El Circo Fantasma!

The Best & Worst

2007-05-02T16:52:00.000-03:00

After seven months of traveling by bus, boat, horse, and foot through Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Bolivia, we decided that the best way to put El Circo Fantasma! to rest would be with a list of highs and lows from our trip. Many of these things were covered more extensively in previous posts, and we’ve tried to link back to those where appropriate. However, we thought that by putting them together in a definitive Best/Worst list, we could arm future travelers with information about what not to miss and what, at all costs, to avoid. We also thought the list would function pretty well to offer an overview of our travels. So without further ado, here goes….

Best Camping: Rio Valera at Estancia Harberton (where we had the place to ourselves, except for geese and red foxes) and Puesto Seron in Torres del Paine were both absolutely amazing. Worst Camping: The hot and dusty sites in Purmamarca and the frigid and muddy Camping Los Perros in Torres del Paine.

Best Town: For Nate it was Gaiman, for Emily, Ushuaia. The Worst Towns were the relentlessly unfriendly border town of La Quiaca and the dusty, hellishly boring Perito Moreno.

Best Room: Because it offered a warm bed after ten consecutive frigid evenings outside, we’ll go with Posada Costa Serena in Ushuaia. For style’s sake, however, Trelew’s Hotel Touring Club is hard to top. Worst Room: The bathroom at our hostel in Uyuni smelled so bad that you had to cover your nose and run in and out. And in El Chalten, we shared a room at an Albergue with a French couple who unabashedly stole one of our headlamps. Perhaps for this reason, we can’t remember the name of either of these places.

Best Hike: 9 days of peaks, glaciers, and lakes on the Torres del Paine circuit. Worst Hike: Watching cars pass us on the way up to the spectacularly boring Garganta del Diablo in Pampa Linda (Nahuel Huapi National Park).

Best Museum: For its giant sloth dung and cabinets full of skeletons, this honor goes to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata. Worst Museum: The 12-peso Nau Victoria––a crappy, lifesize reconstruction of the boat that Magellan docked at Puerto San Julian––was an astonishing waste of money and time.

Best Bus Ride: Spiralling up the switchbacks to the dizzying Abra Condor pass on the way to Iruya was awesome. Worst Bus Ride: Doing the ride back, in the dark, at six in the morning, was absolutely terrifying.

Best Argentines: We feel duly obligated to give it to the Haack family, who welcomed us into their home in Buenos Aires for three months. The couple who took us Bodega hopping in Mendoza were also muy amable. Worst Argentines: The proprietress of Perito Moreno's heladeria (which also doubles as the town’s only locutorio) was memorably awful.

Best Organized Trip: The three-day tour of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia definitely lived up to all its hype. Worst Organized Trip: Honestly, we didn’t spring for these trips very often, but all of them (including Peninsula Valdez and the Cueva de las Manos) were pretty stellar.

Best Wildlife: Nothing can beat watching sea lions give birth on the beaches of Peninsula Valdez, but the penguin colony at Puerto San Julian came very close. Worst Wildlife: The goddamned coatis at Iguazu Falls, who stopped at nothing in relentless pursuit of our lunch.

Best Attraction: The Perito Moreno Glacier is as incredible as all Argentines say (with tears in their eyes). Worst Attraction: Is the aforementioned Nau Victoria an attraction? Because never have we felt so ripped off.

Best Steak: Hands down, the bife de chorizo and lomo at El Boliche “de Alberto” in Bariloche were the best steaks that either of us will ever eat. The Worst Steak was the undercooked meat we made during a pitch-black DIY asado in Tilcara.

Best Alfajor: Dear traveller. If you ever have the misfortune to be stranded in Perito Moreno, there is hope. The alfajors at Chees’1 are seriously the best alfajors in the country. Go forth and eat dulce de leche while you wait two days for your bus to come. Worst Alfajor: the homemade alfajors for sale in the Quebrada taste like honey smashed between two pieces of cardboard.

Best Drink: The bottle of Escorihuela Malbec we bought after a grueling hike up to Refugio Otto Meiling in Nahuel Huapi National Park really hit the spot. So did the warm can of Austral beer that Nate lugged over Paso John Garner at Torres del Paine. Worst Drink: The unspeakable café con leche that we got in Tilcara (3 parts powdered milk to 1 part instant coffee) is now a thing of legend.

Best Bodega: Etchart in Cafayate was ridiculously generous with their free samples. Worst Bodega: The ones in Maipu (Mendoza) that charge for tours and tastings.

Best Deal: We tried to pay three different times, but nobody would take our money. Therefore, the free overnight train from Uyuni to Villazon, Bolivia has to rate as the best deal of a trip chock full of them. Worst Deal: The Nau Victoria. We cannot emphasize enough how much this thing blows.

Best Running Joke: The all-purpose “Saben los cosas que son ricos!”, which a bakery employer once offered as a compliment. Worst Running Joke: “Can we check email? Maybe one of the grad schools will have gotten back to me” pretty much speaks for itself.

Best Local Delicacy: Steak, duh. Also, choripan (spiced sausage between crusty bread) is as special as Wisconsin Brats. Worst Local Delicacy: Coca Leaves. They taste and smell awful.

Best Local Fashion: Bowler Hats! Worn by thousands of stylish Bolivian women. Worst Local Fashion: Pretty much all of Buenos Aires fashion, but especially the mullets.

Best Shower: The hot water at Puesto Seron on the Torres del Paine circuit is worth its weight in gold. Worst Shower: Many frigid showers were taken in concrete bunkers, but cold dousings at La Quiaca and Tilcara was particularly memorable.

Best Asado Ingredient: After much debate, we agree that bife de chorizo is the best cut. Worst Asado Ingredient: I can’t believe we ate ubre (udder).

Best Beach: Mar de Ajo. Worst Beach: Peninsula Valdez at low tide (miles of mucky sand, frigid water, and giant jellyfish).

Best Weather: Coming on the heels of snow, the days we spent at Tierra del Fuego National Park were blissful. Worst Weather: Rain kept us from seeing the falls at Iguazu for more than a day. Driving rain and freezing temperatures made us want to write off Parque Nacional Los Glaciers after just three days out.

Best Argentine Expression: “Vale la pena!” which is used for everything, and “puede ser” which is all-purposely baffling. Worst Argentine Expression: “Tranquilo Chicos”, which is the providence of all annoying, dreadlocked hippies.

Best Off-The-Beaten-Path Excursion: The zodiac tour to the penguin colony at Puerto San Julian was magical. So was camping at Estancia Harberton (everybody goes as part of a package tour, but they all neglect to pitch a tent). Worst Off-The-Beaten-Path Excursion: It was very cool to see Butch Cassidy’s old digs, but I’m not sure it was worth the 8-hour round-trip bus ride. Also, we have serious doubts whether the mythical Xanadu of San Isidro (past Iruya) actually exists.

Best Bus Movie: Shooter. We wholeheartedly endorse this movie. The dialogue is incredible (“I’m gonna do whip-its until I pass out”). Danny Glover’s performance is Oscar-worthy. Attn. Hollywood: more ridiculous B-movies of this ilk need to be made for long South American bus rides. Worst Bus Movie: Probably the third dubbed showing of The Longest Yard, but there are many competitors for this slot.

Best Stereotype About Americans: Everyone in Chicago is a gangster and owns a tommy gun. Worst Stereotype About Americans: We’re all Bush-loving imperialists!

Best Artisanias: The textiles in Bolivia were beautiful, and well worth hauling out in our packs. Worst Artisanias: We found the “artisanias del sal” in Bolivia pretty amusing. Useless items constructed of rock-hard salt.

Best Book: We read a lot of British classics (all that’s really available in English), but the most bizarre and gripping book we got our hands on was Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, which we picked up at a Patagonian book exchange. Worst Book: D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent is so, so wretched.

Best Bookstore: Walrus Books in Buenos Aires. For having a very decent selection, and for buying our thousands of paperbacks so we didn’t have to lug them home. Worst Bookstore: The ones (and there are many) where you have to order at a counter, and not browse the stacks. Insane.

Best Gear: Our tent survived a lot of wind and rain, and never once let us down. Worst Gear: Sadly, our MSR Whisperlite. We managed to break and/or lose no fewer than three key components, and the horrible solvente industrial necessitated a full scouring of the fuel line after each use.

That's it! Thanks to our readers for following along for so many months. –NSH & EMW

Still in need of a pony.

2007-04-25T17:35:00.000-03:00

Nate and I managed to drag ourselves away from Salta La Linda and its delightful assortment of anthro museums and locutorios long enough to take an excursion on horseback through the nearby mountains. Our riding party consisted of six British schoolboys and Alejandro, our patient guide. The schoolboys were keen on role playing games and Pixar movies. Aah, the exciting debates they had on our ride from Salta to the ranch - would a sequel to Monsters, Inc. be any good? Was The Incredibles awesome, or super awesome?

The ranch was a former convent, set in the hills high above Salta. We toured the old chapel, and then got down to the all important business of horse selection. Nate and I classified ourselves as "experienced" riders (after all, we had ridden independently relatively recently), and were accordingly rewarded with two of the better horses. I also proved myself to be a vastly improved rider by getting on the horses unassisted.

We were somewhat worried that riding with a guide would cramp our style, but Alejandro proved to be an excellent companion, knowledgeable not only about horses but also Argentine drug laws and drug production, cures for altitude sickeness, wine making, people of the countryside, Andean cuisine, etc, etc. And, he had no objection to letting the horses stretch their legs, and even permitted us to engage in the occasional race. At the insistence of the British boys, he even agreed to participate in one, his far superior horse quickly outpacing the rest of the field, and almost as quickly disappearing down the road and out of sight. -EMW

So Much Water So Far From Home

2007-04-25T17:28:00.000-03:00

With less than a week to go in our trip, Emily and I have decided to check off one of the last of Argentina's outstanding attractions. By travelling to Iguazu Falls, tucked neatly into the tri-border area between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, not only would we be able to see one of the country's most famous natural sites, we'd also be completing a four month circuit that's brought us clockwise around nearly the entire perimeter of Argentina. We decided that it was worth going a little bit out of our way.

We broke up our 24-hour bus ride from Salta with a stopover in sweltering Resistencia--a likable if disagreeably steamy city filled with all manner of sculptures and other public art. It being Sunday, all of the museums were closed, so we ordered a parillada and hunkered down in air conditioning. The nadir came later that evening when the waiter at a bus station confiteria refused to change the channel from a post-game soccer press conference to Dice-K's big start against the Yankees. We actually watched every pitch of the first four innings on MLB Gameday while waiting for our bus to arrive. It was pretty anti-climactic.

Because we hadn't slept in a bed in three days, we spent our first afternoon in Puerto Iguazu napping. But by the second morning, we were ready for the park. Aside for the Perito Moreno glacier, the falls at Iguazu are Argentina's most beloved tourist attraction. There are nearly 300 separate falls, spread over an area of more than 2 miles, and their lush, subtropical setting aids the overall effect immensely. They're taller than Niagara, and half again as wide, but they don't serve as a backdrop for anything like the Serial Killer Wax Museum, so there are some drawbacks.

At any rate, Argentina has done an admirable job of building many miles of fairly discreet catwalks around the park, allowing for a multiplicity of misty vantage points. Many of the areas were constantly clogged by tour groups, but we found some relief on Isla San Martin--a small island at the base of one of the more impressive sets of falls. Elsewhere in the park we observed caiman alligators, multicolored butterflies, and grotesque, wet-snouted coaties, which executed complexly choreographed maneuvers in an attempt to steal our overpriced lunches.

We left Iguazu in the pouring rain, with plans to return the next day in order to take a boat ride and hit the few remaining walking trails. Unfortunately, nearly 24-hours later, the rain still hasn't let up, leaving us with one more morning to try to make a run at it. Afterwards, it's back to Buenos Aires and then home. But stay tuned, because we're not quite finished posting. We're planning an epic best/worst list to wrap things up. -NSH

Woozy in Wine Country

2007-04-18T13:44:00.000-03:00

We finally got around to taking one of the many day trips from Salta. Located just shy of 200 km from the city, Cafayate is a lazy, pleasant village known throughout Argentina for its stellar wines. A number of bodegas grow their grapes in the area's high-altitude vineyards--well irrigated and perpetually sunny, the region is apparently quite hospitable to malbec, cabarnet, and torrontes varieties.

In the last three-and-a-half months alone, we've logged literally thousands of miles by bus, train, 4x4, and van. Sick of riding, we decided to try something altogether different and drive. Emily piloted us past the Salta city limits (I stupidly left my license in Buenos Aires, and decided to ride shotgun so as not to become the second member of my immediate family to see the inside of a Latin American prison). We flew through the multicolored Quebrada de la Concha (I'm pretty sure that this translates into something completely indecent) and landed in Cafayate around two. After a stop at a tourist kiosk for a map of the bodegas, we headed off in search of what we figured would be the first of many free drinking spots.

Bodega Etchart churns out one of our all-time favorite budget malbecs. When we arrived, the bottling area was a blur of noise and movement, as bottles rolled down the conveyor to get corked. A woman motioned us into a dimly lit tasting room, poured us eight glasses of wine, and left. "For you!" she said, pushing four in each of our directions. By the time she returned minutes later, we were buzzing. We said we'd buy a couple of $3 bottles, which pleased her enough that she decided to pour us one more glass of their premium blend for good measure.

As we stumbled away from Etchart, blinking woozily in the sun, we quickly realized that we were going to need to scale back the rest of the afternoon. We visited a no-frills table swill bodega and admired the pyramid of cheap jugs in their showroom before politely declining a tasting. After a glass of torrontes and malbec at Vaseja Secreta, plus a bowl of cabernet sauvignon ice cream at a local heladeria, we were ready to call it a day.

We returned the car without incident late that evening, the odometer reading about 10 km short of our purchased allotment. Between Cafayate and our bodega tour of Mendoza, we've made out pretty well on our binging excursions. -NSH

Our Salta Siesta

2007-04-08T19:57:00.000-03:00

Sometimes we don't post for days at a time because we're too busy moving from place to place to write anything down. In this most recent case, however, we've just been too lazy. Since the very end of March, we've been living in a small but pleasant apartment in Salta, a historic city in the northwest of Argentina. We have cable TV, a stack of books, a hot plate, and a stash of wine bottles. We don't get out all that much, hence the lack of posts.

Salta is sprinkled with attractive churches and neo-colonial buildings, most of them clustered around the scenic central plaza. Sometimes we walk down in the late afternoon to drink coffee and watch the crowds of school teachers who are invariably demonstrating. They've set up a home base beneath the arches of the white-washed Cabildo, where they hang caricatures of greedy Argentine politicians and chant for fair pay. A recent newspaper editorial chided the teachers for being too selfish about their rights. "What about our right to hang out under the Cabildo!" the Salteno complained. I think the crisis might be coming to a head.

Speaking of crises, we've lately taken to watching Cronicas with some frequency. Somehow more crass than Fox News, the sensationalist TV channel has a knack for eye-grabbing headlines ("Three People and a Bolivian Dead in Fire") and outrageous footage. They always manage to beat the cops to the scene of the crime--a couple of nights ago we watched masked protestors set fire to a politician's office in Buenos Aires, the police arriving ten minutes into the live report.

For the most part, however, life in Salta is pretty tame. We've hit up most of the major attractions, including a cable car up to the adjacent Cerro San Bernardo, and both of the city's anthropology museums, one of which houses Incan mummies. Other museums we invariably visit while they're closed for siesta, and vow to wake up early enough for the next day.

