Argentina — Page 3

And then there was snow…

November 9, 2009 By Jillian

Bariloche is known for its access to great hiking, mountain biking and its delicious local chocolates. Now you know why it was high on our list for Argentina. When we left Pucon to cross the mountains back into Argentina we didn’t expect a miracle with the weather, but we did expect things to be different on the eastern side of the mountains. And they were. I nearly fell out of my bunk the first morning when the Argentinian guy in our room told us it was snowing. Great. We had traded rain for snow.

We had planned to spend a week in Bariloche hiking, mountain biking, and maybe even camping out a few nights. The heavy precipitation of the previous week left the single track (that’s mountain biking) too muddy to ride, and the multi-day hiking treks covered in knee deep snow. Only two of the numerous “refugios” (shelters) in the mountains were even open, so any sort of multi-day trek was out of the picture almost immediately. We turned to the only things that were left, day hiking and chocolate tasting.

Hiking through Parque National Llao Llao on our first day, we thought we were in luck. For nearly five hours we hiked through the park without so much as a flurry or drop of rain. Ironic considering it’s a temperate rainforest and that morning we woke up to snow. With the constant threat of bad weather, and the fact that it is still low season, we had the paths and lakes almost exclusively to ourselves. Overlooking Lake Moreno we had a great view of the surrounding snow capped peaks, and while the weather looked awful up there, we were quiet dry at the lake side.

Emboldened by the fortunate weather from the day before, we decided to make a go of one of the mountains the following day. Dressed for cold, wet weather we headed up Cerro Lopez. A challenging hike up a steep and rocky trail, the other hiker turned around before we made it to the first look out. With the light drizzle quickly turning into a stinging rain, we continued up the mountain determined not to let the weather beat us. As we got above the clouds, the rain stopped and we thought we were in the clear. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but about 100 yards after the hiking path joined the “road” to the “refugio” we found ourselves in a winter wonderland. Except for a few icy inhabitants, it was clear to us that the “refugio” was still closed. From as close to the top as we could get the views were incredible, and its clear why this region is called the lake district. The five or six lakes spread out before us seemed to fill the valleys between the mountain tops and it except for the threatening rain clouds, it looked like a postcard (although postcard photos are taken on days without bad weather) of the Lake District. Verdant green landscapes with turquoise blue lakes, it is easy to see why the region is so popular. Climbing back down through the snow and then the rain, we continued our circuit of the lake, walking 10K back to Llao Llao on some of the same trails we had done the day before.

After hiking in the rain and snow there was only one thing to do: taste chocolates. With more than a dozen chocolate shops lining the main street, we had to choose carefully. Unlike in the United States, there aren’t a lot of free samples, and after we bought some rather expensive samples at the first shop Danny declared we’d only buy from shops that gave us free samples. Fortunately the next two did just that, and before we left Bariloche we ended up with a ¼ kilo box of delicious chocolates, fudges and treats. Just what we needed for the long bus ride south.

The bad weather aside, we had a great time in Bariloche. This is definitely a place that gets put on the “must come back to” list only next time maybe we’ll come when the weather is a little more pleasant.

Foodie Friday- Alfajores

November 6, 2009 By Jillian

Finally, DESSERT! We’ve been searching for a yummy dessert all over South America. Pronounced “alpha-whores” the first time I heard their name I had to ask the person to repeat it again in disbelief. Even now when I ask for them in a store I sort of giggle to myself, thankful that no one around me speaks English. Danny however likes to ask for his “first prostitute” when getting a bit hungry.

There probably isn’t anything we’ve had more often in Argentina than Alfajores, a cookie treat. A cookie sandwich, Alfajores are a dessert we had never heard of but now can’t get away from. Generally covered in chocolate, the most traditional filling is dulce de leche (sort of like caramel), but they come with every kind of fruit jelly, jam or chocolate cream you can think of, and they’re all pretty good. The wrappers say “dulce” to describe the sweet ones, but honestly these things are so full of sugar you can get a toothache eating more than one of them (unless of course you are Danny who likes to eat as many as he can!).

