Por La Razón o La Fuerza

Buenos Aires checklist:

● Mate with friends
● Trip to Puerto Madero
● Panicking about coins for a colectivo bus
● Eating bife de chorizo, milanesa, or other carne
● Seeing Evita's grave at el Cementerio de la Recoleta
● Seeing a tango show
● ---- CHECK !!

[crossing the Andes]

Buenos Aires is sometimes called the Paris of South America, and many of its inhabitants (called porteños (just like residents of Valparaíso! I mean, of course… “porteño” just means “from the port”)) consider themselves more European than South American. On my 3 day trip there with my friend Jeff, I definitely felt that there is a big difference between BsAs and Valpo for one thing, and even between BsAs and everywhere else in Argentina.

We stayed at in San Telmo, where most of the youth hostels are, at Hostel Ostinatto, a refurbished old apart building that is now a minimalist-black-white-and-red color scheme, high walls, very international crowd sort of place. The high ceilings even in the dorm rooms give it a very high-class feel though do contribute to a tremendous echo if people are being raucous below. They laid out us a simple but comparatively hearty breakfast of bread rolls, tea with hot milk, tangerines, and lots of pastries. Dave said it once, and I’ll say it again: Argentines definitely top Chileans in the sweets department. Both in BsAs and Mendoza, you could follow your nose to the corner pastelería and take about 15 minutes to look at all the choices (drooling the whole time) before settling on what to get.

Argentina is big on their medialunas (croissants) and I think have a much bigger thing for alfajores (delicious small cookie sandwiches with manjar (if in Chile) or dulce de leche (if in Argentina) and covered in chocolate or meringue or plain). There’s a huge difference between packaged, mass-produced alfajores and artesenal ones you can buy at a pastelería or vendor on the street. Te really sooped-up manurafctured alfajores with like 4 layers with mini chocolate chips taste like some kind of monster cookie you could buy in the States, but freshly made ones (see “La Ligua” entry… mmm…) are made with better manjar/dulce de leche and chocolate and are softer so you can really enjoy eating them. It’s like the difference between going on a roller coaster and spending an afternoon strolling in a park. Te parece?

Hopefully I don’t spend too much time in this post discussing food. Then again, I’m not apologizing if I do.

Getting back to the location, San Telmo is apparently one of the older sections in the city and one of the few places which still has late colonial and Rosista buildings. There are cafés everywhere you turn, with plazas sprinkled throughout, cultural sites, and a terrific San Telmo handicrafts fair on Sundays (I got a ring made out of a coffee spoon).

After arriving late Thursday night, we went to find food in Plaza Dorrengo a few blocks away, and were interested to find the plaza quite full of people dining under a totally dark sky with a few streetlamps to light up the performers (including a one-man drum band… impressive) and children walking around asking for money. Actually, we were both surprised to see how many small children were out so late at night, usually asking for money or going through garbage.

The next morning we took the New York Times’s recommendation to go to Zanjón de Granados, currently a museum slash event center where you can get a guided tour through the history of Buenos Aires (or Buenos Ayres if you’re feeling French and old-fashioned (AL?)). A zanjón (irrigation ditch) ran through the neighborhood centuries ago, and underground tunnels were built around it. In this building in particular, ownership was passed between people who added and changed the tunnel system and left evidence of their life which was only recently discovered by urban archaeologists. The cool thing about the place, I think, is that instead of just being a museum where the objects aren’t to be touched and the building is removed from the neighborhood environment, this building was changed and refurbished and can still be really utilized and enjoyed by people. If I ever have like a bat mitzvah or something in Buenos Aires, it will definitely be there. And I’ll invite you, don’t worry.

After walking past tons of antigüedades shops (I also think Argentina has a thing for antiques), we walked along the massive Avenida Paseo Colón and to the even massiver Avenida 9 de Julio (claiming to be the world’s widest boulevard) and over to the Plaza de Mayo (pronounced “Masho”…. haha, oh the Argentines!). I gripped my bulky camera bag close to me, as Argentina is known to be thick with thieves. In fact, several of my friends have had personal encounters being attacked, robbed, and held up at gun point (in any order of the 3).

We then went down to the “Subte” subway to meet up with a friend of Jeff’s near Recoleta in the center of the city. There was a long line to buy tickets, and when we finally got up to the window to buy them, there were two young kids on either side of the window asking for your change once you made the transaction. It struck me as pretty brilliant strategic placement, though I didn’t actually see anyone giving them any money.