We've got about two more weeks in Salta, and hope to spend some of that time exploring the nearby Cafayate vineyards and maybe a cloud forest or two. We also skipped over some Patagonian highlights in recent posts, so maybe we'll write about those retroactively. But, it's also quite possible that we'll be too busy watching Cronicas and drinking malbec to manage much of anything. Time will tell. -NSH

Salt of the Earth, Bolivia

2007-03-26T12:20:00.000-03:00

The bustling town of Uyuni, Bolivia, located nine hours north of the border town of Villazon, appears to exist solely for the purpose of catering to tourists desiring 4x4 expeditions through the surrounding countryside. We first heard about these tours from a pair of Dutch boys at a Chilean hostel, and figured we'd never participate ourselves. However, curiosity eventually got the better of us.

Our tour consisted of our driver, Leonardo, his wife/our cook Barbara, and five Italian agronomists. Three of the Italians live in La Paz and speak fluent Castellano. Two were visiting from Italy, and spoke only Italian, which to my ear sounded like fluent Castellano. Anyway, they were all quite nice, and besides for the occasional communication problems, we preferred them to the squawking Brits and Aussies we encountered at each stop. Also, they reminded us a lot of the characters in The Best of Youth.

On the first day, we explored a train "museum" -- really an old rail yard where locomotives are left to oxidize in the dusty air. From there, we visited a tiny town where a woman demonstrated how local families dry, pulverize, and package salt for consumption. And from there, we headed to the blindingly white salt flats, covered in many places by a warm cover of rainwater. Everything sparkled and shined, and the water made the mountains on the horizon seem to float in air.

The highlight of Day One was the town where we ended up and it's eerie necropolis. We spent the hour before the sun set exploring the site, which consisted of beehive-like constructions of rock scattered throughout a desert landscape. Each of the constructions housed visible human remains. Many were just skulls and femurs, but there were also some remarkably intact mummified corpses, dressed in tattered woven material and surrounded by pottery shards. All of the remains dated to pre-Incan times.

Day Two brought us to a series of small lakes, many of which were choked with colorful micro-organisms and deposits of arsenic and borax. We watched pink and white flamingos traipse about, their skinny legs folding at impossible angles. At night we stayed at a crowded encampment, sleeping seven to a room. Before bed, we taught Leonardo how to play Rummy 500, and neglected to correct him when he slapped runs and three-of-a-kinds down on the table that weren't deservedly his. Afterwards, everybody turned in early to be rested for our 4:30 am wake-up.

We pulled out the next morning in the frigid, pitch black, listening to Leonardo's stories about how drug smugglers move marijuana and cocaine into Chile by dressing up as tourists on the same 4x4 excursions we were on. We climbed to 4900 meters (the Italians had a GPS to verify it) to take in roaring geysers. The steam smelled noxiously of sulfur, but everyone was eager to brave it for the heat it provided.

The highlight of Day Three, and possibly of the trip, was a stop at some thermal baths. Despite the lack of an adequate changing area, the Italians stripped down to their tighty-whities to go for a dip. Not wanting to disrupt group solidarity, we quickly joined them, relaxing in the warm water while more tours arrived and spent awhile gawking and photographing us in their parkas and wool hats. Eventually, almost everyone joined in.

The Italians had a bus to catch that night, so we spent most of the morning and all of the afternoon booking it back to Uyuni. Unfortunately, our jeep was unwilling to cooperate. Because one of the wheels was improperly aligned on its axle, Leonardo had to make infrequent stops to remove the wheel and reattach it again. Once, someone asked how long it would take to walk to Uyuni. "A day and a night," Leonardo said, "Then another day and another night, and probably another one too." He drew some kind of symbol in the dirt with a tire iron, which presumably helped. Also helpful--continually crossing himself in between bites of coca leaves.

In the end, the fickle gods smiled down on us. We made one last stop at a town that Leonardo claimed existed solely for drug trafficking. The low stone houses were all shuttered up, and on the hillside, above a yawning cave, the mangled remains of a prop plane were twisted into the rock. There was definitely a story there. From the town, it was a straight shot to Uyuni, with the occasional braking for llamas the only thing to slow us down. After 14 hours of driving, the Italians made their bus by about 20 minutes. -NSH

Quebrada Arriba

2007-03-26T12:17:00.000-03:00

After Tilcara, we continued up the Quebrada de Humuaca to the tiny town of Iruya, which we reached via a stomach churning three hour bus ride. As we bought our bus tickets, we were warned that because it had rained the night before, the roads were particularly bad, and the bus would not in fact be going all the way to Iruya - instead we would be dropped off a couple kilometers from town and would need to complete the journey on foot.

The ride, mostly over dirt roads, occasionally through full fledged rivers, was indeed rough, but our bus driver performed impressively. The ride was through beautiful high Andean plateau, climbing to the 4,000 meter Abra Condor pass. I'm not sure whether it was because of the extraordinary views or merely the lack of oxygen at that altitude, but our entire bus became giddy as we went over the pass, snapping photos and jumping from one side of the bus to the other in an effort to get the best views.

About two kilometers short of Iruya, we encountered a river running across the road. Despite our bus drivers best attempts to drive through the torrential water, we were unable to cross. Instead, he got out of the bus and began throwing rocks in the river, in an attempt to construct a temporary bridge. After waiting a few minutes, all the tourists piled out the bus and began to assist him, gleefully throwing rocks and splashing each other, while the locals remained on the bus, hoping that our efforts would pay off. After fifteen minutes of construction effort, the driver sucessfully negotiated the river, and managed to deliver us all the way to Iruya.

In Iruya, upon disembarking from the bus we were met by an enterprising youngster, who promised to get us a room for 25 pesos. We followed her up Iruya's steepest hill, where she took us from house to house, until we finally found a family with a suitable room for us.

We spent two days in Iruya, mostly watching the donkeys and goats that have the run of the town. After a fruitless attempt at acquiring some horses for a day's riding (the owner of the hosteria sent us to check at a kiosk, where we were informed that the only person who might have horses was the hosteria owner) and exploring the nearby canyons and riverbeds on foot (somewhat taxing giving the altitude). We left Iruya early on the morning of the third day, waiting for the bus in the dark at five am with a crowd of locals and one friendly donkey. We arrived in Humuahaca dead tired, but in time for the bus to La Quiaca, our final stop in Argentina before heading into Bolivia. -EMW

Where The Streets Are Paved in Cheap Empanadas

2007-03-15T18:20:00.000-03:00

With our finances dwindling and our return to the states still long on the horizon, Emily and I have decided to head up north, where the living is miraculously cheaper. Fortunately, the warm and arid region of Argentina where we've ended up is also full of many colorful and interesting sights.

After securing an apartment rental in Salta beginning April 1st, we continued on to the city of Jujuy, which is very fun to say (hoo-hooey!). The bustling, Andean city is useful as a jumping-off point for the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a stunning gorge that boasts polychrome strata, eerie rock formations, and picturesque villages that feel lost to time.

Our first stop en route was the tranquil hamlet of Pumamarca, whose sights include a beautifully austere 17th century church, an impossibly crowded, cactus-strewn cemetery, and a dramatic mountain--El Cerro de los Siete Colores--that towers above the town. We took a long walk around the rainbow-colored rock, counting many more than seven shades of orange, pink, grey, and green. We also loitered around the central square, where squat old women sell weavings and other wares. After sampling lomo de llama for dinner (it tastes kind of like pork, but... smokier?), we retired to our tent, which we'd foolishly staked a mere six inches from four of the most annoying girls in Argentina. They stayed up all night taking flash photos of each other and singing Bob Marley's "Jammin", but I think one of them got trapped in the bathroom the next morning, which I attribute to karma.

From Purmamarca we continued up the gorge to the slightly larger town of Tilcara. Boasting a campground with a) space and b) grass, we were wholly prepared to love place. However, resolving to attempt an asado, we almost came to grief in "downtown" Tilcara, where none of the stores are ever open, and don't stock anything even when they are. Thankfully, we finally found a butcher willing to hack some slabs off a hanging cow carcass, and a bakery with stale bread. No one in town had any carbon, but by shovelling together the coals from extinguished asado fires back at the campground, we were able to get a flame going. Sadly, we had to eat our steaks in the dark, as we'd neglected to remember that the sun sets hours earlier than it does in Patagonia.

The next morning we were tricked into ordering the world's foulest coffee (3 parts powdered milk to 1 part instant coffee, add boiling water) before setting out for the Pukara--the imposing ruins of an enormously complex pre-Columbian fortress that was used briefly by the Incas. Roaming around the reconstructed stone walls and ominous sacrificial altars, we were willing to overlook Tilcara's other flaws. And, because our tickets to the Pukara also got us into an archeology museum housing Andean mummies, we decided that Tilcara deserved a thumbs-up.

For the next week or so, we'll continue climbing up the gorge, reaching altitudes of 4000m. as long as our tender American lungs don't collapse. We plan to poke around at least three or four more of these tiny hamlets before ending up in Bolivia where, my mother warns me, they have something called "the road of death". -NSH

Butch Cassidy, har har har

2007-03-15T18:09:00.000-03:00

We broke up our journey between Perito Moreno Ciudad and Bariloche with a stop in Esquel, planning to head over to Cholila, a nearby town featuring the dilapidated remains of three cabins where Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Etta Place spent 1901 to 1905, hiding out from the law and trying their hand at a more peaceful ranching life. Our travel planning was flawless, except for our failure to take into account the fact that Esquel and Cholila are near each other only in a very general sense, somewhat like Maine is near Delaware. However, having stopped in Esquel, we felt committed to completing our excursion, and we hopped on a bus for Cholila.

We asked the driver to drop us off at the Casa de Piedras tea house in Cholila, a wily attempt to conceal our true destination. The bus driver knew what was up though, elbowing Nate as he got off the bus and chortling, “Butch Cassidy! Har har har!” Apparently it was obvious that we had not taken the five hour bus ride for a cup of tea.

After arriving, we blundered around the farms on either side of the road, hopping random fences only to find ourselves face to face with enormous steers. We finally realized we would never find the cabins by relying on blind luck alone, and walked over to the Casa de Piedras, where we wandered through a deserted tea room, and entered the kitchen looking for assistance. We found the owner, hair still in curlers, enjoying lunch in front of a blaring television. She put her arm around me and kindly (pityingly) directed us 200 meters back in the direction we had come from, to the sign clearly labelled “Butch Cassidy” with an arrow pointing towards the cabins. As we left, she wistfully asked us if we were very sure we didn’t want any tea.

We arrived at the cabins shortly after. One was partially rebuilt, while the other two were in a sadly (but authentically) decrepit state. Someone had gone to some effort to impart a creepy vibe to the site, with animal skulls nailed threateningly to the fence and skins draped from the rafters. We searched unsuccessfully for an escape tunnel the three had allegedly built and contemplated outlaw life.

Veni, Vidi, Vindimia!

2007-03-08T11:52:00.000-03:00

Nearly a month ago, Emily and I resolved to make it as far north as Mendoza for the city's annual celebration of the wine harvest. Held the first weekend in March, Vindimia is an unrivaled spectacle of vino, consisting of parades and music and dance extravaganzas, and culminating with the election of a beauty queen from among the ranks of the city's rival districts.

Normally we're pretty lax about scheduling, but in this case our planning paid off. We stepped off the bus on Saturday morning and into the throng of Carrusel, a procession of floats, marching bands, and sequined dancers. From the beauty queens throwing fresh (and often heavy) produce to the throngs below, to the gauchos who struggled mightily to coax their horses across the grates in the street, there was a great deal of excitement to observe.

Mendoza is Argentina's wine capital, and as such, it's a major port of call both for oenephiles and dilettantes who dig free tastings. The two of us fall squarely into the latter category, so we decided to spend our Monday in Maipu--the satellite town where the bodegas are most densely clustered. While waiting for the bus to bring us there, a slick salesman sidled up next to us and told us about a bike rental place in central Maipu. He explained that the evil cartel of "Bikes and Wines" was run out of Mendoza, while the mom-and-pop operation he was helping--unimaginatively called "Rental Bikes"--was a local operation. This was our first indication that a battle for the hearts and minds of malbec-guzzling bike renters was being waged in wine country.

Unsure with whom to pledge our allegiance, Emily and I decided to walk to the first bodega. Nicknamed "La Rural", San Felipe is a vineyard that churns out the usual batch of malbecs and syrahs, while also housing a museum dedicated to winemaking. After admiring some 16th-century cowskins used for mashing grapes and marvelling at rich U.S. buyers who dumped half-glasses of $80 peso wine into the communal jug, we decided to move on.

Fortunately, we weren't long before meeting a very friendly couple from Buenos Aires who were driving from bodega to bodega. The "Bikes and Wines" vs. "Rental Bikes" debate had been settled for us. We sat in their backseat while they navigated between wineries, and quickly discovered that being chauffered between cool cellars was far superior to pedalling under a scorching sun. Plus, we were able to drink about three times more red wine than would have otherwise been possible.

We tried to duplicate the magic the next day, but failed miserably. Two of the three bodegas we visited charged money for tours and tastings, and a fourth turned out not to exsist at all. Now that Vindimia's over and most of the major bodegas are under our belts, Emily and I have been using our time to stroll around Mendoza's wide, shady streets, hang out in its spacious parks, and explore its smattering of sites, including an anthropology museum, an aquarium, and even a greenhouse housing deadly snakes and spiders. We can't quite bring ourselves to trudge out to the bus station and buy our next pair of tickets--things in Mendoza are laid-back, friendly, and addictively relaxing. -NSH

I want a pony!

2007-03-08T11:29:00.000-03:00

After weeks of backpacking and camping, Nate and I were in desperate need of a sleeping situation not involving thermarests and tents, so we decided to spend a couple of days relaxing at an old estancia on Route 40 run by Petty and her husband Coco. Key to the estancia experience for me was the possibility of horse riding. When I called to make our reservation, Petty informed me that the estancia did indeed have horses and, "if you know how to ride, you can certainly ride." I sat on a horse once 15 years ago without any major problems, so I informed her that yes, of course Nate and I knew how to ride.

Once we had arrived at the estancia, she seemed slightly more reluctant to entrust two of her horses to our clearly untutored hands. Over breakfast she made us sign a release form while fellow guests (who were too scared to ride themselves) reminded us of what a great responsibility we were accepting by taking the horses, and quizzed us about saddlery, asking if we were aware that the horses here were saddled western style. We did not. Did we know what western style was? No. After thoroughly demonstrating our ignorance of all things equine, Petty introduced us to our horses. Nate was given Petty's horse, Coco, (apparently named after her husband), while I rode Pampero, a fat brown horse. Under Petty's close watch, I took Pampero for a practice ride around the paddock, while Nate kicked a totally immobile Coco in a fruitless attempt to get him moving. Petty watched for a few minutes before announcing "I think you'll need a whip!" Whip in hand, Nate got Coco moving, and we hit the trail, chasing sheep around the estancia and marvelling at the bone and carcass littered landscape.

The beauty of taking horses out alone (especially when provided with a whip) is that you can finally do all the things that guides, for some reason, restrain you from doing: make the horses run, jump over streams, play chicken with the other riders. The downside is that horses are willful, lazy animals, and without a guide or a competent rider to keep them in line, they immediately lose the trail, pretend that they are totally unfamiliar with the terrain, and generally use all their wiles in an attempt to trick the rider into letting them return home. We fell for none of their tricks, and had an excellent ride. -EMW

The mythical Ruta 40

2007-03-04T18:39:00.000-03:00

Ruta 40 is the lengthy highway that stretches along Argentina's western border, connecting southern Patagonia with the rest of the country. Guidebooks are apparently obligated to refer to it as "mythical," which in this case apparently means very, very long and unmaintained and poorly served by buses. Only one company provides any transport--one bus, on even numbered days only. We caught a bus out of El Chalten to Perito Moreno (the city, not the glacier or the man--see below.)

