Boots in the Oven

Buenos Aires Tastybits

The food of Buenos Aires is hearty, heavy on the animal proteins and patatas, and light on anything you might like to consider a vegetable. It seems that the most common restaurant type is the parilla, which range from very casual and raucous, with chalkboard menus, to elegant palaces of beef with punctilious service.

A wonderful appetizer to try at a parilla is the provoleta, a disk of rich provolone cheese basted with oregano and other spices, and thrown on the grill until it just begins to melt. We tried this many times, and it was done with varying levels of success. El Obrero's was the best.

Just look at that perfectly crisp crust. Mmm, gooey center...

After that, we usually had a plate of achuras. I went into more detail about these in the Mendoza post (LINK), but they pretty much always consisted of riñones (kidney), chinchulines (small intestine) and mollejas (sweetbreads). Don Julio did achuras very well.

Then, the meat! And a side dish of potatoes, of course. Here we have bife de chorizo and papas españoles.

If you're in Argentina, though, you have to try the costillas, or ribs - they're sliced thin across the bone and cooked quickly, a preparation I've never seen before. The meat can be very chewy but is extremely flavorful.

Another really traditional snack in BA is a slice of pizza topped with a slice of faína, a chickpea pancake familiar to us from Liguria, where it's called farinata (here's a writeup of our 2006 visit). Here is where Buenos Aires's large Italian community makes itself felt. We liked the faína atop a slice of fugazza or fugazzetta, a thick pizza topped with lots and lots of onions. Washed down with a glass of moscato, this made for a very tasty lunch!

Of course, if you're still hungry you can always order yourself a pizza; here's a fairly common combination, with ham and cheese and green olives and hearts of palm… and salsa golf. This was surprisingly good - we'd ordered for the shock value and hilarity and ended up actually kinda enjoying it. Odd.

If you want to try this, or maybe just the fugazza and faína, definitely head to the centro to El Cuartito. We'd heard their empanadas were great; perhaps I was just empanada-ed out, because they didn't seem like anything special. But those were some darn fine examples of Argentine pizza!

Speaking of hilarity and shock value, this is what happens when you order a snack platter at teatime at Salon de Té La Biela… we ate dinner extremely late that night.

Luckily for us, Buenos Aires is a very late-night town; showing up for dinner at most places at 11 PM, even on a weeknight, is not considered outre. And there are lots of lovely places for pre- or post-dinner drinks; we enjoyed Home Hotel's bar and their inventive beverages - we hadn't been in a cocktail culture (with the exception of Fernet & Coke) since Lima's pisco sours!

And then there's Frank's, the crazy fun speakeasy-style joint where you walk in an unmarked door, enter a code into a phone booth inside, then push your way through the back wall into a ritzy '20's style bar with plush upholstery and cocktails ranging from the classic to the fanciful. (My only complaint would be that many of them are served in huge stemless wineglasses and are heavy on the ice, probably to make the drink look less lost in the bottom of these bowls.)

When we weren't able to finish our enormous steaks, they came home with us and were magically transformed by Husbear's wiles into… BREAKFAST! Turns out Argentina is also really into polenta, so that plus steak plus a golden egg made a quite fine morning.

Logan even bent under constant wifely pressure and made me biscuits and gravy, without the help of a measuring spoon or being entirely certain whether what we had was baking powder or baking soda! Oh, happy day!

We're still in the south- just the way south.

So, now that I've tempted you with the food and the culture of Buenos Aires… who wants to go in on an apartment with us? Mmmm?

Seriously, email me.

Buenos Aires!

The ferry from Montevideo was comfortable and fast fast fast. We made the crossing in barely three hours and were really excited to see Buenos Aires edging into view!

NB for other ferry passengers - there were no money-changing facilities in either the Montevideo or the Buenos Aires ferry terminals, and though the official taxi rank in Buenos Aires will take Uruguayan pesos, make sure you work out how much your trip should be in that currency if you choose to use it! We didn't and accidentally paid double what we should have. Oops.

Through VRBO, we rented a swank pad in Palermo Soho, one of BA's hipper and ritzier inner suburbs. We loved the little place, its killer-fast Internet, and its comfy kitchen, which Logan put to good use (wait for the food post to see how).

You could tell Palermo Soho was fancy not only by the name, but by the number of stylish clothing shops… and the ubiquitous dog-walkers.

One day, we went on a street art tour offered by a group called Graffiti Mundo. Though our guide didn't have her smooth patter down completely, we enjoyed the tour immensely and were familiarized with the style of several local artists. The street-art "scene" in Buenos Aires is young in comparison to many other world cities; this is due in large part to their recent repressive regimes, many of which are addressed in today's street art.

