Planes, Boats and Buses

    It turns out that blogging is harder to keep up with than I had expected. I thought now is just as good as any to bring you all up to date on my eventful 2010 year. After my sister's 11 day visit I had the week to recharge my batteries before I was again swept up in my official tour guide position. This time with two of my best friends from high school Carolyn and Chris. For their visit I decided to jam pack as much traveling and cover as much ground as we could in the period of 7 days. I had barely let them put down their bags and freshen up before we were off devouring steak and wine and went out for a long day and night exploring Buenos Aires. Early the next morning, after getting home at 6, we left our house at 8 and headed over on the Buquebus ferry to Carmelo, Uruguay for 1 day and 1 night.

    In Carmelo, Carolyn and Chris got their first taste of horseback riding, we kayaked out to swim in the sunset, they experienced a traditional asado and the official wine of Uruguay, tannat along with home made cheeses made at a family run vineyard called Narbona. Writing about it transports me back to the rustic style restaurant with bottles carefully stacked together to create a wall and a sleepy feel to the restaurant where you can wander the vineyards or lounge lazily on comfy couches enjoying the best dulce de leche I have had in my life. Trust me, I'm an expert now.

    The day after we got back from Carmelo, the three of us flew out to Mendoza, the official wine country of Argentina. Mendoza is located to the west of Buenos Aires and to the east of the Andes Mountains and has it's claim to fame for the Argentine wine Malbec. I had insisted to both Carolyn and Chris that we stay in a hostel, it's more economic and it's part of the Latin American travel experience. After calming Carolyn's nerves I reassured her that this hostel had been highly recommended by my friends, had a pool and that hostel's are generally fun and safe places. Chris and I had backpacked Europe together and knew how great hostels could be, Carolyn, on the other hand had never had the joy of sharing a room with 5 strangers. Confident and cocky I walked into our hostel looking forward to hanging by the pool and flopping down on my bed. We get our room assignments, and walked to our 6 man room. As we entered the room we were greeted by a truly awful stench and sight. His name was Lewis and was a 38 year-old Canadian that was lying on his back on the bottom bunk mwith his grotesque belly hanging out over his unzipped trousers, "Sorry I've been pretty sick lately he grumbled." I looked at Carolyn and noticed the on-edge "I'm going to kill you" look that I have seen only a few times in my life. "I hope you feel better," quips Carolyn. We quickly discard our belongings in their respective lockers and pray that Lewis is not in the room when we get back.

                                                                                 Jaws

    I try to make the most out of our smelly living situation. "At least he's only here for one night. In the meantime lets check out the pool." We agree and walk into the sunny, arid air and look for the pool. The pool is deceptively small. It's like a giant hot tub, but cold and grimy looking...not something that any of us are willing to wade into. I started feeling anxious about our accomodations, I was the tour guide after all! Everything had to be perfect. I started playing with the GIANT but friendly German Shepard in a frightening game of fetch. I would toss the ball and he would bring it back and drop it in my lap then I would reach for it and his humongous jaws would reach for the ball as along with my hand. Chris, Carolyn and I decided it was best to go explore before we became a chew toy to this monsterous animal. 

    We headed out into the famed town of Mendoza to figure out how we could get to some vineyards. We ended up taking a tour that picked us up from our hostel and took us to a large and small winery, olive oil factory and an artsenal liquor store. The wine tastings were brief but fun but nothing that moved me to buy bottles of wine. The next day we decided to venture beyond vineyars and hit the local thermal spas. For only a few hundred pesos we got picked up from our hostel and taken into thermal spas within the Andes mountains, given a massage and an unlimited lunch buffet!  We relaxed in different temperature pools and slathered our bodies with mud and then baked ourselves in the sun. At the end of the day Carolyn and I felt like we had a face lift and were burned to a crisp! Our last day in Mendoza was spent on the rapids of River Mendoza white water rafting. We had a lovely day trip paddling the level 3 rapids and hanging out with our friendly boat mates.

                                                              The thermal spas in Mendoza

    That night we took the overnight bus home to Buenos Aires. The buses in Argentina are light years better than Greyhound but they are also quite bizarre. For example there are different bed options: semi bed and full bed. We decided on the the semi-bed for price reasons. They started off our 16 hour bus ride with a full bus game of bingo, where the winner walked away with a bottle of wine, followed by a dinner. Hmm, the dinner was very interesting. They gave us trays with little compartments that contained a piece of bread, rice, and cheese which we all picked at warily assuming that this was our dinner. About 15 minutes later our bus attendant dropped hot mashed potatoes and beef on our trays, which were suprisingly tasty. We were also given a choice of orange soda or nothing to drink. After dinner the lights were dimmed, this was an over night bus ride, and the movie Madagascar 2 came on full blast. Nope, there were no head phone options. The noise was very distracting as were the people around us trying out new ringtones on their phones. 

    Back in BA, Carolyn, Chris and I had one last hoorah before I  put them back on their plane north, bound for the USA taking with them memories and a large supply of dulce de leche. 

Ringing in The New Years With My Sister

It's been nearly 3 months now that my younger sister, Ali, visited me in BA. I think now is a good time to catch up on my blogging. Ali arrived on January 1st 2010, she was sweet enough to skip the new years altogether and spend 10 hours on a plane flying through 2009 and landing in Buenos Aires in 2010. Needless to say I was at the airport waiting for her, er, well sort of. You see, Argentina doesn't really believe in time changes or a national calender of fixed dates. So when Ali booked her ticket it said pickup was at 11:30 am which really meant 10:30 am which I didn't figure out until 9:55 am and saw the remaining time of the flight online said 10 minutes. I was a few minutes behind schedule and greeted Ali at EZE international airport. 

