTHING:

Lupe = El Salvador 4657, Palermo Soho

and on the same block, Rapsodia. El Salvador 4757, Palermo Soho

AY Not Dead = Soler 4193, Palermo Soho

Pesqueria = armenia 1493. Palermo Soho.

Juana de Arco = El Salvador 4762. Palermo Soho.

Objeto = gurruchaga 1335. Palermo Soho.

Tramando = Rodriquez Peña 1973. Recoleta. interesting textiles and clothing by designer Martin Churba.

DAM = Honduras 4775. Palermo Soho. wacky stuff.

CAFES / RESTAURANTS / etc

Lepi Boulangerie = Roseti 1769. Chacarita. Cute bakery.

Oui Oui = Nicaragua 6068. Palermo Hollywood. coffee shop, bakery, café

Arevalito = Arevalo 1478. Palermo Hollywood. Delicious, filling, homey vegetarian café. Good coffee too. And they serve food all day long (many other BsAs restaurants close down between 2pm and 8pm which often causes visiting yankees searching for an afternoon snack to become hunger-crazed and desperate during these hours!)

an uncharacteristically quiet afternoon at Ølsen

Olsen = Gorriti 5870. Palermo Hollywood. lofty scandinavian restaurant, good brunch and impressive design (from the menus to the plates to the architecture of the restaurant itself)

Milion = Parana 1048. Recoleta. Cool, fancy bar/restaurant in a converted mansion. It’s a beautiful space. It’s always nice to have a mojito in the upstairs bar. (the bar-top is glowing alabaster!)

Cusic = El Salvador 6016. Palermo Hollywood. Cute, quiet café with two nice gardens.

Home Hotel = Honduras 5860. really cute boutique hotel with a nice bar/restaurant in the back, lovely view of the garden and pool from the café, i think in nice weather you can eat in the garden. It’s a great spot for brunches or afternoon tea. They have different cool wallpaper in each room, it’s worth taking a peek around. And they have a wonderful spa if you want to drop a bit of cash on a massage or a day of pampering.

La Catedral

La Catedral = Sarmiento 4006 (corner of Medrano). Almagro. Scruffy, dark & atmospheric tango bar, upstairs in an immense dusty warehouse.

COFFEE SHOPS & BOOKSTORES etc

Eterna Cadencia = Honduras 5574. Palermo Hollywood.a beautiful space, bookstore and cafe.

El Boutique del Libro

El Boutique del Libro = Thames 1762. Palermo Soho. another cozy bookstore/cafe. A great place to take a break from wandering around Palermo, or to bring your laptop and get some work done while you drink coffee. (ED: since this post was written, this bookstore has changed names. El Boutique del Libro opened a new location on Plaza Armenia; this bookstore is now operating under a different name but is otherwise unchanged!)

Helena = Nicaragua 4816. Palermo Soho. Cute coffee shop (no books)

El Ateneo

Ateneo Grand Splendid = Santa Fe 1860. Recoleta. This is a really impressive bookstore, converted from an old movie theater, and the café is located on the stage!

ART & GALLERIES

Espacio Fundación Telefonica = Arenales 1540. Recoleta. Arts foundation with exhibitions in gallery spaces, also an extensive library of art books, workshops, events, etc.

Fundacion PROA = Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929. La Boca. Contemporary arts museum & gallery space

Hollywood in Cambodia = Thames 1885. Palermo Soho. Graffiti art gallery and bar. Open 5pm – 9pm

Jardin Oculto = Venezuela 926. San Telmo. Art gallery

713 ARTE CONTEMPORANEO = Defensa 713. San Telmo. Art gallery.
http://www.arte713.com

Centro Cultural Borges / Galerias Pacifico = Viamonte esquina San Martín. Centro. art museum (CC Borges) is located upstairs from a very luxe shopping mall (Galerias Pacifico) in a beautiful old building.

MISC:

Graffiti Mundo tour = sounds like fun! It’s a tour of walls, galleries and studios to learn about different artists in the Buenos aires graffiti scene.

