#3 - Argentina Part I

Greetings from Argentina!

We just read over the last blog post and that was a marathon entry! For the time-poor out there, we´re going to start with a super quick summary of our latest travels, before diving into the details ;)
(Dave was about to create some powerpoint slides to make it even more to-the-point, but then came to his senses)


THE QUICK SUMMARY:

Buenos Aires - We only had one night in this amazing city, however we will be returning for 5 days before we fly out of Argentina in February … more details when we return there.

Bariloche - We hightailed it over to Bariloche to meet up with some good friends from IMD. The snow-capped mountains and crystal-clear lakes made us feel like we were right back in Switzerland … however fortunately for this week we finally had the time to do the things we really wanted to do last year (mountain-biking, sampling chocolate and relaxing with classmates).

The Estancia! An amazing highlight of our trip! We stayed for 5 days with a good family friend of the Jephcotts who runs a Cattle and Sheep farm in northern Patagonia. Great company, traditional Argentinian Asado (with meat pulled freshly off hangars in the shed), our first taste of Mate and some spectacular hikes around the property (where we saw Armadillos, Vultures and the Andean Condor).

The Wine (San Rafael and Mendoza) - A comfortable (yes, seriously!) 15 hour bus ride to the north brought us to wine country and the home of Argentina´s French-killer, Malbec. In San Rafael we toured like backpackers with rented bicycles and were rewarded accordingly from the vineyards. In Mendoza we splashed out on a professional tour and were amazingly rewarded with some fantastic wines from the top vineyards of the region.

Next Steps - From Mendoza we head north once more, through Cordoba and up to the salt fields and creepy desert landscapes near the Bolivian border!


THE LONG (AND WE MEAN LONG) VERSION ... FOR ANYONE WITH TIME:

Bariloche
As mentioned above, Bariloche was just like Switzerland in Argentina. Snow-capped mountains, beautiful lakes and some amazing chocolate.




Fortunately, the steaks were a little cheaper than in Switzerland. So our first order of business was to gorge ourselves on the plentiful steaks, ice-cream and chocolate available in the town. We also found the self-proclaimed ¨best sausage sandwich¨ in the world (called a Choripan), so we had to have a couple just to make sure…





After gorging ourselves, we got active. After many years out of the saddle, we were convinced by our friends onto a pair of Mountain Bikes to tour the nearby region. The views on the bike circuit were spectacular … however so were the sore muscles after the day of riding up and down countless hills!




With more biking a low probability, we all piled into a rented car and took the Ruto de los Siete Lagos (Road through the Seven Lakes). This road tested the limits of our little car´s suspension, however it had some amazing rest points to take a picnic and soak in the scenery. On this trip, we found a cute little lake village that was pretty much booked out of accommodation, but in the end we were able to rent a trailer out the back of one of the hotels. Not exactly five-star, however a memorable experience nonetheless. We were also able to find a petrol station with ¨Fangio¨ fuel, which we hoped would make the car go faster.






The Estancia!
After farewelling our IMD friends in Bariloche, we caught the bus to a farm run by a Jephcott family friend. Andrew and Paula were phenomenal hosts and we had an amazing time at the farm. While we were there, they were also hosting a couple of other Aussie travellers, Gay and Billy (pronounced Bijy in Argentinian) who, despite completely outpacing us on hikes around the property, were great company. We arrived on the Estancia with the intention of staying only 2 nights … however 5 days later we literally had to drag ourselves away from the place!!





The scenery at the farm was simply spectacular. On arrival, we had a quick walk up a hill overlooking the homestead and (following directions from Andrew) found a little baby vulture huddling in an unused water tank. We went up to take a look, however retreated when the vulture parents returned to the nest!!




Still needing to burn calories, we kept trekking around the property. One hike included exploring an old volcanic plug with great views of the estancia. However later in our stay we attempted a monster hike up one of the taller hills (we´d say mountain!) on the property. After finally reaching the top we were rewarded with panoramic views of the property and a visit by some local Andean Condors. The photo below simply doesn´t do the condors justice … they were huge!





(Un)fortunately the calories burned by the hiking were more than replaced by the amazing food at the Estancia! We learned how to make mate (and now carry the necessary equipment with us on our travels)...




