Mendoza

So our main purpose for being in Argentina is to meet and spend time with all of the family that we have here (Jonathan's mother was born in Spain and immigrated to Buenos Aires at age 7, where she lived until about age 16 when we moved to the US.  Several of Jonathan's grandparent's siblings also immigrated to Argentina and stayed there).  But we also budgeted some money to do a little traveling while we were here.  Our initial idea was to rent a car and drive from Buenos Aires to Mendoza (the wine region of Argentina, famous for their Malbec), to Santiago Chile (to explore the city and the wine region in Chile) and then to travel up the coast of Chile north and into Peru to Cuzco to see Machu Picchu (famous Incan ruins).  After doing some more research, we quickly realized that the northern part of Chile is full of mountains, and basically if you don't have a all terrain vehicle, you need to circumnavigate them in a long route into Bolivia to get into Peru.  We both need visas to enter Bolivia and I also had concerns regarding infectious diseases as we got closer to the Amazon.  So then we decided that we would just go to Mendoza by bus and fly to Cuzco to see the Incan ruins.  As we began to look at flights to Cuzco, we quickly realized that it wasn't really that much cheaper to go to Machu Picchu from Buenos Aires than it would be from New York (plane tickets from NY instead of Buenos Aires were only $300 more expensive).  Also, Machu Picchu is super expensive, like $350 just to get to the site and enter for the day.  I really really wanted to go to Machu Picchu, but after thinking it over for a few days, decided that now may not be the best time.  If while I was in Mendoza, we had to mind our budget the entire time and do everything on the cheap, I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself as much.  So ultimately, we decided that we will have to save Machu Picchu for another time (anyone interested in doing a Lima/Machu Picchu trip with me within the next few years??  We can do the 3-4 day hike through the Inca Trail into Machu Picchu :)  So in the end, we decided to travel by bus to Mendoza for a few days, and then by bus to Santiago for a few more days.  We looked into the 22 hour bus ride from Santiago back to Buenos Aires, but opted to pay the $100 more and fly :).

I was really impressed with the bus companies here.  I've never really traveled by bus before...we usually drive, or if it's really far, fly.  I guess this is what happens in countries where everyone doesn't have a car.  But anyways, the majority of the long distance buses are like double decker charter buses.  So the've got bathrooms, air conditioning, movies, and they even serve you a meal! We bought overnight tickets, leaving Buenos Aires at 8pm and arriving in Mendoza at 10am.  When we arrived in Mendoza, we picked up our rental car (a Chevy Corsa, a classy 2 door ride...so classy it didn't have air bags).  We then found our hotel, where we were pleasantly notified that we had been upgraded :).  Our room had a kitchenette and a private balcony.  Awesome.

So we regrouped and then headed out for the day as we had a 2pm reservation at Durrigutti, a winery in the Lujan de Cuyo region of Mendoza (our dear friend Eric at the Buffalo City Wine Merchant recommended us some wineries to visit.  If you live in the Buffalo, stop by and visit them!!).  So Mendoza is situated in the west of Argentina in the foothills of the Andes mountains.  It has really breathtaking scenery and the wineries, which are all relatively new, are producing some really delicious wines (when we were in the US we drank a lot of wine from Argentina because you could drink some really great quality wines at good prices).  Mendoza has been referred to as "the Wild West meets Napa" or "Napa 50 years ago".  There's a huge wine industry there, but they're not quite yet ready for huge amounts of tourism.  So we departed an hour before our 2pm appointment (our GPS said it would take 45 minutes to get there).  We opted to rent a GPS because I'm a horrible navigator and as my dad says, domestic harmony is rule number 1 in a marriage :).  But needless to say...we quickly found out that nothing (neither the wineries, nor the roads) are properly labeled and got incredibly lost.  This may sound incredibly romantic, unlabeled roads, two lovers lost in wine country...but it's totally not.  We arrived at our appointment an hour and a half late.  We apologized profusely and explained that we got totally lost (we also informed them that it was hard to find their vineyard, being that it had NO SIGN, to which they replied "oh yeah, we know" like it was no big deal).  Thankfully they took us on a tour through their winery and we did a tasting.  We then headed over to Vines of Mendoza.  The wineries are incredibly far apart in Mendoza and you can only really visit 2-3 wineries in one day, in contrast to Napa Valley where if you want (which I don't recommend), you can visit 10 in a day.  So Vines of Mendoza is essentially a bar, but they have a huge wine list that can be ordered by the glass or by a tasting and their staff are incredibly knowledgeable about all of the wine.  So you can go there and taste a huge assortment of wines.  Awesome.  So we did a flight of tastings and ordered a cheese plate.  From there we headed over to Azafran, where we had a reservation for dinner. We got there a little early, so we went to get a cocktail at the bar across the street.  We had a great dinner (though the restaurant was a little over-hyped by all of the travel websites).  But unfortunately, after we polished off the bottle of wine we ordered with dinner, I was well, a bit drunk.  We made our way back to the hotel and I woke up the next day, bright eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to do some more tasting :).

