Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

Things I´ve learned in Argentina:

• Always look down as you walk along the sidewalk or your bound to end up with doggie poo all over your shoes.
• I love going to the gym again (too bad we won´t be able to afford one like we have here once we get back to NYC - for $16 a month...).
• There are wild cats all over the place - the first time we've seen this in Latin America.
• Fútbol is a religion here - during Argentina's World Cup Games businesses close (restaurants only stay open because they set up TVs for customers and staff alike) - hell, even the stock market closes, & people crowd around on the street in front of any store window with a TV playing inside. When Argentina scores a goal the city erupts in honks and shouts and confetti comes raining down past our windows.
• Argentine Spanish (call it castillano, NOT español!!) is really cool!
• Both Kepfram and I can hold our own when speaking with locals (although most of the shop keepers will try very hard to practice their English on us).
• Argentina has abundant locally produced media (the first country we've noted this in on our trip) - and I can generally understand Argentine TV and movies (wooHoo!).
• But still (as I noted in a previous post), it is clear that the companies that provides cable TV here are simply vehicles for the disemination of US media content (quite a bit of it is CRAP).
• One interesting thing we noticed about Argentine television is that there are no older women actresses in the sitcoms - their characters are instead played (and generally not very well) by young women wearing wigs!
• There are a ton of really interesting neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, we explored all the major ones, but I'd love to see the rest of the city.
• It's cool to go exploring with friends, and we were really fortunate to have some time with Yvan & Cécile as well as Rafael.
• There is REALLY good ice cream to be had here (and really good chocolate too). Kepfram has explained to me that part of why the ice cream here is so good has to do with how it's made - it's not adding a flavoring to an unflavored ice cream, the flavors are in place from the beginning of the ice cream making process. Whatever. All I know is that it's GOOD, really GOOD.
• Kepfram thinks it's a good idea to make hot chocolate by mixing milk, cocoa, and dulce de leche.
• Produce is abundant and cheap, we eat WELL here.
• Argentine (grass fed) beef is better than any beef we've ever had.
• You can't buy natural yogurt here (or anywhere else in South America for that matter), so I had to learn to make it myself (thanks, Dad).
• The artisan markets have really great stuff. A friend told us that there are even more people creating artisanal goods since the economic collapse of 2001 - all these talented people needed to work, so they created a market. What we saw in Buenos Aires was better than anything we saw elsewhere in Latin America (where nearly everything is the same). You can find incredible and original work made of glass, leather, silver, bone/horn/hoof, and textiles.
• Ski season doesn't start until June in Bariloche and not until July in Mendoza (so seeing as we visited both in May, we did not get to go skiing in the Southern Hemisphere...).
• It's no fun to dance tango with a slowly healing sprained ankle.
• Non-smoking sections are almost non-existent, therefore Kepfram rarely wants to go out here.
• Six weeks are NOT enough time to get to know this country. We had to skip too many things....
• We met some really great people and now have friends here - Araceli (mentioned in this post), and Claudia (seen here with her family - our Spanish teacher, and former classmate of Araceli's daughter Monica). We won't be strangers when we come back.

Ellie

Labels: Argentina, Musings

Our favorites in Buenos Aires:

The weekend brunch at Janio Restaurant - with a huge buffet of fruit, yogurt, cereals, fresh juices, jams, hams, cheeses, eggs, cookies, and pastries... mmmmmMmmm
The selection included the BEST creamy chocolate mousse brownie thingy either of us have ever tasted
Conveniently located about 10 blocks from our apartment



La Flor on a pretty day - it's a giant solar powered cyber flower.... cool!
If you go at dawn or dusk you can see the flower in motion - but we were equally impressed with the mid-day view





Ricoleta Cemetery (Map in Spanish & Info in English)
With tons of interesting architecture - it's a city within the city of B.A.
It's where many of Argentina's rich, famous, and infamous are laid to rest - not buried, mind you - the coffins are clearly visible in many of the tombs




Shopping at the Feria de Mataderos where you can buy TONS of cool artisanal goods (foods, crafts, clothes, etc) for great prices from cool people & watch local gauchos participate in traditional competitions




Teatro Colón - 2nd in the world in sound quality (after Milan's opera house)
We never got to see a show, but the tour was really impressive - although we were only permitted to take photos in the entry hall, the theater itself was fabulous and we even got to listen to the Symphony practicing on stage from the presidential box!