The ride was hot, dusty and 12 hours long, with unchanging views of flat, parched fields. The road consisted of a bumpy one lane dirt track, occasionally narrowing to two ruts. Our bathroomless bus made frequent pit stops, giving us a chance to enjoy the scenery at even greater length. The drivers also pulled the bus over for essentially anything that broke up the monotony of the landscape: a service station serving coffee and pie, a river, an armadillo. Our bus driver pulled over and leapt on the armadillo, holding it up for all the passengers to see and pet while the armadillo shit in terror. The ride finally, thankfully, ended in Perito Moreno, a city only marginally less desolate than the landscape that preceded it. -EMW

Pigment and Spit

2007-03-04T18:15:00.000-03:00

In classic Argentine fashion, the country's department of tourism takes great pains to hype the Cueva de las Manos without providing much in the way of infastructure for people to actually visit. There's one business in the infamous Perito Moreno offering excursions, but it took us two days to catch them when they were open (they're called "Guanacondor" which, to the best of our knowledge, is translated "Shit Buzzard").

Fortunately, Emily and I did manage to successfully sign up for a tour, which ended up consisting of the two of us, three Argentine women, and a guide. The guide drove us a few hours over extremely bumpy ripio roads until reaching the rim of the canyon housing the paintings. From the rim, it was roughly 45 minutes of steep descent, followed by an equally steep ascent. Because the trail cut through red rock outcroppings and scrubby desert vegetation, there was a great deal of scenery to admire. However, our fellow travellers were mostly interested in taking pictures in a wooded glen where the Rio Pinturas winds through the canyon bed. "Don't forget to get my shoes in the photo," warned one of the women. She had snappy new red sneakers.

In the end, the Cueva de las Manos was well worth the trouble taken to visit. A mysterious archaeological site, the "cave" (really a series of exposed overhangs) features 829 negative images of hands, created 9500 years ago by tribes in the area. By placing their hands on the rock wall and blowing pigment over top, the primitive artists created an eerie, remarkably long-lasting tableaux. In and around the hands are images of guanacos--the llama-like creatures that still wander around the dusty landscape. There are other indigenous paintings from 2500 years ago consisting of scribbly stick figures and jagged lines. I think everyone sort of silently agrees that these are pretty half-assed by comparison.

The woman who escorted us around the site (you're not allowed to go yourself in case you get the urge to spraypaint "TE AMO COCO!" or something over the hands) explained that some archaeologists theorize that the ancient painters might have successfully domesticated guanacos in the area. Guanacos usually appear pretty tame, so I didn't initially find this terribly impressive. However, on the ride back to Perito Moreno, we stopped off to use the bathroom at a hostel and saw one of the gangly creatures ambling around the grounds. We all took turns taking photos ("don't forget to get my shoes!") until the guanaco got restless and suddenly arched its back. Seconds later, a foul spray of spit flew from its mouth. Tragically, my shirt smelled of regurgitated grass for many hours after, giving me a new perspective from which to admire the resourceful cave painters and guanaco herders. -NSH

Perito Moreno is Radically Dull

2007-02-24T12:14:00.000-03:00

Not to be confused with the Perito Moreno Glacier, Parque Nacional Perito Moreno, or the hundreds of Argentine streets named after Perito Moreno, the town of Perito Moreno--which lies partway along the RN-40, an unending dirt highway running parallel to the Cordillera--is incredibly dull. We thought that nothing could quite rival the bleakness of the Atlantic coast's Puerto San Julian, but Perito Moreno manages to.

Emily and I had the amazingly bad luck to pull into town late on a Saturday, fresh off a grueling 14-hour bus ride from El Chalten. While the rest of our fellow travellers fought over a handful of rooms at the inelegant Hotel Belgrano (every one else on our bus would leave very early the next morning), we trudged over to the municipal campground to pitch our tent in a dusty parking lot that proved the least hospitable surface for staking a tent in the entire southern hemisphere. Also, having spent fourteen straight hours staring out the window at vast nothingness, we were perplexed why it was necessary for our fellow campers to pitch their tents six inches to either side of our own. But, we were tired, so we went to sleep.

Our objectives for the next day were fairly straightforward--find food, find someone to take us to the nearby Cueva de los Manos Pinturas archeological site, get the hell out of dodge. By the end of the day, we'd only barely managed to find food. We spent nearly the entire day trudging down desolate Av. San Martin waiting to see if any businesses would honor their posted hours. No dice. We did see a young boy fanning himself with the propeller from his toy helicopter, and some other kids waved at us from behind drawn curtains, shouting "Hello! Hello!" at us in English. In the afternoon, we amused ourselves by pushing a discarded cow backbone around with our boots, and reading political graffiti blaming the U.S. for Perito Moreno's woes. We also spent some time pondering why the town's Burma Shave-style sign was spelled backwards.

The grocery store never did open its doors, but a few other places did open long enough for us to patch together something resembling a meal. The owner of the local fruit stand was unwilling to look away from a TV showing crowd shots from a local soccer match (when you don't spring for the pay-per-view feed, you get this unending footage of fans watching the game, which is like the only thing on the planet more boring than soccer). His wife begrudgingly agreed to sell us apples, grapes, eggs, and avocados. The gas station, which also doubles as the local watering hole, had dusty bottles of $2 wine and cartons of dulce de leche for sale. And a local rotisserie had bread and homemade alfajors. We brought these ill-matched ingredients back to the campground and pondered how it could have all gone so wrong.

Fortunately for our psyches, we were not the only ones to come to grief in Perito Moreno. Our most visible neighbors at the campground were a group of six twentysomethings driving a giant pickup with "Expedition 2007: The Southern Cone" emblazoned on the door. We watched on Sunday morning as they spent countless hours stripping down their site. To give you some idea of the work involved, they had a giant propane tank attached to a hot plate on a folding table, all for the sole purpose of boiling water for mate. They disappeared in the afternoon, however, for what we thought was for good. As we were choking down our dinners, though, they rolled back into the dusty campground to again pitch their tents. They still hadn't learned the lesson that a) no amount of hammering will successfully get a tent stake into the ground in Perito Moreno and b) there are at least 500 more efficient ways to boil your mate water. After our respective preparations, we all turned in early, dreaming about our next day's escape route. -NSH

On To Fitz Roy

2007-02-24T10:30:00.000-03:00

With the Torres del Paine circuit under our belts, Emily and I decided to continue north to check out Argentina's answer to Paine--Parque Nacional Los Glaciers. Home to two impressively ominous peaks--Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre--plus a plethora of other granite spires, calving glaciers, and emerald lakes, the park is like a taller but more compact version of its (in our opinion, superior) Chilean cousin.

Fitz Roy and Torre both boast contentious and fascinating climbing histories, and the park still plays host to countless climbing teams, whose visible presence makes the trekkers in the park something of a subspecies. Because we're both sort of fascinated with climbing without having the mental or physical desire/ability to hunker down in ice caves or pull ourselves up vertical slopes, we enjoyed watching documentaries on ascending Fitz Roy and Torre from the warmth and comfort of El Chalten's National Park Visitor's Center. We then ventured into the park to observe climbers firsthand.

The first site we stayed at--Campamento De Agostini--played host to trekkers and climbers alike. The former are recognizable by their modest tents, loose-fitting clothing, and tendency to admire nature from a distance. The latter--who tend to spend long days and weeks at base camp waiting for the weather to clear--are distinguished by their gear-laden campsites, spandex everything, and enormous stone and wood monuments erected out of boredom.

Despite their differences, Parque Nacional Los Glaciers has much to offer both climbers and trekkers. Walking the moraine ridge beside Laguna Torre on the first afternoon of our hike, Emily and I admired Cerro Torre's cloudless spire in shorts and t-shirts, not realizing that the view was like a once-a-week stroke of good fortune. By the next morning, the peak was completely engulfed in fog, and rain pelted us as we hurried to Campamento Poincenot, the site nearest to Fitz Roy.

We spent two incredibly cold nights at Poincenot--socks, pants, fleece, and wool hats in our mummy bags cold--using it as a base for exploring a variety of spur trails. We walked partway into Laguna Sucia on an unmarked boulder-hopping route, but were stopped by the fast flowing waters of the lake's outlet stream. We also checked out the remote and very pretty Glacier Piedras Blancas, which is surrounded by enormous erratic boulders that make you feel ant-like as you scramble around them. Our hands-down favorite route in the park, however, was the rocky climb up to Laguna de los Tres, a beautifully blue glacial lake located 1500m. up above a treeless ridge. The clouds parted for the first time in two days to offer incredible views of the towering, wind-chiseled Fitz Roy.

We spent a mere four days in the park--less than half the time taken exploring Torres del Paine--but the bone-chilling temperatures of the final two nights, coupled with a sudden and intense aversion to tuna fish, minute rice, dried fruit, and other hiking staples, made us happy to emerge from the woods. When we pulled out our hiking guide the next morning, over cafe con leche at a hostel in El Chalten, we both agreed to nix future treks not involving geysers, fumaroles, and hot springs. -NSH

Perito (Expert) Moreno Glaciar

2007-02-18T17:41:00.000-03:00

Well before we had travelled to Argentina, we were hearing tall tales about the spectacular beauty of the Perito Moreno Glaciar, which was until a few years ago one of the world's few advancing glaciars. Friends informed us that the Perito Moreno was so beautiful its splendor would make us cry. Once we arrived in Argentina, everyone from our laundryman to random German hikers insisted that we absolutely had to see Perito Moreno. It's a pretty well-regarded chunk of ice, and we were looking forward to seeing it ourselves. The glaciar is named after Perito Moreno (and what isn't in this country?), although the man never saw it himself. Apparently he just missed discovering it, a feat that was left to a Chilean general who dubbed it the Bismarck Glaciar, a name which the Argentines apparently did not take to.

We spent the morning hanging out on boardwalks on the peninsula of land across from the glaciar, watching and listening for the frequent calving. Even though the position of the Perito Moreno has stabilized, the glaciar remains remarkable active, and very entertaining for the tourist.

After staring at the ice for a couple of hours, we took a boat across the Lago Argentino for a more intimate encounter with the glaciar, in the form of ice trekking across its surface. Glaciars are apparently not fetus-friendly locales, as I was only allowed to strap on crampons after promising on several occasions to several people that no, I was not pregnant. Our guide also informed us that the trip was not recommended for people with head problems.

We headed out onto the glaciar's vast crests and valleys with a mixed group of Argentines and foreigners, walking in between deep blue crevasses and sinkholes, past streams of cold meltwater running down into the Lago Argentino. We finished our trek with possibly the finest drink ever: a whiskey with glacial ice in a shallow glacial valley, which our guides poured with a liberal hand, reminding us that, after all, we didn't have anywhere to drive that afternoon.

Inside the Sloth Cave

2007-02-08T11:57:00.000-03:00

As mentioned many months ago--in a post about our trip to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata--Emily and I have developed something of a fascination with the enormous, now-extinct mammal species that once roamed the pampas. One result is that we pretty badly wanted to visit La Cueva del Milodon--a giant cave near the Last Hope Sound in Chile, where perfectly preserved specimens of Giant Sloth (Mylodon Listai) skin and dung were discovered near the turn-of-the-century. We naively assumed that the cave was still as remote and off-the-beaten-path as when Bruce Chatwin visited it in the late 1970s, and that a great deal of hiking and orienteering from Puerto Natales might be necessary. In fact, for better or worse, the cave is now administered by CONAF, Chile's National Park Service, and excursions from Puerto Natales are both plentiful and popular. Because our legs were still pretty sore from Torres Del Paine, and because the hostel offering mountain biking excursions had already dicked us out of a room reservation (note to googlers: stay away from Patagonia Adventures) we shelled out for a remise to take us 25 km. out of town to see the cave for ourselves.

The story of the prized sloth skin's discovery is the cause of much debate. I still haven't been able to patch together a lone convincing narrative. The cave may or may not have been discovered by two Germans and a Swede who settled near Puerto Consuelo. The larger-than-life Francisco "Perito" Moreno supposedly rushed down from the La Plata museum to examine the giant piece of skin found by the Europeans. Presumably, the skin we photographed in La Plata is at least one part of the same specimen. Chatwin insists that one of his relations, Charley Milward, came away with "yards of skin and piles of bones and claws", but the interpretive center at the cave suggests that this is legend. One amusing detail that does appear to be true is that a London newspaper enlisted a skilled team of sloth hunters to deliver a live sloth specimen for the public. Although the team was led by "Expert" Moreno, they sadly couldn't fulfill their assignment.

Whether or not sloths and early humans used the cave at different times or, as some suggest, at the same time--the human hunters using it as a kind of corral for trapping the lumbering beasts--the place is undoubtedly impressive. Chatwin's description of sloth dung littering the floor is no longer true, but much of the rest holds: "The inside was dry as the desert. The ceiling was shaggy with white stalactites and the sides glittered with salt encrustration. Animal tongues had licked the back wall smooth. The straight wall of rocks dividing the cave had fallen from a fissure in the roof. By the entrance was a small shrine to the Virgin." Actually, strike that last part. Now there's a giant effigy of a roaring ground sloth. I guess that every once in a great while, time actually brings improvements. -NSH

The Paine Circuit Continues... And Ends

2007-02-05T19:12:00.001-03:00

On the morning of the fourth day, we hauled out of Refugio Lago Dickson without realizing that the prettiest campsites and most agreeable weather were already behind us. After a final glance back at Glacier Dickson—which looks like it’s coated with a fluffy white merengue—we swung west through drizzling rain, passing one of the fiery orange peat bogs that occur pretty frequently in Tierra del Fuego but seem less common farther north. The layout of the Circuit necessitates a campground in close proximity to Paso John Garner (more on that soon), which is probably the only reason that Campamento Los Perros exists. Easily the worst site on the route, it's a muddy, mosquito-infested patch of dirt that we were unlucky enough to greet in the pouring rain. We spent most of the evening in a cramped wooden shelter, watching a ubiquitous crew of hard-drinking Chilean boys cook a giant cauldron of pasta on a "portable" two-ton stove that folded up like a suitcase. Desperate for creature comforts, we bought overpriced cans of beer from the tiny almacen. I thought Emily was insane for asking if the beer was cold--everything was cold--but lo and behold, the beer was the lone exception. We drank it anyway, before crawling into our sleeping bags (wearing socks, pants, fleeces, and wool hats) for a really damp and unpleasant night.

Day Five is the most notorious of the trek--the one everyone tells horror stories about a few campsites later. In order to make a loop, it's necessary to pass over the ominous Paine massif somewhere, and the best place anyone's found to do it is at Paso John Garner, a 1200-meter high dip between snowy peaks. 1200 meters isn't all that high, and the climb to the pass would be pretty simple in agreeable weather. The problem is that the weather is never agreeable. The leg from C. Perros to C. Paso is rated "Difficult" because of the gale-force westerlies that sweep through the pass. They're literally enough to knock you over (we both left our feet on multiple occasions). What basically happens is that as soon as the wind dies down, you sprint like hell for the biggest rock you can find and cling to it. If you stand there clutching it long enough, the odds are pretty good that you'll see a couple passing you going the other way, with one person screaming "It's over!" and the other yelling "Fine! I never want to see you again!".