We met up with Blair and Lauren, who are studying for the semester in Buenos Aires, and they took us to the immense Jardín Botánico (Botanical Garden) and talked a lot about how our experiences have differed. Let’s just use, hmm… FOOD… as a point of analogy. While in Chile, almuerzo (lunch) is the big meal of the day, where the whole family tries to be home, for Argentines it’s the big dinner. They have dinner at around 8 or 9, whereas my family has “once” (ohn-say) around 7. For us, breakfast and once are always the same thing: tons of bread and tons of palta (avocado). First of all, Argentines don’t call palta palta. They call it “aguacate,” just like the rest of Latin America (BO-ring). Second of all, they never eat it.

When I tell Chileans that I really don’t eat that much palta in the States, they’re totally surprised. And when I tell them that I just don’t really eat that much bread either, they stop talking, look at me confused, and ask quizzically, “Well, then… what exactly do you eat??”

We later went to what our porteña friends described as a café for “Argentinean soul food” with a young atmosphere popular with exchange students that Jeff and I likened to Café Journal (shout out Viña del Mar!). Either way, they have amazing cazuela stews (calabaza + lomo + queso mmmmm) and empanadas totally distinct from Chile’s. Argentina’s are smaller and come in many sweeter varieties, whereas most Chilean ones are meat or vegetable focused.

And MATE of course! (That’s “mah-tay” for all of you unfamiliar with this strange herbal tea drunk from a hollowed out gourd through a burning hot metal strainer straw.) It was served with a lovely basket of small biscuits. We were such gringos and had to add sugar to the mix (which is a NO-NO) and also had big problems inserting the straw properly and had to move it around after we’d poured the water in (another NO-NO). Not to mention that all the herb leaves were floating around (NO!), meaning we’d done several other things wrong along the way. Well… you MATE some, you MATAR some… if you know what I mean.

We then hit up MALBA, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, where it was really cool to see all of the artists we learned about in AP Spanish inside a single exhibition room: Xul Solar, Wilfredo Lam, Fernando Botero, and of course Frida & Diego. Now, I don’t really know that much about art, but I had the perception that the collection was much more colorful than similar exhibitions I’ve seen. Even the section on modern Latinoamericano art was not the squares of white canvas with a stripe of black or other extremely minimalist works that I, for one, have seen (not that I don’t like them). In any case, it was definitely worth checking out. They also seem to have some sort of cinema, but we didn’t look into it.

Later that night, instead of going to a jazz show that turned out to be like 1.5 hours away, we walked back to Plaza Dorrengo to a café with live music (easy to find, especially with waiters out on the street trying to hustle you inside). We then went for the first time to the ice cream parlor Nonna Bianca… and let me tell you, if you’re in BsAs, you HAVE to go! They have about 40 flavors, many of which you’ve never seen before (cerveza ice cream? Anyone?). Unfortunately, they have a one sample rule, which meant I stood at the counter for like 10 minutes figuring what to get a sample of, then another 10 figuring out what to actually buy. Jeff was definitely already finished with his cone by that time.

The next day, we took Buquebus to Colonia, Uruguay. Check out my other post for that. (It makes me uneasy to mix too many countries in one post, you know?)

After coming back around 5pm, we made reservations and headed over to Café Tortoni, apparently the first café of Buenos Aires and home of a famous tango show. The audience was almost entirely non-Argentines (in fact, entirely non-Argentines except one pretty drunk and unnecessarily flamboyant lady). The dancing was impressive and acted out in the form of a drama with one man singing the narration. And just as an FYI, food is not included in the price, and Sergio will bring you the bill for the drinks as soon as the show is over. So afterwards we headed to the closest and most Argentine (aka cheapest) eatery we could find and ate---guess what!?---BEEF!

Sunday, our last day on the Atlantic seaboard of this massive continent, we started off by heading to the San Telmo street fair and picked up some medialunas on the way there. We then rode the bus to the incredible Recoleta cemetery (Cementerio de la Recoleta) which has, among many others, the famous grave of Evita (which always has a crowd of people around it). The aesthetic of the cemetery is amazing: mausoleums shoulder to shoulder like a marble village. You can find one from centuries ago and nearby a minimalist one with tinted black glass from 1996.