Botanical Gardens a great free spot to relax in the city & only 4 blocks from our apartment!
The garden is home to many of Buenos Aires's feral cats



Japanese Garden a lovely spot to sit and relax or to participate in any of the many programs offered - from bonsai to tea ceremonies - not that we went to any of their programs, but we did go to visit the garden and it was quite nice



MALBA (El Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) - really good new museum with mostly modern pieces and an excellent permanent collection (artists include Freda Kahlo, Diego Revera, Fernando Botero, and many others including Cuban/French artist Wifredo Lam who painted the work to the left)
Kepfram didn't go with me to visit the museum, but he really missed out!
The museum is new since my last visit to B.A., I was really impressed, and I'll most definitely return



El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes - great mostly free museum including plenty of European (mostly French and Spanish) art from the 19th and 20th centuries
Kepfram was really digging the Impressionist exhibits, and I really went for the more modern stuff, but we were also both taken by the use of light in the work of 19th century Realist William-Adolphe Bouguereau



El Once in Barrio Balvanera is the Buenos Aires garment district - we really enjoyed the super cheap shopping and the totally un-sophisticated flavor of this Jewish neighborhood
Amongst the multiple shoe stores, and casual to trendy clothing stores, you can find a men's suit and (even get it custom fitted) for U$S 30-50 (although it was difficult to fit Kepfram's body type in these suits cut originally for the stores' main clinentel of Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews....)





The commercial theater district along Corrientes
I went with Monica's (my Spanish teacher from Costa Rica) Mom, Araceli (what a great, energetic person, if you ever need tourism advice for Argentina contact her at exploreargentina.com, she can surely help you out) to see the Argentine release of Visiting Mr. Green with the incredible talented Pepe Soriano who WAS Sr. Green for 2 hours...
What an amazing experience to see a beautifully acted play (tickets purchased night of show, 30 minutes before curtain for a nearly full house, but we got FRONT ROW seats!!) in Spanish and understand all but a few words!
Kepfram didn't join us (afraid his Spanish wasn't up to par), again, he really missed out...



Riding the Subte - although we never got used to the trains going the WRONG way (at least compared to normal - which IS the New York Subway system) we loved the art

Labels: Argentina

Iguazú Falls So we finally got our first class bus experience... The first time was on the trip between Mendoza & Buenos Aires complete with our choice of meal (carne, pollo, o vegetariana), drinks, champagne, & 2 movies on a very new bus.

Labels: Argentina

Hi everybody!
Sorry we've haven't been keeping up with this blog lately.
Argentina is an lovely place & we've been focused more on enjoying it than we have been on writing about it.
We'll try to publish all of our overdue updates before we return home next month.

See you all soon,

Ellie & Kepfram

Labels: Argentina

¡Bienvenidos a nuestro departamento nuevo!
Nos mucamos el 3 de Junio y vamoas a quedarnos acá hasta el 4 de Julio. Estamos en el barrio de Palermo todavía. Tenemos un departamento con dos ambientes, cocina completa (con licuadora, jugadora y procesador de alimentos) - Kepfram está re feliz con ésta y está cocinado muchísimo.
Si bien el departamento no es en estado perfecto, hay mucha luz, suficiente espacio, y además un balcón (que no vamos a usar mucho en el invierno, pero todavía es bueno tenerlo...).
¡También tenemos internet! Aunque la computadora no está nueva y no tiene puerta de USB, funciona más o menús bien y estamos felices tener acceso de internet a casa. Aprovechamos el cable también para ver la copa mundial, programas en castellano (hay muchos programas argentinos), y algunos programas familiares (me daba cuenta de que las empresas de servicio de cable son negocios multinacionales y la mayoría de las programas y muestran son de Estados Unidos).

Labels: Argentina

y ahora... ¡¡Buenos Aires!! por mala suerte llegamos el día antes de un día ferial, y por eso no podemos ver muchos departamentos hasta la semana que viene....
Nos quedamos en el barrio de Palermo, no pasé mucho tiempo acá la ultima vez que estuve en Buenos Aires. El barrio tiene muchos cafés, tiendas, restaurantes, unos lugares para bailar el tango, u mucha arte. Nuestro hostel es muy bonito en una casa vieja, tenemos una habitación privada con baño (amo Argentina, donde tener los recursos para esta cosa lujosa otra vez), la cocina tiene todo que necesitamos, y los dueños son muy simpáticos.
Cuando hayamos conseguido un departamento, vamos a conocer Iguazú, y después regresamos para vivir acá, tomar mas clases de castellano, y ¡unos de tango!