We had a nice little breakfast in our little kitchenette and were ready set off to see some more wineries.  But I would like to take a pause here and talk about drip coffee.  I, of course, drank drip coffee in the US, though would usually opt for coffee from our french press or espresso machine on the weekends when I had time to sit around and drink coffee.  Since moving abroad I haven't drank any drip coffee, though I haven't really missed it that much.  There's something pretty pleasurable about having amazing espresso coffees available at every restaurant and bar for about $1.  In our apartment in Spain we have an Italian style percolator.  In most of our families' homes here in Argentina they drink instant coffee, which is a lot better here than it is in the US.  But our hotel room in Mendoza had a drip coffee machine, and let me tell you there was something very comforting and pleasurable about drinking drip coffee.  I thoroughly enjoyed my coffee every morning :). Our first appointment for the day was at Achaval-Ferrer in the Maipu region of Mendoza.  This was my favorite winery that I visited.  First of all, the view from the winery was absolutely breathtaking. 

This winery has an incredibly small production and does a lot of their stuff by hand (grape selection and labeling).  There's term in wine making, called terroir, which basically means that the climate and the soil in which a grape grows, dramatically affects the way a wine tastes.  So when tasting wine, there are two different things at play, the terroir as well as how the winemaker made the wine.  This vineyard releases every year three single varietal Malbecs where the grapes are grown in three completely different climates.  The climates varied by humidity, altitude, soil (whether it had more or less clay).  It was really awesome to taste the three bottles side by side, as they had completely different tastes, even though they're the same type of grape.  Really awesome winery visit.  We then made our way over to Rutini, another winery in the Maipu region.  This winery had a really cool museum with all sorts of antique wine making tools.  They receive a lot of visitors so they run tours every hour.  As we left the museum we caught a tour finishing up with a tasting.  We joined them and did a quick tasting.  Their stuff was nothing to write home about, especially after having such an awesome experience at Achaval Ferrer.  We decided not to bother staying for a tour there and went next door to this homemade candy store :).

Later that night, we had made an appointment at Vines of Mendoza to blend our very own wine.  When Jonathan first expressed an interest in doing this, I wasn't as excited, but it turned out to be really, really fun.  When we arrived we went into a private room and tasted Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Syrah.  After this we were given three different mixing trials to make our own blend.  We decided to each do our own top secret blend, taste each others, and then make a final blend to bottle together.  Jonathan's was 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Malbec, 15% Syrah, and 5% Cabernet Franc.  Mine was 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Malbec, and 30% Syrah.  I thought mine was better, and of course Jonathan thought his was better.  We decided to meet somewhere in the middle for our final blend and ended up with 35% Malbec, 35% Syrah, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Cabernet Franc.  I think it's pretty good.  We got to use this hand press to push the cork through and decorate the bottle with a marker.  We called our blend "Don Martino", after our love-child Marty (our cat), of course :).

After this we headed over to Francis Mallman's 1884 to eat.  It was absolutely incredible (though I will note here though that one of the nicest restaurants in Mendoza does not have a sign...shocker, right?).  I had lamb and Jonathan had baby goat (a popular dish in Mendoza).  Absolutely amazing dinner.  This chef has a cookbook, which I'm totally asking for this Christmas.

Our last day in Mendoza we were planning on spending the day basking in the hot springs, but the woman who helped us at Vines of Mendoza convinced us to spend another day tasting in the Uco Valley (we weren't hard to convince :).  So that morning I called and made tasting appointments at Atamisque and  Salentein (2 she recommended us).  When we arrived at Atamisque  we discovered that apparently I inadvertently made a reservation at their restaurant instead of their winery (I'm not really sure how saying that you want to make an appointment for a tasting and a tour can be confused for I want to eat at your restaurant).  So we apologized for the mixup, even though my Spanish skills were bangin' that morning and it totally wasn't my fault.  But they told us they were unable to accommodate us still!  Those bitches!  We were actually planning on trying to have lunch in their restaurant after our tour, but oh no, I was not interested in patronizing their establishment.  So we called and rescheduled our appointment at Salentein and headed over there early.  We only got a little lost on our way there and arrived more or less on time!  Woo hoo!  Here's a pic I took when we stopped to call them to ask for directions.