Really, the only good things about Paso John Garner are a) If you make it over, there are spectacular views of Glacier Grey and b) conquering it gives you license to be smug to the majority of hikers in the park, who do a much abbreviated route called the W. A book could probably be written about the difference between W'ers and Circuit'ers, but our own favorite observation is that while W'ers carry really expensive and techy equipment, it seemed to us that most Circuit'ers had things like the aforementioned two-ton suitcase stove. Anyway, immediately after making it over Paso John Garner, we both foolishly came to believe that we were "almost done" even though we had four-plus days of hiking ahead of us, and started doing things like eating twice as much food per meal as we'd rationed. I'm serious, the wind does things to your sanity.

Day Six spent much of the time skirting the east flank of Glacier Grey, a 5 km. wide and many-km. deep mass of intricately crevassed ice that represents one of the stubbornly remaining fragments of the rapidly melting Continental Sur. About midway through the day we encountered hikers with day packs coming the other way, which was pretty weird. We ate lunch out in the open, during the only 20 minutes of rain the entire day. We also passed through a pair of imposing chasms, watched Magellanic Woodpeckers shriek and flutter about, and ended up at a densely packed campground on a pebbly beach, with box wine for sale and hot showers for all (much rejoicing).

Day Seven brought us to the windy shores of the impossibly blue Lago Pehoe, which offered us our first impressive views of the imposing Cuernos del Paine. Late a night, a boat pulled up and unloaded dozens and dozens of French tourists who stayed up half the night guzzling wine and taking photos of totally banal sites, such as the campground's cooking shelter. By Day Eight we were really in the home stretch, working our way to Albergue Los Cuernos on a meandering path that brought us past yet another of the park's beautifully blue lakes. On the last morning, we woke up to a torrential downpour. Not patient enough to wait it out, we packed our tent up in the rain and finished the final 11 km. at a pretty brisk trot. If we'd known in advance how badly China Doll Grossman was going to botch things, we probably wouldn't have rushed it. -NSH

The Paine Circuit begins.

2007-02-05T19:03:00.000-03:00

Nate and I postponed beginning our circuit for a day in order to hike to the base of the Torres del Paine, the sheer rock towers that give the Parque Nacional de Torres del Paine its name. In a fit of possible insanity, we decided to make a special effort to see the torres at dawn, when they are especially picturesque. To that end, we spent our first day hiking to a campsite an hour from the base of the torres, where we spent the night. We had planned to rise at the almost reasonable hour of five am, and make a quick trek to the look out point, but an overeager fellow trekker convinced us that we would be too late. To really see the torres at dawn, she said, we would need to rise at four am.

The next morning, as we hiked through the darkness with her, the extent of her overeagerness became apparent. While the days are long in Patagonia, they are not that long, and the sun does not rise at four. Also, it is very cold before the sun rises. We made our dark, cold way to the base of the torres, where we had plenty of time to enjoy pre-dawn views and practice our night photography. When the sun did finally rise, the views were, as promised, spectacular, with the rising sun briefly illuminating the torres with a striking orange glow.

We spent the rest of our long second day trekking ten kilometers to the start of the Paine Circuit, and reaching the starting point in time for lunch. After a well deserved hour of rest and stretching exercises, we set out for Puesto Seron, where we planned to camp next to an old puesto, a shelter that had been used for occasional overnights by workers on the ranches that surrounded Torres del Paine before it had been made into a national park. The walk to Puesto Seron was long but lovely, through fields filled with daisies. We arrived in the early evening, tired but mostly intact. While our bodies had made it through the long day, some key equipment was not so resilient. Nate's boots (loyal companions for ten years and three continents) were showing their age, as the heel and sole of one boot had begun to tear apart. We made some short-lived experimental repairs involving medical tape, but the future of our expedition seemed doubtful until a kindly park ranger supplied us with three precious, ancient tubes of super glue. We drained two of them, in a desperate attempt to keep the sole of the boot united with the upper portion. With one tube of super glue in reserve, we decided to press on the next morning to Lago Dickson.

The route to Lago Dickson took us over grassy foothills covered with thorny calafate bushes and mogotes. From the hills we got spectacular panoramic views of the light blue Lago Paine and the Paine range. We also had our first glacier sighting, and our first encounter with the fierce winds of the park. We also encountered for the first time several of our fellow trekkers who would be completing the circuit at the pace as us: a quiet, fast walking Chileno who carried two backpacks, one on his back and one on his front, and two rather dapper Frenchmen, who spent hours preparing cafe au lait each morning and took lengthy and elaborate smoke breaks on the trail.

At the end of an exhausting day, our first sight of the Lago Dickson campsite was most welcome. We climbed a morraine to see the campsite far below us, on a peninsula surrounded by a lake floating with icebergs calved off the Dickson Glacier. We spent a mostly peaceful night there, interrupted only by the occasional whinnying of a herd of horses pastured nearby, and by a group of Chileno college students, who lugged a giant bottle of whiskey out to Lago Dickson, where they offered around whiskey on the rocks until the bottle was drained. Sufficiently well-liquored, they proceeded to swim in icy Lago Dickson. One assured me later that they had only done it to get pictures of themselves swimming with the icebergs. -EMW

Towers of Pain!

2007-02-05T17:48:00.000-03:00

The recent gap in our blog entries is due to the fact that we spent the nine days prior to the Bears’ tragic defeat at Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Chile. The park is famous for its jagged peaks, mammoth glaciers, and pristine lakes, and we’ve long been eyeing the Paine Circuit—a classic backpacking trek that touches most of the key areas of the reserve—as one of the must-do’s of our trip. We tacked a scenic side trip onto the route, bringing the grand total to eight nights, nine days, and over 125 kilometres logged by foot. The route boasts such a diversity of scenery—everything from meadows choked with daisies to boggy birch forests, sheer rock pinnacles to expansive ice fields—that it felt like we covered even more ground than we actually did. Regardless, we both felt like the park and its signature hike more than lived up to their lofty billing.

Because the trek chewed up so much of our time and digital camera memory, we thought we’d do at least a couple of different posts about it. For anyone familiar with the route (or anyone who’s especially curious), our itinerary worked out as follows: Hosteria Las Torres to Campamento Torres (Day One). Campamento Torres to Puesto Seron via Torres del Paine Lookout at dawn (Day Two). Puesto Seron to Refugio Lago Dickson (Day Three). Refugio Lago Dickson to Campamento Los Perros (Day Four). Campamento Los Perros to Campamento Paso (Day Five). Campamento Paso to Refugio Grey (Day Six). Refugio Grey to Refugio Lago Pehoe (Day Seven). Refugio Lago Pehoe to Albergue Los Cuernos (Day Eight). Albergue Los Cuernos to Hosteria Las Torres (Day Nine). –NSH.

The Argentine wilderness and Argentines in the wild

2007-01-23T09:19:00.000-03:00

Stretching north from the Beagle Channel along the Argentine-Chilean border is Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, a 630 square kilometer of wilderness that encompasses beaches, mountains, lakes, and rivers. Nate and I spent a few days camping and hiking there, after scratching a more ambitious trek we had planned on account of too much snow and cold weather.

The park offered no treks as rugged or challenging as the one we were going to do on Isle Navarino, but we enjoyed the chance to explore the Fuegian ecosystems and observe Argentines on the trail (Mate everywhere! Even on mountaintops! And fires to heat water for mate kept burning round the clock!) In three days we hiked essentially every trail in the park, taking in some spectacular views from mountanintops, and some mundane ones of the Chilean border, which was marked only with a small metal tower. Where was the barbed wire? The guards with guns? The barking dogs? Who is preventing the smuggling of wine between rival countries? I don't know. We also enjoyed camping in the twee-est campsite ever, where pairs of brightly colored birds circled our tent constantly and a flock of bunnies scampered nearby. It felt like a Disney cartoon version of nature.

Perhaps the best thing we saw in the park were some middens left by the Yamana. The Yamana were a tribe who lived in Tierra del Fuego until their civilization was devastated by the arrival of Europeans, who hunted all the sea lions the Yamana relied on, gave them diseases, and attempted to civilize them, but only succeeded in making them more vulnerable to the harsh environment. Almost all that remains of the tribe are these old campsites we saw: the mounds are old trash heaps that formed over generations around the entrances to their huts. They consist mostly of mussel and limpet shells left over from long ago meals and formed a windbreak and protection for the Yamana's homes. -EMW

The Hunt for Solvente Industrial

2007-01-22T20:27:00.000-03:00

Since leaving Buenos Aires, we've been trying to camp roughly five nights to every two spent indoors. As a result, we've been leaning on our camping stove pretty hard. An MSR Whisperlite, it's a pretty common device that runs on white gas. And although the fuel is no sweat to procure in the good 'ol U.S.A., here in Argentina it's become among the best (worst?) of our standing jokes.

We first realized we had a problem on our hands during our final few days in Buenos Aires, when no one in the city had a clue what we were talking about. We checked camping stores, hardware stores, and gas stations in four different neighborhoods to no avail. Even a trip to an establishment named Todo Gas proved a bust. Finally, Google led us to a solution--stop asking for stove fuel, white gas, or anything of that sort. Our particular "open sesame" was "industrial solvent"--solvente industrial.

We headed to a gas store (yes, a gas store) in Belgrano and asked for a bottle of the stuff. The little old man behind the counter was immediately suspicious. "Why do you want it?" he demanded. We explained about our stove. "Yes, but it is very flammable. If you drop your cigarette in it, it will go boom." Not seeing how flammability and stove fuel were mutually exclusive, we begged him for it anyway. "It's too dangerous" he insisted, and immediately began pulling plastic Coke jugs full of kerosene, butane, and other equally dangerous fuels out of obscure corners of his dimly lit store. We held firm and he finally agreed to sell us a tiny bottle. He warned us eight more times not to smoke over the open container, and once not to hit our heads on the way out.

Because we quickly ran out of the first batch, we went looking for more solvente industrial in Trelew. The guy at the service station said to check the hardware store, and the guy at the hardware store said to check a place called Casa Lloyd. With zero confidence, we trudged over. "Buen dia, tiene solvente industrial?" I asked the elderly woman behind the counter. "Do you speak English? For the love of God, if you speak English, speak English," she said. She was apparently of Welsh extraction.

She asked what we needed, and I explained about the white gas. She immediately pulled down a bottle of alcohol. We could tell that it wasn't it, but also that she really wanted it to be. "I'm sure that isn't it," I told her. "I know it's called solvente industrial." Finally, after much protest, she agreed to pull down another bottle. It said solvente industrial across the front. "This is it!" I said excitedly. She showed me the name and advised me to write it down. "That way you can just ask for it directly and save yourself a whole world of trouble." Yes, something like that. -NSH

Tierra del Fuego

2007-01-18T20:42:00.000-03:00

Nate and I spent a night camping at the Estancia Harberton, a historic farm 90 kilometers from Ushuaia, the world's most southerly city. We arrived after some complex negotiations with a shuttle driver who seemed perplexed by our desire to go to Harberton one day and return the next. She finally agreed to drive us and return to pick us up the next day. She drove us the two hours to Harberton, keeping up a running commentary on the countryside, industry in Ushuaia, the arrival of the beaver to Tierra del Fuego, and recommended excursions in the area. For every topic she had a brochure, a photograph, or a beaver skull for us to look at, which she fished out of a backpack next to her, significantly more engaged in giving us a thorough tour than in keeping her eyes on the twisting, shoulderless gravel road.

Harberton was established on land given to the missionary Thomas Bridges in 1886 by the president of Argentina, in gratitude for Bridges' work establishing a mission and the first permanent settlement on Tierra del Fuego. Owned now by the fourth generation of Bridges, the estancia was a working sheep farm until 1995, when a particularly harsh winter killed most of the flock. Now it's mainly a site for visitors and home to a scientific research station and museum that boasts the world's largest collection of marine mammal skeletons.

When we arrived, the tea house attendant rustled up for us some ancient camping registration forms printed some time in the last century. Camping is apparently not in high demand, and when we arrived at the campsite, four kilometers from the main house, we found we had the place to ourselves. We shared it only with the occasional Fuegian fox and flock of upland geese. We spent a cold, windy night there, waking up to snow and sleet. Our tent stayed dry through it all, which was something of a first.

A student living at Harberton and doing research took us on a tour of the museum, explaining how to remove rotting flesh from a whale carcass (with soap and water), what the rarest marine mammals are, and why the museum has so many pilot whales. She also showed us the lab, where closets full of animal skeletons are stored, asking us to avert our eyes from the scientists' living quarters, which she said were too messy to be seen. She took us to a telescope she had set up to look for dolphins in Harberton Bay. She has not seen any yet.

"Patagonia, She Is A Harsh Mistress!"

2007-01-14T17:09:00.000-03:00

Puerto San Julian is advertised as the best place to break up the enormous bus trip between Trelew and Rio Gallegos which, if true, must mean that all other points in between are unthinkably bleak. We woke up in time for the bus to drop us off here, and for the attendant to give us a pretty sympathetic frown. It's not like the town isn't rich in history--Magellan and Drake both executed mutiners in the bay, and Darwin passed through (he had some pretty rotten things to say about the place). Not a lot seems to have happened since Drake's first mate was drawn and quartered, however. Most of the businesses were shuttered up along the main street, although all three of the tourist offices kept diligent hours (one fewer than there were actual tourists, Emily observed).

We spent awhile walking around the waterfront, which is littered with tufts of wool and sheep carcasses marking the remains of an old slaughterhouse. Eventually the wind (which is difficult to stand up in) started driving us crazy, so we decided to see if an asado would cheer us up. A kind butcher in town pulled a lamb down off a meat hook and cut us generous portions with a bone saw. After acquiring carbon and a copy of last week's (month's?) paper for tinder, we were rolling.

Things picked up immensely in early evening, when a woman who leads wildlife boat tours swung by our campsite and asked if we wanted to see penguins. A tall, stoic man wearing gaiters gave us piggy-back rides into the surf, dropping us into a speedy, lightweight Zodiac craft. Minutes later we were on a long gravel bar snapping photos of fluffy penguin chicks and trying not to let the wind blow us into any nests. After reboarding the boat, we zoomed over to where Thomas Doughty was hanged to watch cormorrants, terns, and steamer ducks fly and waddle about. The birds fly in long, frustrated arcs every time the wind gusts, which is often.

The bus to Ushuaia didn't leave until 2 am, so we killed time the next afternoon at The Sportman, a bar that looks like it wouldn't be out of place in Northern Wisconsin. At three o'clock (siesta time) about a dozen old men arrived and began playing a furious dice game at the counter. Nobody even looked up when the power went out. -NSH

Tea and Beer Cans

2007-01-10T16:22:00.000-03:00

After we'd had our fill of watching sea lion placentas being ripped apart by gulls, we continued south to explore towns in the Chubut province of Patagonia. In 1865, 153 emigrants from Wales sailed their ship the Mimosa (we are both particularly fond of this name) to Puerto Madryn, where they proceeded to establish a small community and, eventually, radiate outwards to the surrounding towns of Trelew, Gaiman, Rawson, and Dolavon.

From our base in Trelew, we hopped a commuter bus to Gaiman to see just what this clash of cultures looks like. We were not disappointed—-the town of roughly 5,000 inhabitants is relentlessly charming. Dusty and windswept, with wide streets and scrubby vegetation, the place could almost be some Western frontier town if not for the rose bushes, neatly manicured lawns, and tea houses scattered through the village center.

We visited two sites that pretty aptly illustrate the weird and wonderful cultural disconnect. El Desafio is a 5-acre living museum—-an outdoor, outsider art sculpture garden built from thousands of pieces of refuse. The place was built by an octogenarian named Joaquin Alonso, called "The Dali of Gaiman" by our guidebooks, but actually a mild-mannered man who shook each of our hands and complained about the heat. We walked through what felt like miles and miles of rusted beer can flower patches and polka dotted cars until Alonso's daughter corralled us into a gift shop of sorts, where she proceeded to talk to us about everything from Tehuelche art to her recent vacation to Egypt.