A FEW INTERESTING LOCAL DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS:

KOMware

Ana Laura Perez

Patricia Tewel

Lala Ladcani

Marina de Caro (Bola de Nieve)

http://www.proyectopanda.com.ar/

Cristian Turdera

B R A Z I L !

I’ve been kind of obsessed with visiting Brazil since about 10 minutes into my first listen to an Astrud Gilberto record in college. I guess that lots of people around the world grow up watching american TV and movies and listening to american music and they are just obsessed with going to visit the usa and seeing it all in real life. That’s just like me only with Brazil! so it’s pretty crazy that I’ve been living in Argentina for a few years now, right next to Brazil, listening to samba and bossa nova and Seu Jorge and CSS and it took me this long to finally go visit! Anyway, we’ll just say that i was SUPER PSYCHED and filled with anticipation for this trip. And Brazil lived up to my great expectations.

We split our (way-too-short) visit between Rio de Janeiro and Ilha Grande. Arrived in Rio on Friday, super exhausted from a weird flight schedule and it was pouring rain in the city so we dedicated our afternoon to digging into amazing Brazilian eats. Fish, shrimp, sushi, pineapple, mango, passionfruit, brazilian beef and caipirinhas all appeared on our lunch menu. We had a big nap and a small exploration of Ipanema, then ate awesome thai-brazilian fusion for dinner at a fancy place (Nem Thai) in Leblon.

Saturday was less rainy, so we set out with an ambitious sight-seeing plan! We unfortunately started with going up to see the Cristo Redentor at Corcovado, which turned out to be a huge touristy amusement-ride type thing, with a looooong wait. So we pretty much spent the whole day going up to Corcovado.

It was an awesome view, though! Rio is such a ridiculously beautiful city. I want to live in a city that has crazy mountains and jungle and ocean all together! Really I want to live in Rio! but without the crazy class divide and crime and stuff.

After Corcovado we wanted to take the Bonde (street-car) from the station in the Centro up to Santa Teresa, but we had some communication problems with the taxi driver (none of us can speak Portuguese, though spanish and portuguese are so similar, we mostly got by okay with speaking spanish!) and he took us to the Bonde station in Lapa instead of Centro. Lapa is a touristy area, not a favela, but it is rumored to be a great place to get mugged, and the spot where he dropped us was like this weird, trash-strewn deserted old train platform at the end of a long twisty cobblestone alley and the whole situation seemed like a bad place for a bunch of unfortunately conspicuous gringo tourists to be hanging out. We immediately regretted having climbed out of the cab, but he was gone and we were all alone with our thoughts of the 10000 warnings everyone gave us about getting mugged in Rio and not wandering aimlessly around Lapa. We were all panicky and freaked out and didn’t know what to do and night was falling fast. We totally feared the worst of every person that walked past – but all of them just walked up and waited quietly at the platform next to us. After the LONGEST half-hour ever, the bonde finally trundled up… and it was completely full, there were people hanging off the sides and out the windows and out the door and we totally couldn’t smash ourselves in there, noway nohow. So then the bonde trundled off and we were left alone again, on this platform in the dark.

Nothing to do but wander out into the streets and search for a cab. Which turned out to be very easy. Soon we were in Santa Teresa and, still a little shaky, we wandered up to the most beautiful old ramshackle hillside mansion/bookstore/bar where an awesome samba band was playing an informal show on the front porch while people seated at card tables listened to the music and drank caipirinhas and looked out over the ridiculously beautiful view of the city and mountains beyond.

Crispy pizza and much-needed drinks were ordered, and we played a few rounds of cards while the band finished up and another band started setting up on a little stage on the other side of the house, and a good crowd wandered over to dance to their afro-samba music. What an amazing and perfect spot. Later we had another awesome dinner at a Brazilian restaurant in the same neighborhood, Espirito Santo, which also had beautiful views of the city from the back patio.

Sunday, off to Ilha Grande! We took a three-hour bus ride to Angra dos Reis, with beautiful views of the mountainy coastline in the last hour.

Then a half-hour boat ride (on the fast catamaran) out to Ilha Grande! It’s a jungly island off the Atlantic coast, the former site of several infamous prisons, but has become a tourist spot in the years since the prisons shut down. It’s totally a tourist paradise, but a tiny and simple one, lots of nature and not much development.