We walked through the extremely long crafts fair near the cemetery and had lunch on Calle Ortiz and picked up some Havanna alfajores nearby (dang good). Nearby, two men in costumes were running down the street, ran up to me, hugged me, and yelled at Jeff to take a photo. I was so startled, and the only thing I could say was “POR FAVOR, NO ME ROBEN!!” (“Please don’t rob me!”) They laughed, Jeff clicked the photo, they ran away, and all my money was still in my wallet. Confusing? Yes. Good photo? Also yes.

By the way, Calle Florida is a pedestrian zone that lasts like 10 blocks, but it’s always packed, and you can find the same street vendors selling elsewhere (i.e. San Telmo market) in a less crowded environment.

Oh, and since our Chilean cell phones don’t work in Argentina (or at least not if you don’t have roaming activated), I got my first chance at using a “locutorio” (if in Argentina) or “centro de llamadas” (if in Chile). Apparently there is an underproduction of coins in Buenos Aires, so shops will put out signs saying “NO HAY MONEDAS” and won’t give you coin change, instead giving you small candies to make up for the difference. Anyway, the locutorio owner told us we had to spend a minimum of 2 pesos (about 60 cents), and our Argentinian calls only amounted to like 1 peso, so we calculated that we could call the USA for exactly one minute. So I did, and oh boy was it a productive minute (te juro).

We then walked back across the center of town and back to the Hostel. And to the airport. And trying to exchange $4000 Uruguayan pesos (check other entry). And back to Chile.

It was strange to actually feel sort of Chilean for once. On a weekend trip with 3 friends to Mendoza, Argentina, last weekend, our Chilean Spanish really bumped up against their Argentinean… with no apologies.

As it turns out, there are many dozens of flavors of Spanish spoken around the world, and I have been amazed how organized they seem to be by country borders. For example, when I was in Arica and San Pedro in the north and took day trips just SLIGHTLY into both Peru and Bolivia, there was a very marked difference in the way people spoke Spanish. For example, they actually pronounce the “s,” and they speak more slowly. It was amazing how much better I was able to understand our Peruvian taxi driver than some of my teachers at the university here in Valparaíso!

Before arriving for my semester abroad, I had heard that Chilean Spanish is the hardest to understand. I figured that’s what they say about every Latin country, and I knew it would be hard to carry on a conversation in Spanish no matter where I went. But after going to those other countries and now to Argentina, I totally agree with that stereotype. But I think that being surrounded by people always talking fast, mumbling, dropping all sorts of letters, and butchering grammatical rules is actually a good experience for me to acquire a sort of verbal fluidity to mix in with my unshakable tendency to resort to textbook-style language.

It was kind of fun to have the Argentines correct my grammar… not because it was wrong, just because it was Chilean.

A few examples:
Chileno: ¿De dónde eres?
Argentino: ¿De dónde sos vos?

Chileno: Uy, estoy cansaaaaa.
Argentino: Estoy can-sa-da.

Chileno: Son de Bueno’ Aire’.
Argentino: Somos de Buenos Aires.

Chileno: ¿Cómo estái, po weon!?
Argentino: Uh… ¡Hasta luego!

As for logistics of the trip, well… it’s always good to travel with an open mind and a flexible schedule.

We took the trip on a 3-day holiday weekend, so of course everyone else in Chile was going to Mendoza, too. In fact, when we went to the Viña del Mar bus station on Wednesday night to buy tickets for Thursday night, we went window to window of the bus agencies and they were all sold out! We managed to find one “ida” (going) and “vuelta” (return) from 2 different companies: El Rapido and Cata. The distance from Viña to Mendoza is around 300km, and it can be driven in a car in 5-6 hours. I had heard a bus can take up to 9 hours. Well, I thought, we’re not in a hurry.

Fast forward to El “Supposedly” Rapido bus Thursday departure at 10:00pm (22:00 for those of you down South here) and things were pretty good, except that we had front row seats to the bathroom. The busses are double deckers, and the bathroom is downstairs. Well whatever, I though: easy access.

Fast forward to 2:00am, when our bus pulls into a huge parking lot (after circling around about twice). The door opens about 5 feet from me to the freezing night air, and there is a mass exodus of Chileans out of the bus. We send Dave out to have a look, and he concludes that it’s just a cigarette break. About 20 minutes later, starting to get really cold, someone official looking says something-something-something everyone needs to pay 500 pesos to pay someone-someone. Uh, okay… so I turn to the Chilean lady sitting next to me (I always try to sit next to Chileans and, hey, this time it paid off!) to ask her what was going on.