This is a fancy restaurant called Tegui; their facade was decorated by CabaioStencil, or Cabaio. We loved his work so much that we flouted Argentine law by buying a piece of his artwork and sneaking it all the way out of the country to Africa, where we shipped it back to the States from Cape Town. (Argentine law on removal of art from the country is restrictive and suffocating; any art, be it an indigenous masterpiece or a three-year-old's finger painting, is subject to labyrinthine export laws that cause most mail carriers to deny shipping.)

And Jaz will most certainly be an artist to look out for.

The city's heart is the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Roja; it's where the President's offices are and has long been a traditional place of protest.

Officiatin' low-rider style.

Every week, for years and years, mothers of young people arrested and "disappeared" by the government would meet here to share any information they'd been able to learn. They wore white kerchiefs on their heads to identify themselves to each other. 30,000 people are estimated to have disappeared during the Dirty War of 1976 through approximately 1983. Many of these people's children were forcibly taken from them and placed with families sympathetic to the military regime; some of these children are unaware of their family history to this day, and don't know that their grandmothers still march in the plaza as the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo. It's a heartbreaking chapter in Argentine history that is still very much present in the country's psyche.

Now, the city bustles, and people are generally friendly and willing to help a couple of foreigners that haven't yet accustomed themselves to the distinctive Argentine accent. On Sundays, Buenos Aires's oldest neighborhood, San Telmo, hosts a large antiques and art market complete with tangoing couples and street-filling drum and dance bands.

And what would any visit to Buenos Aires be without stopping by to see the grave of the young Evita Perón, still revered by much of the country for her stances on poverty and women's rights.

Her family tomb is in the stately cemetery of Recoleta, where the grand tombs house some of the finest families of Argentina. They are in varying states of repair, and sometimes broken tiling allows you to see the coffins within the monuments. It's a place worth a wander, and made me rue my lack of familiarity with Argentine sporting, political, and military history. An boxer's art-deco memorial might sit next to a doctor's Edwardian family mausoleum, which may but right up against a city mayor's rococo resting place.

We kinda fell head over heels for Buenos Aires and started checking real estate listings. Who wouldn't want to have a home in a sophisticated and fresh world capital, where young designers and artists create chic works, and a high-quality three-course steak dinner with wine will run you $30 a person?

We even got our hairs did.

I have a feeling we'll be back, BA. Hasta pronto!

Montevideo! Maybe more fun to say than to visit.

Our trip from Puerto Iguazú to Montevideo was a strange one. There is no direct transport, but you can catch an Expreso Singer bus that will drop you off at an under-construction highway overpass kind of near the Argentina/Uruguay border at 5:45 in the morning. Thank goodness there was a taxi parked there; the tiny lady driver happily shepherded us and another American who'd been dumped there across the border to Salto, where we were lucky for once and made the 8:00 AM bus for Montevideo in plenty of time. Score!

From my perspective, the best thing by far about Montevideo was our little rooftop cabin at Posada al Sur.

It had internet, and radiator heat (which didn't succeed completely in keeping out the midwinter chill), and a separate living room and bedroom and tiny kitchen! Logan put this kitchen to good use, partly because the cabinita was sorta expensive and cut heavily into our budget and partly because I really, really didn't like walking around Ciudad Vieja at night.

Even during the day, many of the streets were either creepily empty or had a resident crazy person (there was one ensconced in front of our place) who would bellow and likely begin to follow you if you walked past them. I'd be interested to hear more about Uruguay's mental health system.

On Saturday, we walked down to the Mercado del Puerto (Port Market) for lunch at one of the bustling market's many parillas (grill restaurants, where you head for hearty meat and potato meals). The place was bustling and full of mid-day drinkers, hyped up on glasses-ful of medio y medio, a sweet and lightly sparkling Uruguayan wine concoction. Though we somehow lost our pictures of the market itself, we did document our own experimentation with the bevvie.

Logan took his camera out on Sunday and went for a stroll, shooting the mostly empty streets and their monuments.

Some of these were quite noble.

He also stumbled across a group of people covered in some sort of white powder with their pants ripped to shreds, but was unable to discover what exactly the eff was going on. Estraño.

Food in Montevideo seemed much like the foods of Argentina; hearty grilled meats, sandwiches heaving with strange ingredients and plenty of meat, and lots and lots of potatoes. And meat. Did we mention meat? Here's a typically Uruguayan sandwich, the chivito - this one was called a chivito canadiense, maybe because Uruguayans think Canadians are into ham, beef, mayonnaise, tomato, lettuce, onion, and green olives? With an egg?