We stayed at a place called Sagu Mini-Resort. They picked us up at the main dock and we had a 5-minute boat ride over there. It is a totally cute and kinda fancy little place, a few cabañas and a very nice restaurant.

We spent the rest of Sunday exploring Abraao, the island’s only real town. We waded in the water (it’s wintertime so the water is not very warm, but it’s Brazil so it’s not very cold either) and wandered down a string of small beaches, had caipirinhas on the beach while the sun went down. We had to wander home in the dark, as the sun sets very early (like 6pm!) and we’d forgotten our flashlight. We had a great dinner in the restaurant at Sagu, I’ve forgotten the name but it was excellent. I had linguini with scallops and shrimp and just the right amount of garlic, which was awesome, and I am very picky about pasta.

On Monday we took a hike through the jungle that covers most of the island, out to the famous Praia Lopes Mendes beach. It was steep going and the trails were made out of packed clay, which was pretty slippery on the hills!

The temperature was a bit cool in the shade of the jungle, and then sometimes the trail would come out onto a little beach and get warmed up in the sun.

At the top of the mountain the foliage opened up for a minute and we had spectacular views across the bay, and we could see the town of Abraao and a few small beaches around the island below us.

At the top of another hill, we met a friendly family of monkeys!

luckily we had a few bananas in our pack, so we shared them with these cute little guys. We think they were marmosets. Their fur was incredibly soft, but their little hands grabbed my fingers so tightly it startled me. At first they were wary of us, but as soon as they tasted our bananas they started calling all their friends and family over, and soon we were surrounded by a bajillion curious monkeys.

We hiked for three or four hours, including a stop to drink freshly squeezed fruit juice on the beach.

When we finally arrived at THE Beach, it was indeed spectacular.

Praia Lopes Mendes is world-famous for its beauty! but because it’s so remote (and it’s winter), there were only eight or ten other swimmers and surfers dotted around the beach. Unlike the island’s other beaches, the sand was perfectly white and incredibly fine and soft. Dramatic mountains looming just beside the beach:

The sun was warm, it was perfect swimming weather and we stayed in the water until we were exhausted.

The waves were pretty big and fun to play in, and I saw the most AMAZING thing: a giant wave about to crash over my head, and in the thinnest crest of the wave, above me, a big silver fish swimming along the crest of the wave, silhouetted in the sunlight, as it broke over me! Nobody else saw it though, he disappeared after this one magical moment.

When the sun started to get low, we had to trot back through the jungle to another beach where we caught the last ferry back to Abraao.

We stopped at a beach shack for a caipirinha on our way home, and then we had another caipirinha, and then they fired up the barbecue and started grilling skewers of beef and fish and giant prawns, and we never made it home to change out of our sandy bathing suits, we just kept drinking caipirinhas and feasting on salads and grilled meat and fish as the moon rose over the beach, then finally stumbled down the beach and home to bed.

We’d originally thought we might head back to Rio on Tuesday to see more of the city, but once tuesday arrived, of course we didn’t want to leave yet. We caught a boat out of Abraao to do a snorkeling adventure at Laguna Azul, they handed us flippers and goggles and herded us on a little boat full of tourists. They took us to three different snorkeling spots; the day was overcast and there was a chilly breeze so it was really hard to get into the water, I just kept wanting to sit on the boat and huddle under my towel, but thankfully, at the final (and best) spot, I made the chilly plunge. Mike is not wimpy about the cold, so he was splashing around exploring everywhere and kept shouting “come over here you have to see this!”