Labels: Argentina

Tomamos la decisión de conocer Mendoza porque llegamos en la Argentina antes de que hubiéramos anticipado, por eso teníamos tiempo y también teníamos ganas de comer parrilla y probar vino. Fuimos con nuestros amigos Yvan y Cécile de Francia (nos conocimos en Bolivia).
La ciudad es grande, pero no tan grande como Santiago o Buenos Aires), y interesante:

• con muchas plazas y parques - nos dijeron que éstos son útiles en caso de terremoto, para que uno pueda escapar el peligro de los edificios
• todos las calles con arboles a los lados - dos veces mas arboles que personas en la ciudad
• con muchos perros de la calle, pero no son exactamente perros salvajes. Uno nos adoptó, muy simpático era, muy submisivo, y muy fiel - resultó que tuvimos que perderlo: entramos el mercado de una puerta y salimos de otra puerto (pero todavía pudimos verlo esperándonos con paciencia a la primera)
• Tiene el zoológico más grande del país, con muchos animales de Sur América y unos mas del mundo

Tuvimos unos tures de los alrededores:

• Las Bodegas de Mendoza son muy conocidas, sin embargo los tures que ofrecen son muy diferente de lo que había anticipada por mis experiencias con las bodegas de Estados Unidos. La diferencia más grande era que acá no nos dejaron probar más de dos variedades de vino en cada viña (supongo que poca gente compra vino en esos tures y por eso no quieren darle mucho vino, pero no voy a comprar algo que no he probado...)

• Mendoza es también conocido por sus áreas de esquí y sus altas montañas como Aconcagua. No nos dijeron nada cuando hicimos las reservas, pero en otoño no se puede ver nada por el tiempo mal que hay casi diariamente. Resultó que todo el día estábamos sentados en una camioneta con poca vista y solo paramos para conocer el Puente del Inca en el nieve y de otro lado del rio....

Labels: Argentina

A slight miscalculation...
San Carlos de Bariloche, which pretty much everyone just calls Bariloche is very pretty (I say that a lot, I think I need some new adjectives). Located in the Lake District of Northern Argentine Patagonia it's the major destination city for the region because of all the outdoor stuff that we didn't get to do.
It's early winter in Argentina so it's rainy, windy & quite chilly here. Because of the weather we're not boating, or swimming, or fishing, or skiing, or horseback riding, or biking, & because I still have doubts about Ellie's sprained ankle we haven't done much hiking either. The ski season doesn't open till June 20-something so I don't think we'll get our chance this visit, oh well... So the lesson learned is to check the weather/season before planning your trip. We do now know how nice it is here & would happily come back here for the summer or the winter ski season.
So making the most of our time here we along with Yvon & Cecile visited Cerro Campanario (1,050 meters high) in Parque Nacional Nahuel Haupi to check out the park. The views were incredible from up there. Beautiful, but it was cold. We were SO glad we took the raincoats they offered @ the base of the mountain. At the top was a nice cafe with some tasty pastries & submarinos (semi-sweet chocolate disolved in steamed milk).
& that was the most interesting bit of our time in Bariloche. Our hostel was nice, smoke-free, & warm with a good kitchen, internet, & a nice DVD library. I think I'm going to like Argentina.

Kepfram

Labels: Argentina

Welcome to Argentina!Population: 39 million people
Currency: Argentine Peso, $3.08310AR = $1US
Capital: Buenos Aires
Food: Beef, lots of beef (distinct cuts of grass fed meaty goodness, salted, grilled & slow roasted). There are also lots other grilled specialties that we won't be trying like different sausages, & roasted organs that don't sound so good, but the dulce de leche we will be trying.
Roads: Still nice & there lots of options for busses (from 1st class to coach).


Black People Count thus far: about 12, we encountered a tour group from the West Indies on a mountain overlook so I'm not sure if I should count them or not. Ellie's past exprience in Argentina led her declare it "The Whitest Place on Earth," we'll see if that holds true this visit.
Itinerary: skiing in San Carlos de Bariloche, wine tasting in Mendoza, visit the Iguazu Falls Park, study spanish & tango in Buenos Aires for a month, & take a ferry over to Uruguay for a weekend.

Bye-bye Chile!
So our bus trip was comfortable & uneventfull. It was a pretty ride across the Andes, even on a rainy day it was impressive. It was kinda like going from the US to Canada, the customs people weren't tense, they did random searches of our bags, & we didn't feel like our bus was going to leave us.
I'm really hoping that our money will go a bit further here than it did in Chile, we'll see...

Kepfram

Labels: Argentina, Chile, Status Update