An hour later we were sipping tea and stuffing our faces with cake at Ty Nain, a tea house in the village center. Rusted Winchester rifles, antique cannons, and yellowing newspaper clippings covered the walls, and because we had the place to ourselves, we spent awhile surveying the collection. The piece-de-resistance was definitely the pair of 19th century porcelain poodles on the mantle—-artifacts that survived their voyage on the Mimosa. When Emily reached out to pet one, I gasped in horror, certain that we were going to be responsible for causing 150 years of Welsh-Argentine history to smash into a million pieces on the floor. Fortunately, she was very careful and we finished our tea and left without incident. –NSH

Hotel Touring Club, Trelew

2007-01-10T15:48:00.000-03:00

After camping in Puerto Madryn, we decided to treat ourselves to real beds and hot showers while we visited the Patagonian towns of Trelew and Gaiman. We booked a room in the Hotel Touring Club, a historic hotel in Trelew that once served as a hideout for Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Etta Place while they were travelling incognito in Argentina.

Both the bar and the hotel at the Touring Club retain an appealing historical atmosphere, from the grand faux marble bannisters in the lobby, to the hundreds of dusty bottles behind the bar, to the ancient and untiring owner who spent eighteen hour days behind the bar, and who looked like she had served Cassidy herself when he made his stop in Trelew. The bar service was classy too. We had drinks there one night: Nate ordered a martini, and the white-coated waiter presented him with one empty glass, one bowl of ice with tongs, one spritzer of seltzer, and an entire unopened bottle of vermouth. He grinned at us as he placed them on the table and said, "Help yourself! One, two, three drinks, as many as you like." Not exactly a martini, but an amusing substitute.

The Circle of Life

2007-01-08T17:29:00.000-03:00

We arrived in Patagonia a few days ago, having survived our eighteen hour bus trip. Yay! The highlight of the bus trip may have been the Lion King music videos featuring Elton John badly superimposed on scenes from the movie.

In Patagonia, we're staying in Puerto Madryn, a small city built on a beautiful port. While the town developed around shipping and industrial activities like aluminum fabrication, the main business these days is tourists like ourselves, who come to checking out the marine wildlife.

We took a day trip to Peninsula Valdez, a wildlife sanctuary 60 km from Puerto Madryn, to see said animals. The peninsula was pretty spectacular: on the drive there, we saw nandu (an ostrich like bird) and guanaco (a llama like animal). On the peninsula itself, we viewed penguins, the only continental colony of elephant seals, and sea lions. While we were most interested in the penguins and elephant seals, it was the sea lions that captured our hearts. We had arrived a particularly good time for watching them, and our tour guide told us that we would see them fighting, swimming, and eating. And, she added, "Perhaps even a birth! Why not!"

As it turns out, we did get to see a birth and as an added bonus, a flock of seabirds devouring the placenta. We were also treated to the sights of sea lions fighting and copulating, all accompanied by the unique musky smell of sea lions in heat. Ah nature, so magical! The other animals were comparatively calm: the elephant seals were in fact so docile I initially mistook them for driftwood. -EMW

Bye BsAs!

2007-01-03T14:52:00.000-03:00

Nate and I are leaving town today, abandoning the increasingly hot confines of Buenos Aires for Patagonia, which weather.com has been promising will be much cooler. We spent yesterday and today packing and agonizing over what we absolutely had to take with us, trying to keep our backpacks down to a manageable size. In a few hours we’ll be hanging out in Retiro, the insane main bus terminal in Buenos Aires, waiting for our 18-hour bus ride to Puerto Madryn to depart. We sprung for the more comfortable cama seats for this ride, so hopefully we'll be able to get some sleep in between whatever crappy Hollywood romantic comedies our bus driver has selected for us. -EMW

Muy Hygge

2007-01-03T13:42:00.000-03:00

Members of the Smith-Hogan-Dunn family will be pleased to know that while I missed our family’s annual Heritage Night (a post-Christmas Danish dinner and drinking binge), I did not forgo my yearly obligation to guzzle aquavit. To celebrate our final night in Buenos Aires (at least, our last night for quite awhile), Emily and I paid a visit to Olsen, a chic Scandinavian restaurant in Palermo Viejo. The food was great, and the atmosphere had a transformative effect––a complete getaway from the overwhelming bustle of B.A.

Our appetizers are pictured above––five kinds of smorrebrod and five shots of vodka. Fortunately, our waiter was kind enough to substitute two of the vodka shots for aquavit––that wonderful drink that tastes like a combination of caraway seeds and battery acid. For a main course, I had baked pork with a fruit and beer sauce accompanied by dill mashed potatoes. Emily had warm smoked trout with capers, pears, and mushrooms.

All of this was after an epic day of last-minute errand running, including finding a place to buy white gas for our camping stove. It’s safe to say we won’t be eating like this again for quite some time. -NSH

Sand, Surf, Diapers

2006-12-31T13:06:00.000-03:00

As Emily mentioned in her last post, there’s not a whole lot to do in the summer community of Mar de Ajo. In fact, we were initially concerned that we might grow bored during our weeklong sojourn there. The local movie theatre was showing Hollywood pap that we’d already caved in and watched in Buenos Aires, The Bingo Palace wasn’t ready to begin hosting bingo until January, and the miles of pizza parlors and alfajor shops weren’t quite the draw that they were for the kids in our host family. As a result, we spent an awful lot of time at the beach. And, as we probably should have guessed, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. In addition to copious swimming and lots of reading (I have to finish all 900 pages of Bleak House before January 3rd, because I’m not lugging it through Patagonia), there were entertaining sites to behold on nearly every stretch of sand. In fact, one of the nice things about plopping down in the same spot day after day is that we got to know the cast of characters on the beach pretty well––from a distance, of course. Sadly, we were too shy to take pictures, but I thought I would highlight some of our favorite Mar de Ajo beach regulars.

The Odd Couple. This middle-aged couple was fascinating because they did not appear to enjoy the beach, yet returned to it day after day. Terrified of the sun, they usually brought an enormous bed sheet with them, which they huddled beneath for solar protection. For a million reasons, including the strong wind at Mar de Ajo, this did not ever seem to work very well. This alone might not have been enough to make the list, but they manage to squeeze on here because the man wore a baseball cap to go swimming. Third place.

The Brazilians. We don’t actually know that this family was Brazilian (we never heard Portuguese, but we never heard Castellano either). However, my Spanish teacher once informed our class that no self-respecting Argentine male would ever wear bikini briefs to the beach, hence our suspicions. The Brazilians were fond of playing a paddleball style game on the beach each morning, wearing approximately three square inches of spandex between them. Good stuff, yes, but the highlight definitely came when the wife had the husband lay down in her lap, and proceeded to snip every single one of his goatee hairs with a tiny pair of scissors. Freshly shaved, the man proceeded to sprint into the surf and collapse the instant a wave hit him. Second place.

Diaper Man. We had observed Diaper Man from a distance during our first few days at Mar de Ajo, but it wasn’t until he set up shop immediately beside us that we got to really observe him in his glory. Diaper man was an incredibly tanned, grey-haired, middle-aged man who wore bright white shorts and sneakers to the beach. It was only while playing soccer with his son that he underwent his transformation. Tucking the legs of his white shorts into the edges of his underwear, so that it resembled a billowing diaper, he would proceed to dart around the beach, heading and high-kicking the ball with a complete lack of talent. To this day, we’re still not certain what purpose the diaper served, but we think that it might have ever so slightly helped to improve his range of motion. His teenage son was incredibly unbothered by his father’s appearance. In fact, one of Diaper Man’s best attributes was his total unwillingness to run after the ball. Following a horrendous kick, in which he caused the ball to jet into the surf, Diaper Man would furiously signal his son to retrieve the ball, which the boy did with unfailing loyalty. Diaper Man, Grand Prize Winner. -NSH

Felices Fiestas

2006-12-29T12:21:00.000-03:00

So, Nate and I spent Christmas at the beach. We took a Condor Estrella bus out of Buenos Aires to the lovely seaside town of Mar de Ajo. As we left the city, we also left behind almost all the Argentines, and we got our first real glimpse of the almost unpopulated campo. The population of the country is incredibly densely concentrated in Buenos Aires, leaving the pampas empty except for innumerable cattle. The quietness of the countryside was shocking after the intense activity of Buenos Aires. We rode for five hours along rough roads with unbroken expanses of grass on either side. The day was stormy, and the silent lightning flashing over the pampas made them even more beautiful.

We rode in the comfort of a semi-cama bus, with seats that were nearly fully reclining. Every seat was taken, but the bus didn't feel crowded. We passed our time sleeping and watching the Argentines across the aisle drink round after round of mate.

Carlos and Ana met us at the bus station in Mar de Ajo, looking tanned and happy. They took us on a brief tour of Mar de Ajo, which has the feel of a summer community in the off season. In fact, it feels like it has been in the off season for several years, and possibly it will never be in season again. While that sounds a little depressing, Nate and I liked it. On every street there are a few abandoned buildings or shuttered stores, some with faded signs announcing that a new maxikiosko or internet cafe is opening "soon."

Nate and I spent a pleasant Christmas here, which we decided to celebrate in Argentine fashion with an asado. After a refreshing Christmas morning swim in the Atlantic, we bought a pile of meat and carbon and rented a campsite with a parilla for the day. While I've discussed asado technique with Carlos on several occasions, I've never watched him very closely, and Nate and I found lighting the carbon to be quite the challenge. We torched half of a copy of La Nacion trying to get the damn carbon to light, but to no avail. It wasn't until Nate went back to the center of Mar de Ajo and scored a bottle of lighter fluid that we got an asado worthy fire going. After this rocky start, our Christmas asado proceeded quite merrily, and I think the steaks we cooked would have made any Argentine proud. -EMW

Mmmmm, sea of garlic.

2006-12-22T18:45:00.000-03:00

As Nate mentioned, it's far too warm here to feel terribly christmasy. It is in fact too warm to even stay in the city, so we're bailing to spend Christmas at Mar de Ajo, a beach town five hours south of Buenos Aires. Mar de Ajo apparently does not mean "sea of garlic," but instead refers to the Ajo tribe of Native Americans who populated the region, but I prefer to imagine that we'll be swimming in a sea of garlic. Our host family owns an apartment there, and they suggested, somewhat insistently, that we should spend a week there. We'll never know whether this was out of kindness or just to get us out of the house. Whatever their motivation, I've been looking forward to spending a week at the beach, doing some swimming and sunbathing.

We quizzed the girls, Vicky and Lara, on what we might expect at Mar de Ajo. Both girls prefer Mar de Ajo to the quinta. According to Lara, the primary attractions of Mar de Ajo are: delicious chocolate, great alfajores makers, and tasty bread. Also, delicious pizza. She recommended that we spend Christmas at the pizzeria.

Deck The Halls With Plastic Ivy

2006-12-20T21:13:00.000-03:00

We keep hearing that it’s getting close to Christmas, but we're having trouble believing it. Maybe somewhere in the world people are shoveling out their driveways, but here in Buenos Aires it’s really, really hot. In most respects this is horribly unpleasant, but it does make the fact that we’re missing the holidays back home a bit easier––neither of us can really fathom that they’re actually happening.

Our host family, on the other hand, has not noticed that there’s anything amiss, and they’ve gone ahead with their traditional preparations. In what we assume is a solemn annual ritual, they pieced together the limbs of their festive Christmas tree (it’s todo plastico, of course) and hung ornaments on the branches, which are spray-painted with fake snow. They’ve also written letters to Papa Noel, put up plastic wreaths and boughs, and assembled a lovely crèche, which I never hesitate to gaze at in bafflement whenever I arrive home, drenched in sweat.

I think it was while appraising the crèche that I came to realization that that barn where baby Jesus lay asleep in the hay was probably incredibly hot. Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the lowing cattle were probably sweating up a storm. Perhaps countries with warm climates should use this as inspirational fodder for generating wholly new traditions? Because the whole American/Northern European vibe doesn’t really work so well down here. Looking at Santa Claus suits when it’s 90 degrees outside doesn't put me in good cheer. It makes me itchy.

That said, I would like to offer the following, very important caveat. If you’re the owner of a store in Buenos Aires that sells wheelchairs, walkers, and other such paraphernalia, and you decide to dress the mannequins in your window up like Santa Claus, I totally approve of that. Nice job, dude. - NSH

Leaving Arg! And coming back.

2006-12-19T17:51:00.000-03:00

Tourist visas to Argentina are only valid for 90 days. The easiest way to receive a new visa is by leaving and reentering the country, at which time you receive a new stamp in your passport granting you another 90 days stay. To renew our visas, and to stay on the right side of the law, Nate and I crossed the Rio de la Plata to spend a few days in Uruguay. We went to Colonia del Sacramento, an old colonial town founded in 1680 by the Portuguese to support a thriving smuggling industry that thwarted the Spanish monopoly on trade in the region. The town's been remarkably well preserved in the intervening centuries, and the historic old town has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site.

We travelled to Colonia on a ferry run by Buquebus, a company which holds a practical monopoly on voyages to Colonia and which advertises its fleet as "the fastest in the world," a claim which is not at all close to being true. Our Buquebus boat took three and a half hours to flounder its way across the river. We didn't mind the slow journey too much, as the boat had all the comforts a human could reasonably desire: fully reclining seats, intense air conditioning, and a claw arcade game.

We thoroughly explored and exhausted the sites and resources of downtown Colonia on our first day there, so on the morning of our second day we rented bikes to explore the surrounding countryside. Colonia is extremely well supplied with places to rent motos and golf carts of all description. Renting motos in fact appears to be the town's sole industry. Finding non-motorized means of transport, i.e. bicycles, was a little more difficult, but Nate and I managed to track down and rent two of the most inadequte bikes ever pedaled. We rode out of town along the coast of the Rio de la Plata, admiring the pristine, empty, white-sand beaches, which are unfortunately lapped by the mud brown Rio de la Plata, a river which does not really call to the swimmer.

It was remarkable how quickly we adjusted to the peaceful, slower pace of Colonia. In Colonia, the few cars on the cobblestoned streets drove slowly, obeyed traffic laws, and even stopped for pedestrians. As we were disembarking the Buquebus upon our return to Buenos Aires, Nate joked that every Urugyuan driver leaving the ferry would be killed instantly on the streets of Buenos Aires. There wasn't a fifteen Fiat pile up that night, but when we reached the streets of Buenos Aires I felt like I had lost all my hard won traffic navigating skills. I wasn't picked off by an insane taxi cab that night, but it took hours before I felt like I remembered how to walk the streets here. -EMW

Las Marias

2006-12-13T20:24:00.000-03:00

Our host family, like many other porteno families, has a quinta, a small house in the countryside designed for weekend gatherings and asados. The qunita is in La Reja, a working class town about 40 minutes outside of Buenos Aires, and is named Las Marias, for Anna and her two sisters, who are all named Maria (Anna Maria, Maria Carmen, and Maria I haven’t met yet). We went with the family to the quinta this Sunday for an asado. I also had high hopes for an afternoon of lounging by/in their swimming pool, hopes which were cruelly dashed when Anna informed me that the pool was empty for some singularly ill-timed pool maintenance.

Pool or no pool, we still had a lovely day in the country. We arrived prepared with several kilos of meat, and a pile of wood. The quinta is down a dirt road, completely hidden behind a massive fence of shrubbery and ironwork. It’s a lovely house, but when we arrived it was in full lock-down mode, with metal bars and heavy security screens on every window. Anna seemed apologetic for the extreme security measures, explaining that there had been two break-ins in the past. Carlos confessed that he found the provinces around Buenos Aires very insecure, and did not care to spend nights at the quinta, preferring to leave Anna and the children there while he returned to Buenos Aires.