Alfajores are found all over South America, and apparently Mexico although we didn’t run into them until Argentina. Here they are so common that they’re often served as a snack on the bus and as an artesanal delight in expensive giftshops and dulcerias. Some of the fancy ones have neat chocolate designs or nuts on the top (and usually a thicker chocolate coating), but even the grocery store pre-packaged varieties are yummy. My favorite are the fruit filled ones while Danny prefers the dulce de leche ones.

According to the locals, Alfajores are different in each part of the country, and a source of local pride, but honestly I’ve found them to be very similar everywhere we go. The most famous varieties seem to come from Cordoba, but we’ve sampled them all over the country, from north to south, and trust me, they’re all delicious!!

Foodie Friday- The Enjoyment of Mate

October 30, 2009 By Danny

I first heard of Mate traveling in Guatemala on my semester abroad from college. I didn’t try it but I did remember it and when I saw it again, and had the opportunity again, chose not to try it again. I figured that since I was going to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile I should wait to try it in one of those countries.

Mate itself is basically a type of herbal tea (sort of looks like oregano or crushed tea leaves) that is very popular down here. Rather than filling a coffee mug with water and dropping in a small filter bag with tea leaves inside, with Mate the cup itself is special. No ordinary mug will do. The mate cup (actually just called a Mate) is actually a hollowed out gourd. Since the inside is an organic material (the outside is often decorated) that soaks up the flavors of your Mate overtime so the gourd collects more flavor. Sort of like a caste iron skillet.

To drink mate you also need a special metal straw enclosed on the bottom with a strainer. The entire mate (gourd) is filled up with the yerba mate, what we in the north would call the tea leaf. Since there is no filter bag, the straw has to do the filtering.

To drink, you fill the gourd with hot water (often kept in a thermos), a little bit of sugar and sip it down, adding more water only when you want to drink it. This however does take some practice as drinking hot water through a straw is not exactly the best of ideas…and that’s forgetting the fact that this is a metal straw. Whatever you do, don’t jiggle the straw…metal doesn’t exactly make the best filter and that can make it so some leaves come on down your throat.

Mate is a social beverage and often the mate gourd is shared among friends. One person finished the “tea”, fills it with more water and passes the gourd to another person. Like an herbal tea, mate has a bitter taste and often people add a little bit of sugar to the mixture to soften the flavor. Mate is often referred to as a stimulant, and its use is similar to that of coca leaves in northern andean countries. If you can find it in the US I highly recommend trying it!

Incomplete Information

October 27, 2009 By Jillian

Using a guidebook is a blessing and a curse. It provides tons of information, but somewhere in the back of your mind you have to remind yourself that the guidebook can always be misleading or even (gasp!) wrong. We once flipped through a guidebook on the USA which referred to the Grand Canyon as the best site to see in California. I guess the editors didn’t get to that chapter before publishing. Big mistakes like that are easily caught by a well read traveler, but smaller mistakes or rather assumptions can leave you stranded.

A few weeks ago, on our way to Salta we arranged our transportation schedule so that we’d have a day in Resistencia. Not much to do there besides an incredible park about 50 km away, we assumed that we’d be able to take public transportation to and from the park without much fuss. Once in Resistencia, we found out that while it was possible, we’d missed the first bus and the second one would give us about an hour in the park, great. That left us with an entire day stranded with nothing exciting to do but to wait for our overnight bus. (These days usually involve a movie theater if we can find one.)

Sometimes its not the guidebooks though that get us. We’d been advised by a group of Argentinians that we absolutely must go to Parque Ischigualasto (Valle de la Luna), an UNESCO world heritage site boasting the oldest dinosaur fossil anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the park did not live up to our expectations. Instead of finding dinosaur bones and fossils, we found ourselves in the middle of a dust storm in the desert with a couple of cool looking rocks to appreciate…hardly worth the two day’s and $100 worth of effort we put into the endeavor. To add insult to injury, all the fossils (not just some) had been removed to an archaeological museum.