Looking frustrated, she said that the border crossing was closed due to snow, we were going to stay in this parking lot overnight, leave at 8am to be first in line at the border, and that the bus needed to pay the parking lot owners $50USD to be able to park. Wow, we gringos had been really out of the loop. So anyway, we decide to “aprovechar de” the opportunity of being at a trucker’s stop so we get out, head over to the owner’s rest house, and about 40 minutes later get the “churrascos” (beef sandwiches) that we ordered, mostly to avoid being in the freezing bus.

When we finally do get back on, the door is still open, the cabin freezing (though warm upstairs), and people generally agitated.

Fast forward to actually getting to the border, after about 15 hairpin turns up a mountain. This huge dome shaped building (massive, but somehow totally inefficiently utilized) is actually right next door to one of Chile’s most popular ski resorts, Portillo. There was snow, wind, right in the grip of the Andes. And just as importantly, several kiosos selling refreshments.

Fast forward to actually arriving in Mendoza 4 hours later (after an abrupt change of busses, and NO BREAKFAST--- THANKS EL RAPIDO). It was about 12:30 on Friday, so more than 14 hours.

We finally get our bearings after asking a “carabinero” (police officer) and get to our hostel, Mendoza Inn, 1 of the 3 Hostelling International Campo Base hostels in Mendoza. Of the 3, I’d say Campo Base has the best location, though the extra 8-ish block walk from Mendoza Inn isn’t bad. All the activities offered are the same and often people are mixed together on the excursions. If you do stay at Mendoza Inn, we really liked the Mulato Café around the corner and El Palenque up the street… good eats, not expensive.

Speaking of excursions, they were offering a package deal: Saturday excursions to 2 bodegas and a chocolate factory, followed by an “asado” (BBQ); Sunday excursion to do trekking, rappelling, and rafting.

We spend the rest of Friday walking around the town. It has very wide streets, due to the city’s being rebuilt in 1861 after a devastating earthquake. So it’s pleasant to walk along the streets… well, except that in many places there isn’t any form of traffic signaling, signs, or otherwise. So cars kind of speed toward an intersection at the same time and, at some point, someone makes the decision to go first. There are also a lot of nice plazas, and vendors set up tables with assorted antiques or little tents selling handmade goods or foods or what have you. We also found the densest concentration of book stores we’d seen anywhere in Chile.

We took my Chilean seatmate’s recommendation to go to Las Tinajas, a “tenedor libre” (all you can eat) restaurant near Plaza Independencia downtown. She told us to get there early… meaning 8pm. We did, only to find that it didn’t open for dinner until 8:30, but good thing we got there early because there was already a line of about 10 people and more quickly extending behind us.

For a mere $7.50USD, we got entrance to about 6 counters of all sorts of food: “mariscos” (seafood), pasta, an “asado,” “ensalada,” “postres” (dessert), and some semi-Chinese food. Well, well worth it. Except that it kind of hurt to walk home afterwards… and we couldn’t really figure out where we were (our map had lots of streets missing and our hostel was located off the shown area), so I approached a studious looking young woman on the street and asked:

“Discuple, dónde está la Calle Colon?”
“Ah yah, la Cajsha Colon, una cuadra por allá.”

“Uh… no, no la CASA Colon… la CALLE.”
“Sí, sí, la CAJSHA Colon está allá!”

“Hmm… Cajsha… Calle… oooo Cajshe! Yah, gracias!”

Tose crazy Argentines turn the “LL” into a “JSH” so that “calle” which should be “cai-yae” becomes “cah-jshay.” But on top of that, instead of “-ay” she said “-uh”… which totally threw us off. It also threw us off that someone had spray painted the street signs of “Calle Colon” with “Che Guevara,” and that the street has about 3 different names anyway. Long story short, we got back to the hostel VERY “satisfechos.”

Next morning we piled into some hostel vans off to two bodegas, and I found it really interesting to see all the machinery used in the process, and also to meet all the Swedish exchange students also studying in Valparaíso and also in Mendoza for the weekend. Different university though. I still managed to bring up Norway ASAP though.

We then went to the La Cabaña chocolate factory, and you can imagine how my mouth was watering watching that massive vat stirring around some lovely milk chocolate. It was almost fun to just walk around the chocolate shop at the back (dare I say I felt like a child in a candy shop??) and “aprovechar de” the free samples. Argentine prices, once higher than Chilean ones, are now significantly lower… very convenient in this type of situation.