Security issues aside, the quinta was a great place to spend a hot summer day. It’s surrounded by surprisingly tall fruit and nut trees planted thirty years ago by Anna’s father, and we sat in the shade of a walnut tree for an asado. Anna’s cousin Enrique joined us, and we had the pleasure of answering his many questions about American habits and customs. “Why do Americans wait so long to get married? What is wrong with them, and why are they so selfish? I’m asking in a general sense only of course, this has nothing to do with you personally.” He also told Nate that he should go to Brazil because the women there are mad foxy. -EMW

Fool About A Horse

2006-12-07T20:48:00.000-03:00

Last weekend, Emily and I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to go bet on the ponies. The fact is, we have a certain fondness for horse racing. A couple of summers ago we made an homage to the Derby, and more recently we became accustomed to making infrequent visits to Hawthorne, a course on the South Side of Chicago. We liked its distant view of downtown at sunset, the quiet jingling of the harnesses, and its bleakly Edward Hopper-esque vibe.

The Hipodromo, an elegant 100,000 capacity track in the chic neighborhood of Palermo, is a world away from Hawthorne. With its bright buildings, neatly kept stables, and family atmosphere, it seemed like a cheery throwback to another era. Upon arriving, we immediately bought a racing form and took to appraising the ponies. Betting the Trifecta or Superfecta is tricky enough back home, so we resolved to stick simply with El Ganador––the winner.

At the Hipodromo, the owners parade their horses around a small ring before each race, giving observers a chance to scratch their chins and generally act like they know exactly what it means that such-and-such horse is frisky while another has a calm, confident gait. I liked the looks of #6, a black thoroughbred with a long stride and powerful-looking hindquarters. I ambled over to the booth to slap down my $5 peso wager.

By the time we arrived at the stands, Emily and I were shocked to discover that a race was already in progress. It turned out that we were appraising the horses for the wrong race––the one I had bet on had already begun. Shockingly, #6 managed the win at 6:1 odds. With $30 in my pocket, my head started to swell. It was Cokes and churipan all around.

Needless to say, I lost the next 6 races in a row (although I would be remiss not to mention that I was about 3 feet away from a 15:1 shot). It turns out that you do much better when you don’t actually look at the horses beforehand. Emily fared better by betting less often. She picked one winner, a 4:1 favorite, and lost 3 other races. We both left in the hole, but not embarrassingly so. Which, as it happens, is the best we’ve ever fared back home. -NSH

El mundo es un panuelo

2006-12-06T23:51:00.000-03:00

One of the short essays I recently read for Spanish class was entitled “el mundo es un panuelo,” or, “the world is a tissue.” It’s an idiomatic expression and our teacher tried to get the class to divine the meaning. What is a tissue like? she asked. Fragile? Soft? While? Disposable? We guessed. All wrong. The relevant characteristic of a tissue is that it is small. And so is the world.

This expression aside, the smallness of the world is a favorite theme of Argentines. Anna’s sister quizzed me recently on my encounters with other Americans in Buenos Aires, insisting that I must surely have run into someone I already knew, or have encountered someone who knew someone I knew.

These thoughts were not misguided. The world is small. Of the four other students in my Spanish class, three of them provide some evidence for the small world theory. One is living with a fellow Middlebury alumni and ex-WRMC dj, while another is in a band that I played on my radio show in Chicago. Nate and I have run into a third classmate so often and in such varied parts of the city that it certainly makes the city of Buenos Aires, if not the world, feel small. -EMW

La Boca

2006-12-06T01:19:00.000-03:00

Nate and I recently went to La Boca, a barrio near the port in Buenos Aires. It’s perversely one of both the poorest and most touristy areas of the city, a combination that always makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Located near the port of Buenos Aires, the neighborhood was originally populated by poor immigrants. Lacking money, they painted their houses with any spare paint they could beg off the ships in port. Over time, the neighborhood became a patchwork of brightly painted shanties and conventillos, and is now an extremely popular subject for postcards.

It’s still an extremely poor neighborhood, and our guidebooks warned us not to stray off the two “tourist” streets. These tourist streets offer much to the tourist: waitresses who are so argentine they wear high heels and dance tango even while waiting tables, and aggressive minstrels who will serenade your table endlessly.

However, our objective in La Boca was not to be found on the tourist streets. Because the thing that La Boca is most famous for is its soccer team, Boca Juniors. Even though Nate and I hate soccer with a passion shared by all good, red-blooded Americans, we are sports fans in general, so we wanted to see La Bombonera. La Bombonera is the stadium where the Boca Juniors play, and is so named because apparently it looks like a chocolate box. I have posted a picture so you can judge for yourself whether this is a reasonable statement. It’s famous for being the stadium where Maradona had some of his greatest triumphs, and for the incredibly rowdy and raucous crowds. We were vaguely thinking of going to a game sometime, but apparently the Boca Jrs. are kicking ass this year and tickets are not easily available. Also, I may have mentioned this before, but we hate soccer. -EMW

Futbol Americano & Fancy Dinners

2006-11-29T09:54:00.000-03:00

With the baseball season long over and the occasional longing for the comforts of home creeping in, Emily and I have lately been searching for a few red-blooded American activities to do in our spare time. Our American housemate sometimes asks us if we’re interested in accompanying him to a terrible expatriate bar that’s either called “Remember the Alamo” or “Shoeless Joe’s” (the sign reads “Remember the Shoeless Joe’s Alamo”), but we’ve since learned our lesson. Desperate for ideas, we’ve recently started doing what everyone with a flag in their yard and Uncle Sam in their heart does on a weekly basis. You guessed it, we’re betting on football.

On a typical week, Argentine television broadcasts two games––the Sunday night game and the Monday night one. Staying up until 2 am to watch mediocre NFL teams play meaningless contests isn’t something I’ve ever made a habit of doing back home, but down here we’ve grown pretty desperate. So, usually we watch. And very often we bet a dinner on the outcome. Back home these dinners would have probably set us back about $80, but here in Buenos Aires they only cost the losing party $25. In other words, you don’t need to go calling any gambling addiction hotlines yet (the number for drinking problems is a better bet to keep by the phone).

As the savvy prognosticator of the recent Colts victory over the Pats, I was recently treated to a tasty meal at Almacen Secreto, a “secret” restaurant in Palermo. The chic café, which is run out of a couple’s apartment, specializes in the cuisine of Salta, a province in the northwest of Argentina. Light on steak and heavy on stews, tamales, and fruity malbecs, it was a refreshing change of pace from the typical gauntlet-de-bife. As you can see from the picture, the joint was both intimate and colorful. I ordered charqui (a sun-dried, jerky-like beef) and Emily had cazuela de gallina, a chicken dish. The tamale appetizers were tasty and the wine was great, but the highlight was the dessert––a milled grain covered in milk and flavored with honey, clove, and other spices.

Last week the Bears bit the dust, so on Thursday I’m obliged to take Emily out. Because it’s been a whole two weeks or something ridiculous since we’ve last tasted offal, I think we’re going to check out a recommended parilla in San Telmo. Emily has begrudgingly agreed in advance to a traditional Argentine parillada (mountains of steak, sweetbreads, blood sausage, and more) so it should be a treat. And, of course, it should go without saying that if you have hot tips on games happening this weekend, you should contact me privately. -NSH

Sweet Home Nueva Chicago

2006-11-27T23:23:00.000-03:00

The morning after our belated holiday feast, Emily and I went with our German housemate Alexandra to the Feria de Mataderos, an event that occurs every weekend in a barrio on the southwest side of the city. Alexandra seemed tentative about riding an hour by bus for the sole purpose of visiting a feria––after all, there are dozens of them scattered around Buenos Aires––but we assured her that this one came highly recommended by our guidebooks and classmates.

After stepping off the bus, we were greeted by the site of a few dozen stalls selling kid’s underwear and Spanish translations of Dan Brown novels. We were frightened that we’d been led horribly astray, but when we turned the corner a lively scene greeted us. In addition to the vendors selling woven scarves, wooden animal figures, and homemade dulce de leche candies, the town square was bustling with traditional dancers, steak cooking on open-air asados, and men corralling children into two-peso llama rides.

Mataderos served an important historical purpose as the site of Buenos Aires’ stockyards. Most of the livestock that was fattened up on the Pampas were eventually transported to this district to be slaughtered and shipped internationally. For this reason, the barrio was affectionately referred to as “Nueva Chicago”. Naturally, we felt right at home.

After purchasing some trinkets and pondering whether we were all too big for a sulky ride, Emily and I suggested visiting the Museo de Mataderos, a collection commemorating the gaucho legacy. Alexandra definitely wanted to skip this part of the trip, but I convinced her that the nominal entrance fee would be worth it. I should have specified that if, like me, you’re a sucker for cowboy iconography and intricately rendered diagrams of beeves, the museum would be worth it. I don’t think Germans really go in for that stuff. Emily and I, on the other hand, were enraptured by the masks made from cow’s faces, the amateurish oil paintings of romantic gaucho scenes, and the classy portraits of Argentine cattle barons (apparently ostentatious facial hair is a prerequisite). Fortunately, Alexandra seemed happy with the llamas-wool scarf she bought, so I think the trip was a success. -NSH

Turkey action in Argentina

2006-11-27T12:25:00.000-03:00

Nate and I recently introduced our host family to the many joys of American Thanks-giving, in what I think was a reasonably authentic style. When we proposed to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, our host Carlos was enthusiastic, primarily because the holiday promised to involve large amounts of meat. He immediately became enamored of the idea of a turkey on the parrilla, the family’s outdoor grill, which left us with only the challenge of acquiring said turkey. We managed to order one 5 kilogram bird at a nearby butcher, only barely restraining ourselves from purchasing two.

The turkey appeared to be something of a novelty for the butcher – when we went to pick it up, they not only remembered us and our order, but gathered around to examine the beast. It was quite lovely. Sadly, when confronted with the turkey in all its 5 kg glory, Carlos decided that perhaps it was beyond the capabilities of the parrilla, and we ended up cooking it in the oven, American-style. Despite this disappointment, and a flaky oven that delivered heat inconsistently at best, we managed to deliver a beautifully cooked turkey. At least we thought it was beautiful. I think the Argentines found it monstrous. Lara, one of the girls, asked me if we threw out the drumsticks, wings, etc, and looked somewhat horrified to hear that people actually ate them. Apparently Argentines are white meat only when it comes to poultry.

We expected to be confronting leftovers for some time, because together with two other Americans, we prepared a mountain of food. Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, salad, bread, stuffing, pumpkin pie, apple crisp, and vanilla ice cream. However, among the twelve of us we managed to devour a substantial amount. Perhaps the second turkey would not have been amiss. -EMW

Mmmm, literaturwurst.

2006-11-23T12:40:00.000-03:00

For about ten million reasons, our favorite museum in Buenos Aires is MALBA, the Museo de Arte Latinamerico de Buenos Aires. We hit the cinema there pretty frequently, and we check out the art on occasion too. Last Thursday we went with Alexandra, a German friend of ours, to the opening of an exhibit on Fluxus in Germany. We enjoyed the art, which captured the playful spirit of Fluxus, and we enjoyed the free champagne, which always enhances an experience.

After checking out the exhibit, we were discussing MALBA with Carlos, who finds the whole venture kind of horrifying. “Did you know that the museum loses money every year?” he asked us. He also said that although all the foreigners who visit always go to MALBA, he himself has never been. Perhaps the literaturwurst is not to his taste. -EMW

Spanglisherman

2006-11-22T13:53:00.000-03:00

One of our host’s most curious characteristics is his avowed love of coincidences. This love is so strong that I’m fairly certain we would not be living where we’re living without it. You see, the other American student who boards with us is also named Nathan, and he took the same flight (albeit on a different day) to reach Buenos Aires. I’m pretty sure that Carlos was so enamored of this “coincidence” that he agreed to welcome us into his home.

Carlos’s love of coincidences is so strong that when a random German couple emailed him about paying a visit during their trip to Buenos Aires, he immediately leapt at it, solely because the couple happens to share his surname. In fact, he was so excited by this “coincidence” that he informed us, at one point, that the couple would need use of our bedroom, and that we would need to move out and live in a hostel for a week. We were ready to hit the road completely, but I think his wife talked him out of that, and so we’re still around.

The famously named couple finally arrived this weekend. They’re either in their late 50s or early 60s, and the husband is pretty deaf. They’re from Germany, and speak fluent English, but not a word of Spanish. When we returned from La Plata, we walked through the front door to find the entire family sitting around the dining room table with the American boarder, the German boarder, and the German couple. Invited to partake, we sat down for what was probably the most dysfunctional dinner conversation I’ve ever experienced. You’ve got Carlos, who speaks Spanish and just a bit of English and German. His wife and three children speak Spanish exclusively, Emily and I speak English and just a little bit of Spanish. The other American boarder speaks English and Spanish. The German boarder speaks German and English and a little bit of Spanish. And the couple––one of whom SHOUTS because he is TOTALLY DEAF––speaks German and English. Fortunately, everyone was fluent in the universal language of red meat, sausage, and red wine, so I guess we managed. But I'm not too surprised that the German couple hasn’t been back since. –NSH

Nature's Amusements

2006-11-21T01:20:00.000-03:00

Okay, so Emily did an excellent job of describing the wondrous qualities of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata, but I wanted to elaborate a bit, if only because it is, I think, the coolest thing I’ve seen so far in Argentina. In addition to the incredible “bone room” that Emily described, the museum also devotes a great deal of space to the enormous mammals that roamed the Pampas approximately 11,000 years ago. These creatures are arguably more impressive than the dinosaurs. For one, and if I have my ancient history right, they must have cohabited with humans. Farming is supposed to have commenced approximately 10,000 years ago, which means that fairly sophisticated societies of hunter-gatherers were roaming in close proximity to these lumbering beasts.

Furthermore, these things are ridiculously cool looking. In In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin quotes French naturalist Georges Cuvier as describing one of these creatures as originating because “Nature had wanted to amuse herself with ‘something imperfect and grotesque.’” It’s as good a reason as any I can think of for inventing an armadillo so big that you can fit your entire head inside its sinus cavity. If nothing else, these animals make the dinosaurs easier to grasp conceptually. It’s more difficult to try to wrap your head around freakishly large cousins to today’s porcupines, anteaters, armadillos, and sloths. Check out the Wikipedia entries for the Megatherium and Glyptodon to see what I mean.

Finally, if you’re familiar with the afore-mentioned Chatwin book, you might be interested to know that the skin from the Mylodon Listai––the Giant Sloth that figures prominently in In Patagonia––is still on display. (If it’s been awhile since you’ve picked up Chatwin’s book, you only have to reread the first three chapters to know what I’m talking about). Found in a cave on the Last Hope Sound in Patagonia, Chatwin describes the piece of skin as half an inch thick. “Nodules of white cartilage were embedded in it and it looked like hairy peanut brittle.” The picture above is of the piece of skin that Chatwin wrote about, and the one below is of Giant Sloth dung found in the same cave. -NSH

Aparicion con vida.

2006-11-19T22:52:00.000-03:00

La Plata, the provincial capital of Buenos Aires, is a small city located about a hundred kilometers outside of Buenos Aires. It’s famous mostly for having been renamed “Eva Peron” for three magical years in the fifties, and for its great natural history museum, built around the collection of explorer Francisco Pascacio Moreno (aka el Perito Moreno, or “expert Moreno”). We checked out the museum today. The train ride out to La Plata was somewhat uncomfortable, but at least the hard metal seats kept us awake the whole way, and we did not miss spotting the TURKEY at one of the farms alongside the train tracks. If we can’t find a turkey for Thanksgiving here in Buenos Aires, I’m bringing my swiss army knife back out to the suburbs and catching myself one.