And that was our wintertime experience of Montevideo, Uruguay. Maybe not the best time to meet the city, but unfortunately the only time we had available. Early on Wednesday morning, we hiked our bags onto our backs once again and walked to the port, where we caught a 3 hour high-speed ferry to Buenos Aires.

Iguazu Falls makes a spectacle of itself

Thunderously, massively, soakingly wet. That's the intense Iguazú Falls.

We stayed solidly in Argentina for our visit there, though it's possible to visit from Brazil, as well; the Argentines have a wonderful setup, with boardwalks allowing you above, below, and between the stunning falls.

From the highest point in the park, you look down into a crevasse filled with pounding tons and tons and TONS of water.

It's hard not to feel ebullient, even as the spray soaks your clothes (and your camera - though luckily both of ours seem to have survived).

There are hours of walking to be done here, and most of it is on easily accessible pathways. Of course, things can get a bit wet and slippery…

The Falls are enormous. They span an area twice as wide as Niagara, though this area isn't entirely unbroken Falls.

From Brazil, you can apparently get more of a panoramic view of the Falls; but the Argentine side held quite enough power and wonder for us!

Oh! And if you're insane, you can take a boat under and through the falls. Of course we went. Giant dry-bags are provided, thank cherubs, though I don't think I've EVER been so soaked!

The view from down in the water is marvelous, though. Riots of blue and white and green, and if you hadn't noticed in these pictures, there are rainbows everywhere when it's sunny because of the spray!

Though after we docked, I did feel like I'd need to wring my skin out.

There's wildlife at the Falls, too, beyond the tourists. Birds flit around, and if you wait patiently they might even do a birdie dance for you. (I dubbed this one the Eugene Levybird.)

And there are seemingly thousands of coati around; and really, really don't feed them!

They might try to get food from you anyway. Apparently they can get a bit aggressive if they think you've hidden tasty niblets about your person, but these particular guys seemed more curious than rapacious.

And, as staggering as the Falls themselves are,

That's how not wonderful the Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú is. You can get not so good hamburguesas completas there, and there are a couple of decent parillas at the market. But that's about it.

Don't let the disappointing town keep you away from the Falls, though. They are worth a spot high on the must-visit list of any traveler.

Notes from Salta

Salta, Argentina is in the Andean northwest of the country, and for us almost felt like a swing back to Bolivia. Sure, there was still the Argentine gnocchi and the steak and the sifón everywhere (we loved the sifón - fizzy water at your fingertips!)

but there was also coca, and people chomped down on HUGE cheeksful. Women dressed in bright indigenous colors walked the pedestrianized shopping boulevards with babies blanket-strapped to their backs. And late one night, we stumbled onto a festival complete with people in wide-ranging costumes dancing to cacophonous music blasting from speakers in a blocks-long game of oneupmanship.

In Salta, you can also visit the small yet fascinating archaeological museum, MAAM, which hosts a rotating display of three different child mummies, sacrificed by the Inca and entombed atop icy Llullaillaco peak. The children (and their grave goods) are immaculately preserved, and seeing them is wrenching. When we were there, "The Boy" was on display; he's very young, and you almost feel that you can reach out and pinch his chubby little kid-elbows, still dimpled with baby fat. Pictures are not allowed, and would feel kind of disrespectful anyway.

The child mummy couldn't have been much older than the children we saw dancing in the parade.

Just look at that face,

In fact, children were everywhere in Salta, and the town in this era would be a very friendly place to travel with young 'uns. There were cute ponies to pose and play with,

a lagoon with paddle-boats, and a cable car ride that sweeps you to the top of cerro San Bernardo.

The cuisine is child-accessible as well, with meaty soups (locro, a specialty of this area, is hearty, thickened with beans and potatoes and sometimes sweetened with peaches)

the submarino, which is simply a chocolate bar lazily melting in a glass of warm milk,

and giant hot dogs. This one was on the Rococo end of the pancho spectrum, with fontina cheese, chips, celery aioli, corn, green olives, tomatoes, and onions. They aren't always this elaborate!

Adults shouldn't miss a trip to nearby Cafayate. The amazing Quebrada de las Conchas provides arresting scenery on your way out of Salta; the geological upheaval around here produced otherworldly striations of color and texture.

And the region grows wine! Lots of wine, at some of the highest vineyards in the world. The torrontes is wonderful, and we'll have to seek out more when we get home. Unfortunately, with only a day to give for a Cafayate trip, we were in a rush and didn't get to see many vineyards.

Next up: Iguazú Falls!

(and in current news, we're in freaking JOHANNESBURG! Hoping to get the next four or five posts done and in the chute before we leave for Tanzania on Tuesday. Hello spicy Zanzibar!)