...and we were able to taste some amazing Patagonian lamb. Dave´s eyes nearly popped out of his head when we were shown the shed on the farm with hanging lamb carcasses. One night Andrew roasted half a lamb (yes, half an entire lamb) over an Argentinian grill (asado). As the lamb roasted over the coals, Andrew cracked a bottle of Bundy (brought by Bijy) and we introduced the nectar of the gods to a couple of the Argentinians on the estancia. Unfortunately, by the time the lamb was cooked, so were the dinner participants. The photos below show the cooking, carving and the aftermath. There are also a couple of photos in-between the carving and aftermath, however we´re not committing them to the internet…

Wine country
After finally dragging ourselves away from the farm, we took a 15hr bus ride north into wine country.

The first stop was San Rafael. Inspired by our biking in Bariloche (and the flat terrain), we rented a couple of bikes and headed out to the wineries. Quickly we learned that even on flat ground, biking is still tough work in the middle of the desert in summer. At each winery we turned up sweaty and dishevelled and were rewarded with the finest cheapest wines they had to offer. The exception of the day was an extremely friendly tour guide at the Bianchi winery who gave us a personal tour of their facilities (including the private family collections, not shown to the large Spanish-speaking tours) to practice her English.

Second stop was Mendoza, the home of Malbec and 70% of Argentina´s wine production. Following our bicycling adventures of San Rafael, we decided to ditch our backpacker budget for a day and cashed in a birthday present from last year to take a professional wine-tasting tour. We found a great operator in town who visited appointment-only wineries for tastings in small groups of 6-8 people. As we finalised the booking, out of curiosity we asked which countries the other people in our group came from. After hesitating, the sales agent very tentatively told us that most of their clients were from the United States. We had a little bit of a giggle with her, however we learned why she was hesitant … a Swiss couple the previous day had cancelled when they learned that they would be touring with Americans!

In the end, the Swiss couple missed out! We joined 3 couples from the United States and Canada and got on famously with them … the conversation flowed faster than the Malbec! Halfway through the day it became slightly apparent why we had so much in common; at the table we had representatives from Bain, McKinsey and an ex-Accenture consultant. Fortunately, consulting was rarely mentioned throughout the day (everyone was on holidays!) and instead we tasted many fantastic wines, got the chance to blend our own personal wines and had a fantastic lunch overlooking vineyards with the Andes in the backdrop … an amazing day!

Where to next?
After another overnight bus trip, we have just landed in Cordoba, which already looks like a fantastic city. From here we will continue north toward the Bolivian border, on the lookout for grand salt fields, spacey rock formations in the desert and llama stew. If you´ve made it this far, you´re dedicated … Stay posted!

Hasta Luego!

Dave and Kate

PS ... Actually, this blog was written a couple of days ago and some computer malfunctions stopped us from posting it. Now that we´ve finally got everything back together, we can finally post! Since writing the above text, we´ve just had a couple of fantastic days in Cordoba ... many thanks to our Italian connections in town (and many thanks Isabella!!!) We will update our Cordoba adventures on the next post. However right now, we have to hop on the bus to Salta!

#2 Adios Ecuador

hello all,

Sorry it´s been a while... we´ve spent the last three weeks in the same place (Montañita) relaxing, reading, learning spanish, drinking, sleeping and getting brown (or red depending which one of us you look at! -Can you tell who is writing today?)

It´s been great for recharging the batteries, however rather than sending repetitive daily updates we thought it was better served in a longer summary of our time here...

Introducing Montañita



Montañita is a small town on the southern coast of Ecuador. It is set just back from a long beach with excellent beginner waves and is therefore popular with travellers from Ecuador and elsewhere in South America (lots of Argentinians judging by the amount of ´mate´ being sipped at the beach) and of course a few obligatory gringos like us.

The locals are very friendly and of course offer special prices which we discovered varied as Kate´s skin got darker and her Spanish got better.