And then there are the times when you make assumptions you shouldn’t. A few days ago we left Salta headed south for Cafayate, the beginning of Argentina’s wine country. While the guidebook says there are buses continuing south from Cafayate, it doesn’t say the times. We assumed that three a day meant, morning, afternoon and night, so when we arrived in Cafayate we expected to be able to take an afternoon bus the next day south to Tucuman giving us the morning to tour some nearby ruins. Wrong again. The three buses to Tucuman were 2am, 6am and 6pm, we had to take the 6am to get to our next stop in time.

But surprises are part of what makes travel, travel. If everything always went right then we’d be without some of our best (and worst) memories. On that very trip to Ischigualasto, we found ourselves in a hostel with no other guests. The owner warned us that there was a party that evening for the staff and that we were welcome to attend if we didn’t mind a bit of noise once we hit the sack. The noise didn’t bother us, neither did the unlimited supply of home-made pizza nor the bottle of wine provided to us that once finished….was replaced!

Biking Argentina’s Wine Country

October 26, 2009 By Danny

We began our bike-tour of the Argentina while we were still in Salta. Unable to go mountain bikes we managed to find some ‘regular’ bikes to go for a spin around to the surrounding towns. The bikes were slow, we were out of shape from all this great food we’ve been eating, and we couldn’t find our way into the big forest that we had wanted to go to. Feeling ‘bike’ sore in more ways than one we began to worry about the other bike trips we’d be taking in the near future, we quickly reminded ourselves that those would be featuring wine!

After finally tearing ourselves away from our great hosts in Salta, we made it to the bus station in the nick of time to head on down to Cafayate where we quickly put our things in a hostel and got on with the wine tour. The first winery had 4 organic wines (Bodega Nanni, and they do export to the USA….yes, I said organic) to taste for about $5 pesos (3.8 pesos to the $) per person…good start. The second was closed for a private tour. The third wanted 15 pesos (for 10 pesos you can choose from about 1000 bottles in the store) for a single taste so we passed. The next one was closed. The one after that was open, but the person who handles the tastings was on vacation. The next one looked out of business. The following one let us have a taste of one red and one white, neither very good. We returned to the second one and the private tour was over but there was only a taste of the Malbec. The next winery was closed and then finally we found another one in town that was open with three wines to try. In total we spent about 5 hours on those bikes, and in those five hours we visited 9 wineries and tasted a total of 10 wines. Finally we returned to that first one to buy our own bottle for an additional 10 pesos…(that’s about $2.60 for a bottle of organic wine!)

After that we moved onto the real Argentine wine country…Mendoza. This is where most of Argentina’s wine comes from and we expected to be able to really enjoy ourselves. Setting off on our new rental bikes we soon learned that we would be wrong. We had expected to go to at least 10 wineries but soon learned we would be quite disappointed as well. Sure, all of these in Mendoza were open, there were plenty of tourists after all, but they all wanted 10-25 pesos for a taste of just 3 or fewer wines . (Several actually charged less for a bottle, but then charged a 15 peso corkage fee!)

Given that we’d heard from several sources that none of the wines on “the route” are known to be particularly good, we continued biking to the winery furthest from our starting and ending point. There we sucked it up, paid our 15 pesos to taste three wines, all of which were good. Adding only 5 pesos to the tasting total, the three of us (we managed to rope our CS host Jessica into coming with us…who qualified for something of a ‘local’ discount) enjoyed a nice bottle of rose with the lunch we’d brought along for the ride and spent the rest of the day lounging in the shade drinking wine. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, but certainly not the biking through vineyards we imagined. In a stroke of complete irony the bike rental company, who only charged us 15 pesos for each bike, then provided us each with a very full glass of wine, some cookies, and a bottle of water… Why couldn’t this woman be the one working the vineyards?

Although our image of cycling from vineyard to vineyard toasting wine after wine was a bit of a bust, the day had yet to bear its biggest bit of fruit. At some point Jessica mentioned that she had been trying to arrange a trip to Ushuaia. Over a few supermarket bottles of wine and those delicious empanadas (from the video!), we hatched our plans to meet at el fin del mundo. Nos vemos pronto!

And then there was snow…

Foodie Friday- Alfajores

Foodie Friday- The Enjoyment of Mate

Incomplete Information

Biking Argentina’s Wine Country

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