Salentein was probably the most beautiful winery we went to.  How could you not love this view:

And here's Jonathan poaching some grapes:

We ate an awesome lunch at Salentein (I had the trout and Jonathan the Rib Eye) and began our trek back to Mendoza city (about an 2 hours).  The majority of the radio stations we could find only played awful Reggaeton music, but for one breif shining moment we found a station that played some Michael Jackson for us.  Here's Jonathan car dancing:

We stopped on our way back at a Cristo Rey statue that we saw (large statue of Jesus with his arms spread out wide.  The most famous of these is in Rio de Janero, Brazil, but they are all over the world).  But from the base of the monument was this awesome view of the Uco Valley.  

For our last night in Mendoza we wanted to try to sit and watch the sunset.  Unfortunately, the Andes blocked it :(.  The mountains were too tall, and the sun went behind the mountains before the sky changed colors.  We drove into Lujan de Cuyo because when we were lost the first day we saw some really beautiful landscapes that we thought might be good places to watch the sunset.  So we pulled off the road and hiked through this dried up riverbed.  Even though we didn't get to see the sunset, we took some really awesome pictures of the landscape.  

On our drive back to the hotel that night Jonathan looked over to our right and saw this HUGE orange ball coming up over the horizon and says to me "Oh my god is that the moon?!"  This was the night when the moon was super close to the earth.  We continued driving for a bit because this large orange ball was obscured by some trees and once we could verify that indeed this is the moon, we pulled off to the side.  We tried to take pictures of it, but were unfortunately unsuccessful.  We sat and looked at the moon for a while and then went back to the hotel, packed, and headed out the next morning to Santiago, Chile. 

Mar del Plata

Jonathan and I went to Mar del Plata, a large coastal city about 6 hours south of Buenos Aires.  We wanted to go to Mar del Plata to visit Jonathan's mother's first cousin Angelita and her family.  We also wanted to travel there because all of the family here says its one of the most beautiful beaches in all of Argentina and that it gets tourism from around the globe.  To be here in the 90 degree heat in Buenos Aires (they don't have beaches in Buenos Aires) after living literally across the street from the beach for the last 6 months and not being able to soak up some sun has given me a major jonesing for some quality beach time. 

So in looking at our travel options we could travel by bus or by train.  I was more interested in the bus (air conditioning, nice comfy seats), but Jonathan wanted to travel by train because it was 30 bucks cheaper.  He won and we decided to travel by train.  Our trip there was quite possibly the most miserable experience of my life.  Seriously.  I was prepared to be uncomfortable, but this uncomfortable..no.  First of all, it was 90 degrees and humid and all of the windows in our area of the train were broken and wouldn't open and the overhead fans inside the train were broken.  So it was literally an oven.  When we finally arrived, we were soaking wet.  Our seats were facing two other people's seats, so we had to share leg space.  The girl across from me was the most inconsiderate foot space sharer ever.  When she arrived she asked me if I minded if she kept her bag on the floor where our feet go, as opposed to putting it above.  I told her that I didn't mind at all.  When I told her that I didn't mind I assumed (I was wrong to do so) that she would understand the social rule where everyone gets an equal amount of foot space and if you'd like to use your space for your bag, it's your choice.  She completely used up like 80% of all 4 of our foot space, sprawled out while sleeping.  At one point she put her feet up on our seat in between Jonathan and I.  This was going to far!!  Luckily she was sleeping when she did so and my very obvious nudging it off didn't seem as obvious (and i it did, I really don't care).  She also kept stepping on my feet when she moved.  I was so ready to yell at her and thought over exactly what to say in Spanish, but opted against it because I didn't want to be some obnoxious American chick yelling on the train in Argentina.  Oh, and did I mention she smelled?  She smelled!  She smelled like a dank wet basement that didn't have any fresh air for months.  Our train trip back wasn't as bad.  Our windows opened and the fans worked.  My arm got burns from the sun coming in from the window (you know you're a foreigner when you get a sunburn while inside a train).  But needless to say, Jonathan has promised to do something really special with those 30 bucks we saved :).  All of the family here laughed at us and told us it would be a good story to think about when we're older, but I'd rather not have this story to tell. haha.