Montañita has a reputation with backpackers as a party town which was definitely confirmed over the christmas and new year period. We spent multiple evenings with our favourite cocktail vendor ´Galan´ sipping on caipirinhas and daquiris all made with fresh fruit and lots of liquor (which seemed to increase with every visit). Although the cocktails were delicious we didn´t sample everything they had to offer (see menu below). We were however impressed with the friendly smile and the guarantee of muchos vitaminos in every glass so much so that Dave almost considered pulling up stumps and starting a new career (not really we just got the t-shirt)...





One of our favourite daily activities was to watch the sunset over the water, naturally with a cool beer in hand. After living most of our lives on the east coast of Australia we thought this was far more civilised than getting up early to see the sunrise. One of the things that struck us was the speed of the sunset (which we are assuming was a result of our proximity to the equator) that was so quick it beat us to the bottom of our beer.




Lost in Translation - Learning Spanish

While we finished most days with a beer and sunset, we started early with our four hour spanish classes under a sun umbrella in a garden near the beach. We were pleasantly surprised with our progress over the three weeks with many thanks to our great teacher Isabel.

The first week and a bit were filled with a lot of vocab and grammar however the second half allowed us to practice our spanish (and get frequently corrected). In these practice sessions we took the opportunity to utilise Isa´s local knowledge and asked the best places to eat, drink and get groceries. We were extremely impressed with her suggestions and even more so with her entrepreneurship as we slowly worked out that all her recommendations were her relatives in town.




While we thought that our Spanish was improving immensely (which it was of course!) we did have some lost in translation moments. Dave´s favourite was learning that the word for wife, esposa, was the same word used for handcuffs -he even took a photo of the dictionary entry. He also took a photo of the Mitsubishi Montero, because Pajero (as it is called in Australia) means something else over here (maybe the Japanese were trying to send us a message).



Over the few days of the full moon there was lots of miaowing coming from the neighbourhood cats and we had many conversations about the cats being ´loco´ (crazy). Isa attributed this to something that sounded like ´alunestra´so naturally we assumed it was because of the full moon. After we began to wonder why we were having the same conversation everyday, we eventually worked out that the household cat was on heat. This was what was driving the other cats wild and made more sense than our lunar theory.


The funniest moment - New Year´s Eve

However the funniest moment (not at the time but in hindsight) was definitely our experience of new year´s eve in a huge party town. After securing accommodation next to the loudest and biggest party in town we were excited for the evening ahead after hearing about the huge new year´s eve celebrations. Not only was the town packed with people, we learned that the locals put on huge bonfires which they threw life sized dolls filled with gunpowder into at midnight before dancing the night away.

After class on the 31st we headed back to our room when Dave started to feel a little queazy. We were sure it wouldn´t last long so Kate set out for some water and managed to fall down an entire set of stairs. As Kate´s bruises grew in intensity so did Dave´s stomach flu, so the eagerly anticipated new year´s eve was spent by Kate stiffly forcing gatorade down Dave´s throat while he worshipped the porcelain gods. Luckily (?) they were able to live the party vicariously as the base from the party next door pounded through the bedroom walls until 1030am the next day. Not so funny then but giving us a good laugh now.


Dining out

We had a lot of great meals during our time, from local fare to some reminders of home like wood fired pizza and rotisserie chicken. Sadly we lack Kelly´s dedication so the only photographic record of food we have is Dave´s adventure with ceviche (raw seafood cured in lime with onions, tomato, salt and pepper). Apprehensive after his New Year´s Eve experience and a little worried about eating raw seafood purchased from a random cart on the beach, Dave eventually took the plunge near the end of our stay. He opted for the apparently most traditional regional ceviche of oysters although it could also come with prawns, fish or octopus. Despite the apprehensions there was more than one bowl of ceviche devoured (it´s lucky he only tried it at the end of the trip!) and Dave´s stomach is still intact.





Where Will the Next Cervezas Come From?

Right now we are sitting in a hostel in Guayaquil with a few hours to spare before our overnight flight tonight (with many hours to kill it could explain the length of this entry-congratulations if you´ve made it this far!).

Ecuador has been a great wind down and introduction to Spanish with friendly locals and the smell of popcorn hanging in the air. While we have loved the relaxation we have decided to increase our iron and energy levels by swapping our towels for hiking boots and high-tailing early to the abundant meat, wine and nature of Argentina.

Hasta luego

Dave and Kate