I’d never been snorkeling before, and never seen a coral reef before, and honestly despite being a confident swimmer, deep water gives me the heebie-jeebies. It was hard to get used to the snorkel thing and I kept getting mouthfuls of salty water when I wanted lungfuls of air. But Mike kept saying “come on over here, I’ll show you, I’ll give you a tour of the reef, it is so awesome, you have to come see!” and soon I started to get used to breathing air while my face is in the water. While the world above water was grey and chilly, the underwater world was a spectacular and crazy fantasy waterscape of freaky beautiful fishes and bulging coral formations and undulating, pulsating seaweedy looking things that might have been flora or might have been fauna, I don’t even know. There was a loooong skinny fish and there was a fabulous fish with feathery wings, there was a camouflage fish that looked like a swimming rock, translucent fishes and zillions of stripey black-and-yellow fish, and who knows what else. When I finally surfaced and looked back, I couldn’t see the boat anymore and I was all “O god where are we, oh no! it looks like it’s going to rain, we better hurry back!” and then I stuck my face back in the water and I was all “WHOA, COOL” and forgot about going home. I was so surprised that a whole hour had flown by when the boat tooted its horn to call us back. I so wish I had an underwater camera to take pictures of all that.

Then they took us to a cantina on a beach somewhere and we got this ridiculously huge black cauldron of stewed garlicky shrimp and it was awesome.

After lunch, back to Abraao, rushed back to our rooms and packed everything in a hurry and hustled onto the last boat out of town.

We got back to Rio at 9 or 10 at night, had an amazing churrascuro buffet in Ipanema (I didn’t even eat any beef, the salad bar was so spectacular, and they had amazing pasta and sushi and seafood, and I just want to eat that every night for the rest of my life. Food in Brazil is so good!) and then after a good night’s sleep we flew home first thing in the morning. I want to go back already!

patagonia!

April 2009: 6 days in the deep south of Argentina. Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, El Calafate, Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Chalten, Cerro Fitz Roy…

Day 1: it took us most of the day to get from Buenos Aires to El Calafate; we finally arrived at our hostel around 4:00 and then explored El Calafate. It’s a lot like Bariloche or any other Argentine touristy town; lots of fake-alpine architecture and chocolate shops and souvenirs. The view from our hostel was awesome, out over Lago Argentino to the mountains beyond.

Day 2: a visit to Perito Moreno Glacier and Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We woke up bright & early and had a scenic two-hour bus ride through foothills and pastures and lakes, out from El Calafate to get to the park.

There’s an impressive series of boardwalks and platforms from which to admire the front edge of the glacier, watch little icebergs calving off from the icy mass and crashing into the lake below.

this ice is 400 years old! These spires of ice began as humid air moving east over the Pacific ocean and over Chile they condensed to clouds and then over the Andes they became snowflakes which fell on the Patagonian continental ice field and slowly made their way down to Argentina a few hundred years later. This is one of the only glaciers in the world that’s not receding. Between the melting and the giant icebergs constantly crumbling off the front end, it’s not really advancing either, but it’s more or less holding its own and neither advancing nor retreating.

After an hour or two of admiring the glacial action, we went to the tourist center and had a hot chocolate, then headed out for our hike across the glacier! We took a boat across the lake, then hiked along the lakeshore and up alongside the edge of the glacier.

Our herd of tourists split into smaller groups and we all strapped on crampons over our boots and gingerly marched, single-file, up onto the side of the glacier. From across the lake you see how massively wide it is, but from this vantage you realize how tall it is, like a giant ice mountain and all of the climbers are little tiny ants on its side.

The ice was all pebbly, just like crushed ice. Every now and then we came across crevasses where you could see deep into the ice, and it glows bright blue inside. The sun was surprisingly warm and there were rivers and lakes of melted glacier-water running all over the place.

Our guide told us to fill up our water bottles and drink from the puddles, it’s the purest water in the world! With the crampons it was really easy to climb up and down the ice. We had sweet views of the lake and mountains from atop the glacier. After clambering around for a while, we arrived at a little wooden chest nestled inbetween two great ice-drifts. Inside: a pile of hand-made chocolates, a bottle of whiskey and a dozen glasses; the guide scooped up glasses full of glacier ice and we each had a whiskey on the rocks and a tasty chocolate.

We were sleepy on the bus ride back to El Calafate but I was glad I stayed awake because it was the best colored sunset I have ever seen.

Day 3: bus ride to El Chalten and an afternoon hike to Laguna Capri brings us face-to-face with the mighty Cerro Fitz Roy.

