Wine and Steak in Argentina

Ah, a new continent awaits me! I've got an old friend to travel with, a old language that I barely speak, and new foods to try out. I'm looking forward to it though I'd be just as well off going home to rest. Oh well, when else will I have the chance to wander around South America while I'm still in my 20s? Never; at least now when I add on the age conditional. Ok, so what have I been up to?

The flight over to Argentina from New Zealand was unpleasant. There were 9 flights, on 5 airlines, that stretched over 3 days. Of course since I crossed the international date line it looked like 2 days on a calendar but trust me, it was no cake walk. I went from Christchurch to Auckland, Fiji, Samoa, Honolulu, Portland, Los Angeles, Huston, Santiago, and Cordoba. In Hawaii I had a 6 hour layover and had to through an additional security interview before switching to a domestic flight. I thought that in the interview, the officer sounded more jealous than suspicious. In Los Angeles, I had a 14 hour layover so my friend Cindy picked me up from the airport at midnight and we got together with Jesse for some late night and brunch quality time before I had to get back on a plane.

Eventually I got to Cordoba in Northern Argentina and my luggage made it as well. It's a miracle. My luck didn't end there; I also somehow avoided paying the $140 visa fee. I think that the Cordoba airport doesn't have a collection point since 99% of visitors would choose to start in Buenos Aires. It's true though that my northerly route is going to cause me to miss out on both Patagonia and Buenos Aires (the two best parts of Argentina) but I suppose that I can come back some day on a 2 week holiday. I've got a couple places that I had to leave like that including Croatia + Slovenia and N. Thailand + Laos. I guess you just can't see everything in one shot but I've covered more ground than most people will ever see in their lifetime. Hopefully that's useful for something but I can't imagine what. Mostly it just makes me discontent with my own country, or certain aspects of it at least. I really shouldn't read the news... ever.

Anyways, Cordoba is a pretty nice place... much nicer than I was expecting but then I've had a pretty skewed impression of Latin America since I've only ever been to Central America and the Cuzco Trail through Peru and Bolivia. They're all very poor places and shouldn't be considered on the same level as Argentine, South America's most prosperous country... at least historically. I hear that in the 1920s it had one of the top 3 standards of living in the world but 80+ years of alternating left and right wing governments created chaos. Today it still feels poor compared to Europe or America, but it's decidedly modern. You see people jogging all over the place and otherwise dressed very fashionably. Everyone looks so healthy! Of course Cordoba is a college town so this too makes it look more fit, but still it's remarkable.

After checking into the hostel that Jowen told me about, I got cleaned up and a couple hours later I ran into him in the lobby. He still looks the same to me, but I guess its just been like 6 months. We went out for some good steaks to celebrate our reunion and to catch up on what we've been up to. Jowen did some more time in Germany after we split, before touring France, Spain, and Morocco. He didn't love Morocco but has been enjoying Argentina since he arrived a month before me and stayed in Buenos Aires for 3 weeks taking Spanish classes. It paid off because he's pretty decent. His general plan now is to travel North along the West coast through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and into Columbia before going home. It'll take him 1 to 3 months longer than me, but he's not got a ticket and isn't sure when exactly he wants to go home though he is feeling a little bit restless like myself.

We didn't stay out too late because I was pretty tired after my journey but here in Argentina people stay out very late. I think they have more energy than normal since they take a siesta in the afternoon for a few hours, but they don't even come out to the bars until 2 am. I think it's crazy but it's not so unusual to stay out until 5 or 6 in the morning. Siesta is critical to the plan in these parts. This next day however, we did take a siesta in the afternoon and wandered around town viewing some churches and eating empanadas. There are empanada shops everywhere and many sell at least 40 flavors though most of them are combinations of ground beef, ham, chicken, peppers, cheese, olives, and spices. I can't get enough of them! I'm also sure that will change.

That night Jowen and I went out to some bars with a New Yorker chef from our hostel and an Israeli backpacker. Nice guys. I spent particularly a lot of time in the afternoon chatting with the Israeli and a Syrian who also shares my room. They're both really cool and love to taunt each other over all the politics. It's good natured though. The next day we spent more time in the morning doing just the same before wandering the city looking for an audio splitter so that Jowen and I can watch movies on my laptop. This was of course in preparation for the first of many unfortunately long bus rides in Argentina. We got on our bus at 9pm and arrived in the city of Mendoza around 7 the next morning.

Mendoza is a pretty smallish city in the heart of Argentina's wine and beef region. What a place to be! After an earthquake leveled the city in the 1830s it was rebuilt with wide streets and many parks for the rubble and people to spill into. Today those streets are tree lined and filled with activity when the people are out. We spent the day napping and exploring the many parks and squares of the city. It hasn't got as nice of churches and monuments as Cordoba but it's still very charming. Of course we made plans to do the main attraction of the city the next day.

Early in the morning (or noon as some would call it) we took a taxi 10k outside the city to an extremely popular bike rental place called Senor Hugo. It's smack in the middle of a cluster of a dozen or more vineyards. Some places also draw in visitors with chocolate and olive oil tastings. That stuff is for girls though, we just wanted the wine. That said, we visited two wineries right away and had some of the region's specialty, Malbec wine. It's a deep purple grape that makes rich red wines and is also associated with Bordeaux mixes. Any time I brush my teeth after a night of drinking the stuff, the spit comes out purple.