For the asado around 9pm that night, vans picked up people from 2 of the Hostel Internationals and brought them to Hostel International Mendoza for the asado, which basically consisted of about 1.5 hours mulling around near the bar and the grill while the food was prepared (this is kind of how South American asados are, I think). People joked that they made the people wait so long so that they would buy drinks, thereby giving the hostel money, and not be hungry by the time that the food came around.

Well, we still were, and there was plenty of cow for everyone. The servers came back with tray after tray of meat and told us “Con la manito no más!” (Just take it with your hand!). Fast forward to it being difficult to walk afterwards…again.

Sunday, we again pile into the tour bus, this time next to our new-found Argentine friends: Charly, Sol, Gaby, Juan, and Montserrat. We head about an hour away to trek through some pre-cordillera hills to a site for rappelling (preceded of course by an hour or so of waiting in the lodge… no worries, we played ping pong). When we get to the rappelling site we have to wait for about… 2 hours?... as the group in front of us finished and as a pobrecito had his leg bandaged up and himself strapped to a stretcher after he broke his ankle jumping off a rock (not related to the rappelling). The rappelling was fun… I actually didn’t feel scared at any point in the process, I’m not really sure why. It must be due to all of Mr. Miner’s insight during our climbing unit in 6th grade. Thanks again, Mr. Miner, for everything.

Back to the lodge, another hour of waiting in the lodge (more ping pong), and we got to go rafting. But oh wait, oops, everyone else has already gone rafting for the day, so all the wet suits and everything else is really wet. So… wear what you want. Smart Kam is pretty sure that we won’t get that wet, so why not just go in my jeans? I’ll put on a jacket and some supposedly not really waterproof over-pants… and wet shoes. Shiver.

Fast forward to water crashing all over our boat as we bounced along the class III river, and did I mention it was freezing? About 30 minutes of rafting later, we get out and I’m glad that my pants aren’t actually cold, but I’m pretty embarrassed that since they’re gray jeans, it looks like spots on a cow: black and white, wet and dry. And of course we still had to go to the lodge to wait while who knows what with all the Argentines and Swedes inside. Oh well. At least people made room for me at the fireplace.

The next morning, after the tasty and small breakfast of tea, a piece of sweet bread, and a piece of buttery bread, we head back over to the bus station, optimistic about out 10:30am Cata departure. As we were stocking up on food items from the kiosos (trying to go prepared this time), Andrew and I were approached by a cameraman and reporter and asked if we could be interviewed! It was fun… she asked us each some questions about where we were from, what we did and liked about Mendoza, and what the city was lacking. I joked with them afterwards that I hoped our Spanish was acceptable, and they kind of chuckled. Too bad it didn’t air in Chile so that we could see if we’d actually made it onto the program.

Fast forward to us waiting for SEVEN HOURS at the border crossing. Let me clarify that I mean the bus pulled up to a line of cars and stopped. And fifteen minutes later, it moved a little. Then stopped. Stayed stopped. And the driver didn’t like letting people out because, hey, we could move at any time.

[Can you SEE how many vehicles are in that LINE???]

About two hours in, he realized this was a bad strategy and started letting people out, many of whom scurried over to find scrap cardboard to make makeshift sleds, others to buy cigarettes and have an extended smoking break. I started talking to the couple across the aisle only to have the wife explain to me in English that her husband sitting between us is the most famous living musician in Chile, Patricio Manns. Apparently he was 1 of 3 main forces behind the “New Song” era in Chile, along with Violeta Parra.

Fast forward to… wait, no. Keep fast forwarding. Keep going, keep going… I mean, seven hours is a LONG TIME. Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. Did I mention that we had front row seats to the bathroom, again?

So we wait in this line between 2pm and 9pm… yes, it was dark by the time we had our bags sniffed by fruit-seeking dogs and finally pulled out of the station. And then another 3 hours to Viña. So, hoping to be home by, you know, 6 or 7pm at the latest, I’m walking home with all my bags at midnight.

So all in all, it was a really fun weekend in Mendoza, especially the parts where we actually talked to Argentines. [In fact, we exchanged emails with some and may be able to meet up in Buenos Aires in a few weeks when I go!] Having to wait and wait and wait at nearly every turn in the trip could have been really frustrating, but then you just have to remind yourself that you’re not really in a hurry to do anything on these trips. Or semester in general. And there are always plenty of people to talk to and new things to discuss.

And if you have to go to the bathroom, there’s always one nearby. And in Argentina, there is actually toilet paper in every stall!