Day 4: Blustery buckets of rain. Stayed inside the hostel knitting a scarf and cooked a pot of pea soup.

Day 5: hiked the Laguna Torre trail, a long but easy trail through amazingly bright fall foliage, and at the end a spectacular view of the laguna, Glaciar Torre, and the cloud-covered Cerro Torre. Snow flurry at the summit.

Day 6: bus back to El Calafate, had a few hours to relax in Calafate and then flew back home to Buenos Aires.

here are more pictures!!!

I am going here

tomorrow!! gotta go pack now.

can’t keep up!

Lots of exciting and awesome things have happened in the past few weeks/months, and all of these exciting things have been keeping me very very busy. Too busy to blog! I’d like to go back and write a more detailed entry about each of these things, but for now here’s a quick list:
-October: weekend at the beach in Uruguay with Julia and friends.
-November: taking Level 5 spanish course at the University of Buenos Aires aka La UBA
-November: got the worst flu
-November: Amy Sawyer came to visit, yaaayyy!!
-November: 8-day trip to Salta and Tucuman provinces in the north of Argentina
-November: nice mention of Morris & Essex on Design*Sponge, which brought me tons of card orders and wholesale inquiries! i’ve been working like a sleep-deprived madwoman to fill wholesale orders and keep up with it all. I am my own sweatshop.
-December: adopted a new puppy! we wanted a friend for Emmylou Elbows, who seemed terribly sad and lonely and scared all the time. new puppy is adorable and fearless and nameless. we’re thinking of calling her Inga Josefina.

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!!!

uruguay beach weekend

ok, i’m trying to catch up on some good stuff that I’ve neglected to write about in the past few months… In October we took a nice chill weekend at the beach. Mike had a day off from work for “Virgin Day” or something like that. Argentina has so many national holidays. Julia invited us to come to Uruguay with her; we took a ferry across the river to Uruguay, arrived in Colonia and got right on a bus to Montevideo. I’d been napping on the ferry and was still totally groggy when we walked out into the terminal; I immediately crashed straight into a giant pole (it was painted white and everything in the room was white, i didn’t see it!) it hurt so bad and it scared the bejeezus out of me, i was so groggy and confused I spontaneously burst into tears and then i felt very embarrassed about a) being clumsy/oblivious and b) crying like a baby, but luckily nobody seemed to notice, or at least nobody pointed and laughed at me. We got into Montevideo around 10 or 11 pm and met up with Julia’s friends Eugenia and Antonella. We ate some dinner in Montevideo and then took another bus, headed north up the coast, around 1 am! An hour or two later we asked the bus driver to drop us on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere around 2 or 3 am. It was beautifully cool and quiet and deserted and dark. We walked about twenty minutes, through a tiny seaside town, to get to the rental house next to the ocean. Dropped off our backpacks and walked on out to the moonlit beach!
The town is called La Tuna, somewhere between Montevideo and Punta del Este, where the brown Rio Plata water mixes with the salty Atlantic Ocean.

……..So we spent a few days chilling and doing nothing, walking on the beach and reading and drawing. The beach was really quiet, just a few fishermen and occasional families playing in the sand. I jumped in the water once and it was super chilly! I guess Uruguay in October is about like Maine in June…
Antonella staged a video shoot on the beach, lots of her friends came out for the afternoon and they acted out some kind of live-action Super Mario video art with lots of jumping in the sand dunes. Then we had a typical giant asado, lots of beef and sausages, crusty bread and fresh salad. They had these delicious sweet blood sausages that tasted like fruit and cinnamon! Usually blood sausages are too creepy for me to eat (they’re called morcilla here) but these ones were just so tasty, I couldn’t get enough. We made lemon squares for dessert.
After a big thunderstorm the sun peeked out through the clouds and there was this amazing light on the wet deserted beach.
Muchissimas gracias a Antonella, Eugenia y Julia para invitarnos!

bike ride to tigre!!