We bought a couple bottles from the two tasting rooms we visited and dropped them off at Hugo's so that we could go fetch more. Hugo poured us some free glasses of his own wine and we took a spin on a tandem bicycle. They're a lot harder to ride than I expected as they're very unstable at low speeds and we went back to our normal bikes after a while. We had time to visit one more winery in the afternoon after lunch and it was pretty great. We had some desert wines, sparking wines, and of course more Malbec. In the end we came home with 5 bottles (priced between $5-$15 each) and made another fine dinner of Argentine beef back at the hostel. They had a copy of the Risk board game and we played a couple games of it each night at this hostel.

I guess that we needed some exercise because we settled on a trip to the zoo the next day. It was a very long walk up into the hills to reach it. There was a huge and unkempt park leading up to it that must have been several square miles in size. We were warned to avoid a few parts of it that house unsavory characters. The zoo was nice and had really a lot of pumas and bears. Many of them were kept alone and seemed lonely. Maybe I should have gotten in there with them. Also we noticed that it had HUGE herds of small herbivores near the entrance. They must have had 600 goats, deer, and other tasty herbivores. Surely they must be raising them to feed their large number of carnivores. We had a good time and met a couple amusing characters along the way.

That night we of course played more risk, cooked some beef (costs around $5 a pound for a good cut), and chatted with the other hostelers. I remember that we talked with some Dutch girls, Marion and Donya, and said that we might run into them again in a few days in the city of Salta. Well, we did so that's notable but first we went out to see a more obscure place along the way, the Valle de Luna.

To get there we took a bus in the morning with a couple connections along the way to the place called San Agustin de Valle Fertil. It's a tiny hamlet near to the park entrance for Valle de Luna. The area is famous for it's unusual rock formations which must be accessed with the help of a car. I'd been looking into buying a cheap car in Argentina to use for the rest of the trip but there are legal problems that prevent it so forget that. It's illegal for foreigners to buy a used car in Argentina and take it outside of the country. That's an issue certainly. A light rain started coming in as we arrived in the hostel in Valle Fertil and this proved to be an issue but we forgot about that and enjoyed some BBQ for dinner and chatted up a German and Italian girl sharing the hostel with us. Oh wait, I spent much of the evening playing some game (Plants vs Zombies) that Jowen gave me. It's been a long time since I'd played a video game.

The light rain had turned the dirt roads in the park into a thick mud and it was to be closed to visitors for the next few days so the tour of the park had to be called off. There was nothing else to do in this village and buses only come every other day so we rushed to the bus station to buy the last two seats headed North and waited out the day until 3 am to get the bus out. In the evening after dinner we actually had 10 guests in the hostel and we threw a little party. I declined a tango lesson but I won a few free drinks when I played some songs and generally had a nice time. I'm looking pretty awkward in these photos lately since I've decided to grow a big silly mustache as part of my South American venture. Trust me, it looks awful!

The bus ride to the next city, Salta, was very long had we had to change buses and find new onward tickets in two other cities before reaching our destination around 6pm. I was exhausted by that point but we clamored over through the town to reach our planned hostel on the south end of town before it got too dark. They still had a couple beds for us though we didn't have reservations since we didn't expect to be here that day. It's the high season for travel since the local students are on summer break and reservations really are necessary. That night Jowen and I ran into the Dutch girls again and shared some beers with them, our Irish roommate Erin, and a couple others at the hostel bar. That was fun.

Next morning Erin joined us to tour the city while Marion and Donya had booked a wine tour outside town. The first stop was the city square surrounded by tall and fine business buildings, hotels, and a church. They're the best looking buildings that I'd seen in Argentina so far and I was pretty impressed. This city is just gorgeous. The main church on the square is the Iglacia Cathedral which houses the ashes of General Guemes, an independence war hero. Also on the square is the high altitude archeology museum.

This museum named MAAM houses three Inca mummies found on the peak of a volcano over 6000 meters high. The dry cold air almost perfectly preserved the bodies and today they're on display along with many Inca burial treasures. One of the mummies on display is called 'Lightning Girl' since she's been burned by a strike before death and was around 6 years old. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but the small museum was really interesting and a little shocking with their lifelike mummies.

We also rode a gondola to the top of a nearby mountain to see the view of the city and after a walk down we rambled into the large and stately park that dominates the area between the bus station and downtown. There's small lake with paddle boats for rent and we had some empenadas and panchos (hotdogs with onion, olives, corn, salsa, chips, and mustard on top).

In the evening, we met up with Marion and Donya again and the 5 of us went out for dinner at a parilla. It's a kind of restaurant that features steaks and sides (which 4 of us got) but Jowen got the traditional parilla meat platter. It's got a festive mixture of short ribs, blood sausage, kidneys, intestine, and liver on a hot iron plate. I tried the sausage, kidney, and tripe and though I thought it was pretty good for what it was, I had a hard time enjoying it. The dutch girls are headed up towards Bolivia and Peru on nearly an identical schedule to us and they talked us into joining them into Bolivia. I think they thought it would be unsafe for them to be alone.

So now it's the next day, we've got tickets to take an overnight bus to the border and then to go to a small town near the salt flats. Should be a good time and I'm looking forward to some cheaper prices. After I'm done with this blog post I'll finish getting ready for the border crossing (finding cash and food) and we'll see something new. Should be good.