Upon arriving in La Plata, we went over to the natural history museum, which lived up to all expectations. Our favorite space was what I’ll call “the bone room,” essentially a mass grave of every kind of animal ever. It’s a classic example of old school comparative taxonomy, and it’s muy, muy, muy lindo, and very peaceful. We also enjoyed the massive specimens of prehistoric Argentine animals, which are unlike any we’d encountered in U.S. natural history museums, resembling mostly armadillos of mammoth size.

After we had absorbed the beauty of the skeletons in the natural history museum, we ventured out to explore the rest of La Plata, where we saw the most massive cathedral in all of Argentina, which Nate found to be lacking in elegance. We also saw tons of graffiti, which might merely signify that La Plata has a lively student population, but I think is especially thick on the walls of La Plata now because of the general unhappiness about the apparent return of right wing death squads to Argentina. Much of the graffiti referred to the recent disappearance of Julio Jorge Lopez. One of the primary witnesses in the trials against those involved in the Dirty War, Lopez disappeared from his home in La Plata on September 18, shortly after delivering some of the most powerful and emotional testimony in the trial against Miguel Etchecolatz, a former police investigator. His disappearance is interpreted by many as a sign that the tactics and methods of the Dirty War are not totally consigned to the past. -EMW

Jesus!

2006-11-15T23:45:00.000-03:00

Argentina is nominally a Catholic country, although few of its inhabitants seem terribly devout, or to adhere to many of the traditional customs of Catholic life, such as attending church. Random patches of Catholicism remain in the culture: divorce wasn’t legal here until the eighties, abortion is illegal, and children celebrate their first (and maybe only) communion with a vengeance. Our host sister, Vicky, celebrated hers this Sunday. The family never goes to church, which may explain the one small mishap that marred the day – no one knew when the mass began, and all the guests were given the wrong time, turning up well after the ceremony began.

It was okay, though. The congregation was unusually boisterous for churchgoers, and no one seemed to notice when we slipped in about twenty minutes after the start. The mass was in general pretty low key – the priest droned on about Jesus or something, while the congregation chatted amongst themselves, children play fought in the back of the church, and people came and went freely. When the priest had some especially important piece of church knowledge to import, he would ask everyone to just please be quiet for once. And people would settle down a little, for a few minutes.

After Vicky had ingested the body and blood of Christ for the first time, we got to the really significant part of the day: the party, for which lengthy preparations had been made. The family rented out a salon, where we gathered with a host of extended family members and Vicky’s friends for an asado. Nate and I talked with Carlos’s German mother about the family history, while she kept insisting that we must eat just one more homemade alfajore – which she advertised as “made by my own hand.” The party concluded with a distribution of party favors, sweet little figurines made by Vicky and her mother. I will cherish mine. -EMW

Corre! Corre! Corre!

2006-11-14T00:54:00.001-03:00

Sunday was race day, and we had to wake up early to make it to the starting line in Palermo by 8:30. On the ride over, I mentioned to Carlos that a girl in my Spanish class had a friend in the race, and that this chica had apparently sworn off drinking for three weeks as part of her training. Carlos informed us that he had the same thing in mind when he neglected to have a drink on Saturday evening. “I had beer in the afternoon, yes, but nothing with dinner” he promised.

Feeling pretty intimidated by the training regimens of our fellow competitors, Emily and I selected a location well behind the starting line upon arrival. There were signs directing people who planned to run 4-minute kilometers to head to the front, 5-minute kilometers to head to the middle, and 6-and-over to head to the rear. Since our goal was an hour, we figured that a spot towards the end of the sea of yellow shirts would be best. As soon as everyone started running, however, we quickly realized that achieving our desired pace would be something of a challenge. Everyone was so densely packed together that, if tired, I’m pretty sure we could have crowd-surfed our way to the finish.

Things thinned out a bit around the third or fourth kilometer, however, which was also the point at which I observed one of the funniest scenes from the event. An elderly man with a cane had foolishly attempted to cross Av. Del Libertador before the race, and only managed to make it to the median before the crowd of runners swarmed around him. He was clutching his hat with one hand and a lamppost with the other as he buckled down for what was likely to be a solid half-hour of waiting.

Things got progressively hotter as the race progressed, and Emily and I got separated around the 5-kilometer mark. Nevertheless, we must have been really close, because we ended up finishing within 5 seconds of one another. If you’d like to see our results (and a rather poorly rendered video of our respective finishes) on Nike’s flashy website, you can click here. We’re pretty positive that the times don’t accurately reflect when we crossed the starting line, but that’s okay. We beat an hour either way.

On the way out, Nike representatives handed us medals for participating in the event. Emily has draped hers around one of our bottles of wine. Carlos wore his throughout his daughter’s First Communion party on Sunday evening. Yes, we’re all very proud. (Photo courtesy of La Nacion; there’s a pretty cool photo gallery from the race there also. -NSH

Faith In Robots

2006-11-11T21:33:00.000-03:00

The house where we’re living has been a whirlwind of cooking and cleaning lately because the youngest daughter is about to have her First Communion on Sunday (“the third most important event in any Argentine’s life,” Emily’s Spanish teacher assured her). In a bid to escape the bustle, we decided to pay a visit to one of the Buenos Aires sites we’ve been most curious about seeing: Tierra Santa, billed as the world’s first religious theme park.

Getting to Tierra Santa is not quite as difficult as the Hajj, but it’s not like it’s terribly easy, either. We had to walk a couple miles, catch a bus, and walk a couple miles more. It was largely for this reason that we didn’t simply turn right back around when the headscarf-and-sandal wearing ticket taker informed us that it would cost us 15 pesos each to see inside. We grouchily agreed.

Tierra Santa boasts life-sized recreations of key Biblical stories, the biggest Nativity scene in the world, an “awe-inspiring” 18-meter effigy of Jesus, and a recreation of the Last Supper that “becomes a moment of spiritual devotion for all the visitors of the park”. But, in fact, Tierra Santa is kind of a disappointment. Yes, there are kitsch pleasures to behold around every corner: an inexplicable statue of Gandhi that neglects to make mention of his religion, a 2000-year-old kiosk selling candy and rolls of film, a gift tent that carries not only “Tierra Santa: El Video” but “Tierra Santa: El Video Segundo Edition”, and much more. But after awhile, all of the life-sized plaster figures begin to run together, and one starts to have trouble making sense of Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Mary, the hundreds of sheep, and the thousands of hedonistic Romans.

After an hour of walking around under the blistering desert sun and taking in animatronic renderings of the Nativity and the Last Supper (imagine people crossing themselves at Chucky Cheese––it’s almost that weird), we decided to split. Across the street we sat on a park bench and looked out across the River Platte. I even turned the other cheek when a dog came over and bit my shoe, so maybe I learned a little something after all. -NSH

The Argentine Tiger

2006-11-09T11:18:00.000-03:00

A few kilometers outside of Buenos Aires, at the mouth of the Rio Plata, is a small, atmospheric port town called Tigre. We took a day trip to Tigre to get out of the city for a little while. It’s possible to take a commuter train directly from the train station near our house to Tigre, but we were advised that to get the full Tigre experience we really must change trains in Olivos and take the Tren de la Costa the rest of the way to Tigre because the views from the Tren de la Costa are really super beautiful. We enjoyed our stroll through Olivos, home of tasty medialunas and Argentine president Kirchner, to the station for the famous Tren de la Costa, but the train itself was something of a dud. It turns out that “spectacular views” = suburbia, with lots of high school sports fields.

Tigre itself, however, did not disappoint. We played guess the organ meat at an all-you-can-eat parrilla, where waiters bring tray after tray of unnamed meats to your table. (okay, Nate played, and I spectated.) After lunch, we took a trip out into the delta, which consists mostly of small islands that are reached via the boats that serve as buses for the area. These islands are prone to frequent flooding, so all the houses in the delta are built on stilts and look something like treehouses, giving the whole place a very Swiss Family Robinson feel. We took a boat/bus out to an island called Tres Bocas, where we spent a peaceful afternoon breathing the fresh air of the countryside and watching a three legged dog frolic. It was idyllic. -EMW

Our Corre Story

2006-11-06T23:56:00.000-03:00

Many weeks ago, we mentioned that we were hard at work training for the Nike 10K, a race held throughout Central and South America on the 12th of November. Our host, Carlos, talked us into entering with him and––not wanting to seem like total wusses––we grudgingly agreed. We’re now just five days away from the big event, so I thought I’d post with an update about how we’ve been progressing with our training.

The place where we’ve found to run is a small park just a few blocks from where we’re living in Belgrano. We know from cryptic signs and Carlos’s assurances that the park is exactly 1.3K in circumference, and we’ve tailored our sessions accordingly. On the weekends the park plays host to a lively feria, which means that we have rabbits on leashes, tents with leather goods, and bad reggae blaring from loudspeakers to help keep us company. Other evenings, our only entertainment is dodging the heaping piles of dog shit.

Now, although Emily has a long history of running competitively, those who know me know that I am happy to hike, bike, and swim great distances, but that running’s not really my bag. That said, the mortal fear of keeling over dead in front of thousands of screaming portenos has inspired me to be diligent about getting my laps in. For a while we were running 7 and 8 kilometers every other day or so, but last week we experienced a mysterious tapering off. Some lethal combination of rain, laziness, and $2 bottles of wine at El Viejo Lobo kept us away from the park for over a week. This morning, when Carlos popped his head into our room and announced that he had just finished running 12 kilometers, we knew that it was time to get back on the horse.

We just finished six laps around the feria, with plans of running a couple of more times before Sunday. On the way back home, we ran into Carlos on the street. He was pleased to see us sweaty and sore, and interrogated us about how many times around the park we’d gone. We told him only six, and he looked kind of disappointed, but Emily quickly assured him that we had done so in record time. In all of our previous conversations about running, time has not really been a factor. I’m worried that Emily is broaching dangerous new ground here, but we’ll see how it plays out.

All said, I think I’m swearing off the Lobo for the week. The vino tinto can wait; I’ve got my dignity to maintain. -NSH

Que casualidad.

2006-11-04T13:44:00.002-03:00

As noted earlier, Nathan and I take our Spanish classes at the Laboratorio de Idiomas, in the dilapidated remains of a once lovely building. In class today, my teacher filled us in on some of the details of the building’s glorious history. Nearly one hundred years old, it was once the best hotel in Buenos Aires, where every couple spent their wedding night. The grand exterior and the lobby of the building hint at these better days. Sometime later, after one Argentine crisis or another, hard times came to the owners of the hotel, who were soon putting all those en suite rooms to use as a brothel. Eventually, the prostitutes and johns were cleared out, and the building was converted again into a bank. Many years and several more crises later, the building was further degraded as the ruin that now houses our language classes.

While my teacher was sharing this history with the class, the building superintendent knocked on the door, asking permission to briefly interrupt the class to show some engineers the building. When he heard the topic of our discussion, however, he insisted on delivering a brief lecture. “Nearly 100 years old! A magnificent hotel! Everyone stayed here, even, once, Isabel, the gordita, the daughter of the king of Spain. You should remember, when you walk up these stairs to class, that you are walking where Isabel walked.”

Our teacher sighed and rolled her eyes. The superintendent began to digress, asking, “Are there any Swedish students in the class? Ah, yes? Well, I had always thought that I would marry a pretty little brunette from Argentina. And yet, I have found myself married to a blonde from Sweden!” He then announced, slowly, in English, to be sure that we all understood, “MY VIKING WIFE.”

When the superintendent finally cleared out, our teacher said he told her that story about Isabel every time she complained about the always broken elevators. “Think of how Isabel, the gordita, once walked up these same stairs, he says. But I can only think of the four more flights I have to walk up.” -EMW

A Morning at the Opera

2006-11-01T20:45:00.000-03:00

Just this week, we mentioned to one of our housemates that we were interested in seeing the Teatro Colón, a world-famous opera house built in 1908. Much to our surprise, we were informed that it would be closing its doors on November 2nd for an extensive restoration. Not wanting to miss our chance, we woke up at the brutally early hour of 9:00 to take a tour. Upon arriving, we discovered that there were two tours––one in English and one in Spanish. And although the line for the Spanish-language tour was nearly three times as long, the tour in English was sold-out. Perplexed, we decided to join the Spanish language tour.

At first I was concerned about missing crucial information from our tour guide, but everything turned out okay. This was mostly because the facts delivered on the tour of the Teatro Colón closely resemble the facts delivered on tours of theatres around the world. The acoustics are perfect, the best box is saved for the President, the marble comes all the way from Europe, etc. It was kind of a relief. But, lest I seem jaded, the theatre was actually really beautiful. And we were made privy to a lot of the behind-the-scenes workings, such as the room where a hundred anorexic ballerinas prepare for the show, the place where they store all 22,000 pairs of shoes, and––my favorite room of all––the set design workshop, where a tiny Argentine man was furiously sanding down an enormous styrofoam effigy of an ancient Chinese warlord.

I know what you’re thinking: why would you post this lame picture when you got to see a tiny Argentine man furiously sanding down an enormous styrofoam effigy of an ancient Chinese warlord? Well, my friends, I'll tell you. There are no photographs allowed at the Teatro Colón. In fact, the only place you’re allowed to take photos is in the lobby, where’s there’s really not much to look at. Of course, everyone feels obligated to take a million photos of the lobby anyway, and so did I. I snapped one of this miniature artist’s rendering of the theatre. There was a hole in its plexiglass case, which people have been using to drop their spare centavos––maybe for suerte? I guess miniature artist’s renderings of famous theatres are like the Argentine equivalent of shopping mall fountains. Or something. –NSH

Hablamos spanglish.

2006-10-31T22:53:00.000-03:00

Nate and I arrived in Argentina with any study of Spanish well in our past (Emily: 6 years ago, Nate: 8 years ago). From those long, boring hours of high school Spanish we retained only an extremely limited vocabulary and an extensive knowledge of Mexican Day of the Dead folk customs (well, technically I have most of the knowledge of Mexican holidays, since Nate’s Jehovah’s Witness Spanish teacher apparently excised all holidays from the curriculum). In order to survive life in Buenos Aires, we decided to brush up on our meager skills with Spanish classes at the University of Buenos Aires (aka la UBA). The school has a series of classes, Español para Extranjeros (Spanish for Foreigners) that are tailor-made for our purposes. We go to class for two hours of mostly laid back conversation every day, and we hope that our Spanish is improving.

I like the Spanish classes because I have learned key life lessons, like the Spanish names for various internal organs, allowing me to avoid them on restaurant menus. (Tip: you probably do not want the mondongo). And I like the other extranjeros, who come from around the world, with various stories as to how and why they ended up in Argentina. I also like the Laboratorio de Idiomas, the charmingly decrepit building that houses our classes. So far the roof has not collapsed on any of my classes, but I believe it could happen any day. -EMW

Penguino Sighting

2006-10-29T23:42:00.000-03:00

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about not wanting a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak for lunch. And here I am, about to write about having a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak for lunch. On Friday, after spending an hour in line at the Correo Central, Emily and I decided to treat ourselves to––yes! you guessed it! Gigantic, fatty, sizzling steaks! We headed to a tiny café in San Telmo to enjoy vacio, bife de chorizo, choripan, and papas fritas. We also decided to go the extra mile and blow $3.25 on a liter of wine. What we weren’t prepared for, however, was our very first penguino sighting. Our gruff waiter delivered our vino tinto in the most charming penguin pitcher that either of us had either seen. Not even Emily’s astute observation that it looked like the penguin was vomiting blood was enough to ruin it. We hope that this is the first of many penguino sightings to come. Stay tuned. –NSH

Let Them Drink Jugo

2006-10-26T12:09:00.000-03:00

When we first weighed the pros and cons of living with a host family, the fact that breakfast was included in our rent was something of a selling point. However, after arriving, we quickly came to realize that “breakfast” means something entirely different in Argentina. Whereas I generally like to eat a bagel or a bowl of cereal, Argentines are mostly content to drink juice and sip coffee in anxious anticipation of their lunch, which is almost always a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak. Because we’re not much interested in eating steak at noon, Emily and I were originally a bit disappointed to discover that our breakfast would consist merely of juice. However, the juice is so spectacularly good that we’ve decided we wouldn’t have it any other way.