For at least a year and a half, Mike and Leandro and I have been talking about taking a bike-ride to Tigre some weekend. Tigre is my Coney Island in Buenos Aires, one of my favorite places in Argentina, a neighborhood/city north of the Capital Federal, a weekend amusement town on the muddy brown river delta that includes a zillion green, overgrown islands, lots of old victorian mansions, humble weekend cottages, boats of all kinds, an amusement park, a casino, a giant busy market, a grand old museum in a former gentleman’s club, and a festive, nautical, fantasy-land air that ranges from dirty, creepy and dilapidated to expensive and fabulous.

So Saturday was the perfect hot spring day and we finally did it!! We guess that the ride was 25 or 30 miles one-way (mike’s bike odometer broke after 15 miles), though that included some rambles and detours to see some sights along the way. It was definitely the longest bike-ride i have ever done! but it made me want to do more.

Leandro was an amazing tour-guide, and named all the neighborhoods and landmarks for us as we rode through, took us to see the giant towers at the riverside in Olivos, guided us through some busy traffic on the avenues and some beautiful shady lanes in the fancy neighborhoods. I definitely would’ve been terrified to do this ride on my own, but with Mike and Leandro i felt more or less invincible. I put sunscreen on my nose (and Mike’s nose) but didn’t put it on my back and shoulders, so by the time we got to Tigre I was not only sore and tired from riding but completely sunburned to a crisp and sick from sun-poisoning. oops. It was an awesome trip though, an amazing way to start the spring, a perfect day in the sunshine with friends. And how satisfying to finally go through with the plan! when we got to Tigre we dragged our tired butts to the riverside and had a fabulous picnic of stuffed olives and fancy cheeses on the lawn in front of the museum, until the guard came and kicked us off. Barbaro.

Afterwards we were too tired to ride back home so we took our bikes home on the bike train!

fun in Mendoza with wine.

Emily and Arjie came to town for a quick visit and we had lots of fun together. After their 18-hour flight, we relaxed at home for a while and then we had a massage! what a great idea for tired travelers arriving after a long flight. This wonderful masseuse named Linnea came to our house, carrying her massage table, and gave each of us a 30-minute massage with beautiful lavender or eucalyptus-smelling massage cream. I wish she could come give me a massage every day.
After our massages I dragged the tired visitors out to Maria Emilia’s birthday party, which was fun and led us from her house in Palermo to Sugar bar nearby on Costa Rica, and then to Club Podesta for dancing afterwards!
The highlight of the visit was a short trip to Mendoza via overnight bus (13 hours in comfy reclining sleeper-seats). We spent the first day recovering from the bus-ride and wandering around Mendoza, enjoying a sunny crisp fall day and strolling in the park. We had a great posh dinner at a place called Praga (Aguirre 413), yum. The second day we took an awesome wine tour with Ampora wine tours. They picked us up at our hostel at 8:45 am and brought us to four different vineyards to tour the facilities and sample wines. The tourguide was incredibly cute and nice and gave us lots of interesting info about the region and its history and the winemaking traditions in Mendoza. The focus of our tour was boutique wineries, so they were all smaller operations, each with a distinctly different type of facilities. My favorite was probably the first one, Bodega Benegas, which was very old-fashioned and had a chatty and informative tourguide. The most interesting thing we learned was that most of the wine producers in Mendoza used to ferment their wines in enormous underground concrete vats, which is why Argentine wine used to have the reputation of being cheap and mediocre, and also explains why older Argentines have the habit of drinking their wine mixed with soda water and ice cubes (to dilute the yucky concrete taste). Now these fancy places ferment their wine in imported cured french oak barrels which cost like $600 each! and each barrel can only be used one or two times before it loses its flavor and is sent to a lower-quality place. Anyway, there were lots of tasty malbecs and we had a delicious lunch at one of the vineyards, with a different wine paired to each dish. It was cool to learn more about how wine is made and how to enjoy it, although I still did not learn how to describe wine with words like “rustic” or “chewy” or “apricots” or whatever.

The only sad thing about the tour was the drizzly chilly wather and clouds which almost totally hid our view of the Andes. One of the most beautiful things about Mendoza is the rows of vines growing in the valley with the snow-capped Andes looming above, but we could only see the foothills on our visit. Nonetheless, our spirits were lifted high by many glasses of fancy wines, good company and tasty food.