Funny thing about Argentina, on holidays, the city feels like a ghost town. People retreat to their summer homes in the suburbs and restaurants are closed for vacation. I welcomed Ali to my deserted city and we headed out scavenging for food. We ended up walking to this uber touristy area of Palermo called Plaza Serrano that is notorious for overpriced foods and drinks. Well we fell victim, due to the lack of options and ordered a pathetic version of nachos which really meant cheese sauce and a side of chips and a sandwich. I was so disappointed to introduce such a deserted city to my sister especially when I had been talking it up so much. The first night we were able to find a restaurant, a parilla of course, to introduce my vegetarian (ish) sister to meat. On our walk home she was spit on by some delinquients on a stoop and then we scampered home when we saw a laser pointed at our friends head. Obviously, it was not the best introduction to Buenos Aires.

Recoleta Cemetery

Horse backriding in Las Pampas

Her 11 days passed by quickly and we managed to thoroughly see all the sites like the Recoleta cemetery, see the museums and eat at great restaurants. Yet, the highlight of her stay was our one night we spent at an estancia or ranch out in Las Pampas to celebrate my friend Caroline's birthday. The estancia is called Inside Las Pampas and is owned by a wonderful British woman named, Totty, and her boyfriend Jaime. Everything is prepared fresh by Totty or the local gaucho's wife.  In the afternoon we sat around the grill awaiting our food and sipped mate, a traditional Argentine tea. In the evening we rode off on horseback into the cow fields, galloping at full speed to avoid being devoured by mosquitos.       Unfortunately Ali and Caroline were victimized by the mosquitos and had bites the size of dimes all over their bodies. 

Riding in Carmelo 

Another high point of her visit was making our way over to Carmelo, Uruguay. To get to Carmelo you need to take a ferry to Colonia, Uruguay. We took the Buquebus which is more like a small cruise ship than a ferry, complete with duty free shopping. After the one hour boat ride to Colonia we took a 1.5 bus ride to Carmelo, a place so beautiful it looks like a painting. In Carmelo I felt like everything is a little extra, the green leaves are extra green, the sky extra blue. It has such a tranquil feeling in the sleepy town and at the resort like development it felt like camp for adults. At our family friend's simple ranch style house you could look out the window and see her two horses, Frasier and Santana tied to trees outside. After lunch my sister, Amy (our family friend) and I set off horse back riding, darting through trees and stomping through the river. That night we kayaked out to a boat party with Amy's dauchsand, Tut, in tow and stopping periodically to ooh and awe over the stunning sunset.

Visitors are always the best. Especially after living a few months in the same place. An outsider lets you appreciate a place all over again and to see it through the eyes of a tourist. My sister's trip, despite starting out on the wrong foot, ended up being perfect. It was a perfect sister bonding  experience and an overall great vacation for both of us. 

More than Matzoh: Passover in BA

   I have very few Jewish friends at home and from college, but the second I stepped into Buenos Aires I have found that nearly every expat is a Jew. I started my first 5 weeks of living in Buenos Aires living in a Jewish neighborhood with an older Ashkanawshi woman and have gone on to discovering long lost relatives who came over from Germany during World War II. Anyways, my connection to Jewishness has grown since I've been here mostly due to proximity. It's been easy to rally people together to participate in all things Jewish. The Jews are proud to share their culture and holidays and the non-Jews are curious and eager to learn.  

    It's been a tradition to spend the day of Passover in the kitchen slicing and dicing the day away with my mother. This year I tackled my first seder for 12 people. With the help of my wonderfully talented gentile roommate we brought my mother's recipes to life and served a pretty outstanding dinner. Buenos Aires in one of the largest Jewish populations in the world, yet despite the Kosher McDonald's in the Abasto shopping center I had to go on a pretty extensive scavenger hunt to find traditional ingredients for the seder. We ended up buying cheap red wine to substitute for manchevitz and avoided gefilte fish altogether but were successful in finding matzoh and matzoh meal to make matzoh ball soup from scratch.

 After a great service led by my friend Hannah, we dug into homemade macaroons and tubs of Freddo ice cream. 

Although the best part was searching frantically through our tiny apartment tearing up nearly every room and crawl space to find the valuable piece of matzoh known as the afikoman.  

Every Party Has Its Pooper

    Argentines love their asados and often spend long afternoons and evenings gathered around the table awaiting a string of delicious food like chorizo, provaleta, salads and meat. As Americans living in Buenos Aires we too have come to appreciate the art form and beauty of the asado oftentimes trying to emulate their very cooking style and techniques. 

    Well the other night my American friend and old roommate, Steph, made a delicious asado rivaling some of the best Argentine one's I have had, on the terrace of our old house. For months now, day, night, with a small group of friends or large parties with blaring music, our neighbor, who lives in a high rise behind our building screams obsentities in spanish almost every time we walk outside. But this time he made it even worse and went one step further and called the police on us. About 40 minutes later the police arrived at his apartment and walked outside on his balcony to see the "disturbance" being made down below. We watched with glee as the police men chuckled at the old man and through gestures we were able to determine that the cops could do nothing about a casual dinner party before 2am. The man walked grudgingly back into his apartment, closing his blinds, turning off the lights and retreating into the darkness. However we would see the curtain move whenever we were being louder. It was almost as if I could hear him growling inside and feel his wrath on our backs, not a comforting feeling to have.