The fact is, not only do Argentines love orange juice, they love fresh squeezed orange juice. On most bustling street corners, there’s someone there to press you a fresh cup on demand. Granted, this is something of a luxury street food item––whereas sugar-coated peanuts cost $0.33 and a hot dog $0.66, fresh-squeezed orange juice will run you closer to $1. That’s right, you’ve got to really, really want it. But because so many of the drinks we’re familiar with (including coffee, beer, and, according to Emily, Diet Coke) are inferior to their equivalents at home, it’s pretty nice to have access to a variety of orange juice that beats the pants off of Minute Maid. This is why the sound of the juicer whirring every morning has become our new alarm clock. -NSH

Juan who?

2006-10-25T01:05:00.000-03:00

Nate and I came to Buenos Aires with a list of three Argentine artists we were fond of and thought might conceivably serve as topics of conversation. Borges (duh), Lucretia Martel, and Juana Molina. (Okay, and also Jose Gonzalez, if you count Swedes born to Argentine parents, which we're not.) While everyone here of course loves loves loves Borges, we’ve been striking out trying to find an Argentine Juana Molina fan. Juana Molina is an Argentine television actress, with a show called “Juana and Her Sisters,” which her record label inaccurately claims was “a hit in the Spanish-speaking world.” I promise you that this is not true. She has in fact achieved a small level of worldwide fame as a singer-songwriter, but she remains unknown in her own country. I asked Carlos, our host, whether he liked her, and he said (approximately) “Juan Molina? I don’t know him.” Carlos is much keener on Robbie Williams.

A few days after my conversation with Carlos, when my Spanish class read a passage on one Miguel Molina, a German student asked if Juana Molina was, perhaps, the sister of this Miguel. Our mild mannered teacher reacted with surprising force. “NO! He is not her brother. He is not even her cousin. They are not related, and Juana Molina is not popular or well-known here.” I have not yet had the courage to inquire about the popularity of Lucretia Martel. -EMW

Another Man's Treasure

2006-10-23T01:34:00.000-03:00

This weekend we made two separate trips to San Telmo. Located just a few blocks south of the Casa Rosada (pictured below), the barrio is well stocked with cafes, tango bars, cobblestone streets, etc. Immediately following the first game of the World Series (“Los Cardinales! Asombroso!”), we headed down to attend a birthday party for the roommate of one of Emily’s classmates. Most of those in attendance were Americans, but we did talk to one guy from Mexico City who came to Buenos Aires to study cooking. He considers the trip somewhat of a bust because of the lack of picante in Argentine cuisine, and we all spent awhile lamenting about how salt and beef can only get you so far, and how we all could have really gone for a taco. We met some other people too, including a too-drunk guy who spent an hour analyzing the mid-term elections back home––everything from marquee Senate seats to obscure state Attorney General races. I think it was while railing against Lincoln Chaffee that he started gesturing too wildly, and spilled half a bottle of wine all over the floor. Soon afterwards we left.

But we came back only a few hours later. Every Sunday San Telmo plays host to an antiques fair in the small Plaza Dorrego. There’s lots of tangoing for tourists and booths selling everything from colorful old gramophones to crudely painted Che portraits and mate cups fashioned from animal hooves. We ate churipan (take a Chicago brat, cut it in half, stick it between like half a loaf of bread and you’re in the neighborhood) and drank orange juice (stay tuned for a future post about Argentina’s love for orange juice). We also picked up a poster-sized guide to cuts of beef and ogled antique maps that were way too expensive for us to buy. All in all, a fine day. -NSH

In the Jardín Japonés

2006-10-20T10:08:00.000-03:00

We used one of the warm and sunny days this week to check out the Jardín Japonés, an immaculately landscaped garden created in 1979, on the centenary of the arrival of Argentina’s first Japanese immigrants. The map seemed to suggest that the garden was located just past the zoo, but when we arrived there, we found your average, run-of-the-mill park, complete with sunbathers and people tossing tennis balls to dogs. We pondered whether it was possible for the city to be lazy enough about celebrating its Japanese citizens to simply set aside a patch of grass and call it the Jardín Japonés. But we found the real garden soon after.

Upon arriving, we realized that we weren’t quite sure what we were doing there. Having no special affinity for Japanese culture, and not having experienced all that much of Argentine culture, why were we interested in an Argentine homage to the Japanese? We never did answer this question, but we did eat some pretty tasty sushi. We also watched children feed koi fish, walked the circumference of the garden, and managed a Gothic Lolita sighting. Gothic Lolita sightings are usually enough to make any trip a success, so I guess we ended up to the good. -NSH

Educational and ludicrous activities.

2006-10-19T00:04:00.000-03:00

The Casa Rosada is Argentina’s more festive, pink counterpart to the United States’ White House. Apocryphal tales as to the origin of the pinkness of the Casa Rosada abound – my personal favorite argues that the building is pink because it was painted with cow’s blood. Awesome. I had also heard that the Casa Rosada featured a crypt, and while I didn’t have any expectations it would equal Paris’s catacombs or the bone church of Kutna Hora, after visiting Recoleta Cemetery, I had high hopes that we would not leave the seat of Argentina’s government without seeing some bones.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the building, we learned that tours were indefinitely suspended. The surly woman who demanded our identification before letting us enter the lame museum in the basement of the Casa Rosada had no idea when, or even if tours would recommence. Instead of a tour, we wandered through the unedifying museum, examining the official cake cutters and the ceremonial pants and reading the bizarre English-language signage, which informed us that the museum was available for “educational and ludicrous activities.” I looked in vain through the museum for the discussion of the Dirty War. The clever museum designers had managed to avoid any kind accounting for the years of military dictatorship, disappearances, and deaths by pretending the last 30 years hadn’t happened. The museum’s brisk march through Argentina’s history stopped at the year 1976, when the military dictatorship began, with no mention of any subsequent events. A list of Argentina’s presidents near the entrance to the museum ended at 1976, without a mention of even the current president and occupant of the Casa Rosada. -EMW

Fear the Mermaid

2006-10-18T00:40:00.000-03:00

Our favorite museum in Buenos Aires remains the aforementioned MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). This weekend we went to see if the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes could compare, but we found ourselves a bit underwhelmed. Our guidebook promised works by European masters including Renoir, Rodin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, but neglected to mention that their representative canvases were, well, pretty weak. In the case of the Renoir, hilariously weak. But we dug the Manet painting and the Rodin sculptures, and saved the promising second floor––works by Argentine artists––for another day.

We did find the special exhibition––a career retrospective by contemporary artist Renata Schussheim––really entertaining. The faux-Egyptian beauties pictured above belong to Schussheim. My favorite of her works, however, was an installation in a separate room, involving a sculpture of a mermaid standing against the railing of a ship. There was a fan blowing, so the mermaid’s hair kept ruffling, and the room was lit to mimic moonlight on the ocean. I wasn’t at all sure what I thought about this piece until leaving the room, where I saw a girl of 5 or 6 pleading with her father not to have to go back in. Apparently the lovelorn mermaid scared the bejesus out of her, while the naked dog-faced women had no effect. Who would have guessed? - NSH

Buenos Aires petting zoo

2006-10-16T22:57:00.000-03:00

Last week, Nate and I went to the Buenos Aires zoo, hoping to take advantage of the relatively sparser weekday crowds and enjoy a few quiet moments with the animals. Our plans were thwarted, however, by a school holiday known as a “day of reflection.” Held every twenty days, these are apparently intended to give teachers an opportunity to spend a day contemplating education. It also gives parents a chance to take their children on a weekday visit to the zoo, and the place was swarming with families when we arrived. Ultimately, the crowds did nothing to diminish our enjoyment of the zoo, and instead were a major enhancement to our visit. While at zoos in the United States the primary source of entertainment is observing animals in habitats as closely approximating nature as possible, in Buenos Aires the primary entertainment at the zoo is observing people interact with animals. At seemingly every turn, zoo employees hawk approximately gallon size containers of generic animal food, which indulgent parents never failed to purchase for their children. Oh, the hilarity that resulted: teens using food pellets to lure a muskrat out of a pond for cell phone camera photo ops, young children nearly losing an arm throwing food into the disgusting open mouths of camels, everyone blatantly disregarding the signs on a few animal’s cages that read “do NOT feed these animals,” etc. All in all, a treat. -EMW

Senor Pollo

2006-10-15T19:01:00.000-03:00

One of our favorite places to walk by on bustling Av. Cabildo is a small stand called Senor Pollo. In case your Spanish isn’t quite as amazing as mine, that’s translatable as Mr. Chicken. Anyway, Senor Pollo typically features a near-unfathomable number of chicken breasts, drumsticks, and flour-coated “milanese” style cutlets stacked twenty or thirty high beneath the register. Refrigeration is not a priority at Senor Pollo. Just the other day, we were made privy to the inner-workings of Senor Pollo’s operation. Apparently, the inventory at Senor Pollo is transported in the back of an enormous open-air truck. We took a picture for posterity. -NSH

Algo Profundo

2006-10-14T00:41:00.000-03:00

As much as people wax poetic about the elegant simplicity of baseball, let’s face it. It’s pretty complicated. I’m not talking about calculating VORP, or when to squeeze bunt. I’m just talking about the rules. I realize that in some ways this seems kind of strange. In America, nobody ever has to explain to anybody how baseball works, but at some point we all figure out about balls, strikes, force-outs, tagged runners, and fielding errors. However, in Argentina, they have no idea what any of these things are. Baseball is completely boring and illogical to them, not unlike the way the British monarchy is to me.

Fortunately, baseball––at least playoff baseball––is still broadcast down here. But this doesn’t stop the announcers from doing everything they can to ruin it. They do this primarily by acting as though the only interesting thing that can possibly happen is a home run. When someone hits a home run, they yell “ALGO PROFUNDO!” and then they make a noise like “Lolllolllollllolllo.” Kind of like what they do when soccer players score. Which, I think, is really lame. Folks who complain about Hawk’s home run calls, or Ron Santo’s radio announcing, need to get a load of this. They’ll never complain again.

That said, I do appreciate that the members of our host family make an effort to learn about baseball. They do have, however, an unfortunate knack for entering the room immediately after a pitch is thrown, and staying only for the length of time it takes the pitcher to adjust his jock, blow onto his hands, and shake off five or six calls from the catcher. This lack of action never fails to confuse them. Also confusing: “What is an out?” and “Did he do an out?” More recently, they’ve given up trying to figure it out. Now they’re merely interested in who is playing. I think they thought the whole thing was finally finished when the Tigers beat the Yankees, but I didn’t know how to explain that it merely meant that the Tigers would advance to another series––seven games this time, instead of five. The World Series is totally going to blow their minds.

In short, don’t look for Argentina at the next World Baseball Classic. They’re not going to be there. -NSH

Boca-River, River-Boca.

2006-10-12T00:47:00.000-03:00

After the asado, we felt too meat-gorged to do much besides stumble down the street to the Viejo Lobo, the neighborhood bar where the Boca-River soccer game was being shown. Boca and River, the two most popular soccer teams in Buenos Aires, play each other three times a year in what is apparently a “Superclasico” game. One taxi driver informed us that of all the many soccer rivalries in all the world, all soccer fans know that Boca-River is the best, far better than Manchester United-Arsenal, Real Madrid-Barcelona, etc, etc, or any other national rivalry. Unfortunately, apparently everyone in our neighborhood also knew this, and the Viejo Lobo was packed, with only a few lawn chairs available. We grabbed them and enjoyed an extremely indirect view of the game on a tiny television. -EMW

Meat, salt, wine.

2006-10-11T22:58:00.000-03:00

On Sunday, Carlos prepared an asado for the family, our first experience with the traditional argentine meat-fest – it’s similar to an American barbecue, but with more meat. Preparations for the asado started early, and we woke to the sounds of Carlos cleaning the grill on the patio outside our room. By 3 pm, after elaborate fire preparations and hours of slowly cooking the meat, the asado was ready: first, sausage, followed by morcilla (blood sausage), followed by steak, finished off with more steak, and accompanied by wine. According to Carlos, the only acceptable ingredients in the asado are meat, salt, and wine. We violated this by having a tiny portion of salad, but the meat:vegetable ratio remained appropriately high. -EMW

Escandalo!

2006-10-09T12:25:00.000-03:00

My concern about being estranged from news that’s happening in America was laid to rest last week when, upon boarding the subway, I was handed Le Razon, a free newspaper outlining the major stories of the day. Here you can see a breaking piece about Mark Foley and his salacious IMs, complete with a photo of… well... actually, I’m pretty sure that’s Bernard Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom. -NSH

Vamos al Club

2006-10-08T12:49:00.000-03:00

Our host, Carlos, has succeeded in convincing both Nate and myself to enter a 10k race in November. Nike is holding six 10ks on November 12 in different countries throughout Latin and South America, apparently as some sort of exercise in corporate sponsored regional solidarity. Carlos sold the race to us not on the basis of solidarity, however, but because we will be rewarded with t-shirts for entering. And medals, if we finish.

Yesterday we went to the athletic facility of the University of Buenos Aires with Carlos and our housemate Nathan to commence our intensive training. We began with an impressive eight laps around the track, and I feel that we are well on our way to a successful 10k. Next challenge: actually registering for the race on Nike’s impenetrable website. -EMW

Los Gatos!

2006-10-08T11:50:00.000-03:00

On Thursday we visited the Recoleta Cemetery, an ornate mini-city of mausoleums located behind imposing walls. Apparently, only the incredibly wealthy can afford to have their coffins placed in these ostentatiously decorated tombs. However, many of the tombs are so badly dilapidated that one could (if one wanted) reach inside, lift the coffin lid, and see the rotting remains of some legendary tango dancer. It's actually more tempting than it sounds. Anyway, we did manage to find Eva Perón's resting place, and we snapped some pictures of some of the more elaborate graves. We also survived all of our encounters with the hordes of feral cats who roam the narrow alleys between the mausoleums. They're the biggest cats I've ever seen, and I don't really want to think about what they're subsisting on. -NSH

Birth of a Blog

2006-10-07T18:00:00.000-03:00

We've decided to set up this blog as a way to transmit stories and pictures from our time in Argentina. We figure it's a convenient way for friends and family members to check in on our travels. The blog's title refers to a film that we saw on one of our first nights in Argentina. Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) hosts regular screenings, and on this particular night their schedule listed a showing of El Circo Fantasma, a film by Elia Kazan. As it turns out, El Circo Fantasma (The Ghost Circus) is the Spanish title for Kazan's 1953 film Man On A Tightrope. However, the print was so badly damaged that--despite our meager Spanish--the subtitles were more useful for making sense of the narrative action than the muffled dialogue. This odd disconnect seemed somehow representative of the absurdity of our situation. Hence, "El Circo Fantasma!" -NSH