But we had a very nice visit with all of the family there and had a nice time in Mar del Plata as a whole.  Here is a picture of all of us having dinner the first night there:

Our first whole day in Mar del Plata we went to the beach.  Jonathan had a ball checking out the abundance of thong bikinis, which most of the women my age wore.  We did see a 3 year old girl with a thong bikini (so not okay).  The beach in Mar del Plata is expansive, taking up the entire coast.  Also, the city receives a lot of wind, so we had a ball playing in the huge waves.  I hadn't gotten to play in waves that big since I went to Cancun in 7th grade.  What was strange about the beach that I had never encountered before were these expansive tents sectioned off into little cabanas for people to rent.  I suppose people rent them to get out o the sun, but they are still sitting in the sun and I imagine they must be hot, all on top of each other (you can see some of them in a picture I posted below).  But they totally looked like refugee camps and kind of ruined the scenery of the beach.  Oh, and one last thing.  People drink Mate (hot tea) at the beach???  All of the beach kiosks sell hot water.  Why you would want to drink hot tea at the beach is beyond me.  I'll stick to Quilmes, Argentina's Budweiser.

Jonathan's shoulders got pretty burnt our first day at the beach.  I put sunscreen on his back and he put sunscreen on his chest and I guess we didn't effectively communicate about his shoulders, haha.  So the second day there we walked along the coast, went and played some slots at the casino (we lost our 12 bucks within like 15 minutes, shocker right?), played cards in a cafe, and walked around the city center.

Since being here we have met a lot of Jonathan's family (Jonathan is meeting most of them for the first time in his life) and have had really nice visits.  We are ready for a break now from the family visits.  They sometimes can be a little redundant and awkward, meeting all of them, answering and asking the same questions over and over.  So we are now planning a trip to Mendoza (the wine region in Argentina, home of the glorious Malbec.  Malbec actually came from French colonists, but Argentina made it famous as it is often used in blending in France whereas here in Argentina it is bottled as a single varietal here), Neuquen Argentina, and Santiago Chile.

Morón

We went to Morón, another suburb of Buenos Aires to visit Jonathan's grandma's brother, Juan and his family (Jonathan's mother's first cousins and their kids).  We had a really nice visit with them.
Here is Jonathan with Juan and his wife Isabel.  Jonathan said it was so weird to watch Juan.  He has the same mannerisms and face as his grandmother (Juan is the only sibling of his grandmother that he has ever met and is still living).  

And here's a picture of all of the family in Morón.  Juan and his wife Isabel, their son's Alberto and Alejandro, and Alberto's family.

Our first whole day there they did Asado (basically BBQ, but usually implies beef).  It was funny, actually, the day before we left Nora asked us what we thought we were going to eat there and I said "Asado, of course.  Is there really another option?" haha.  It's interesting actually, Buenos Aires has a huge history of immigration from Galicia, Italy, and Israel specifically (they say that Buenos Aires has the largest population of Jews in the world outside of NY and Israel.  Why bagels aren't abundant I still don't know).  When you go to a restaurant it is pretty commonplace to expect homemade pastas, which is pretty spectacular.  But why there isn't more diversity, why people (if they can afford it) eat beef at every meal I don't really know.  This assimilation is really interesting to me.  But anyways, we had Asado at Juan's house.  We had beef, chicken, lamb, and pork.  It was pretty meatalicious. Alberto was the Asador.

After lunch Briscas (Gallego card game):

Juan and Isabel had a dog, whose name was "poopie".  Isabel was devastated when we told her what poopie means in English. haha.  But Jonathan, a self reported hater of dogs, actually liked poopie.  I had to record this momentous moment in history.  

After we also went for a walk around town and went and got a drink with Alejandro (who we'd like to visit in Neuquen soon).  Our second day there we went over to Alberto's house for lunch.  They made homemade pasta with brussel sprouts (so amped for the veggies).  It was also really nice to spend time with Nadia and Andrea, Alberto's daughters. 

Argentina: Tigre and Gaucho Fiesta

Earlier this week Jorge arranged with a friend, who has a boat, for us to go on a little boat tour of Tigre.  Tigre is a town situated on the Parana Delta, where several large South American rivers come together at the Ocean.  The delta creates a really cool network of islands to cruise around in a boat.  We spent the afternoon trolling around the islands, enjoying the sun, and checking out all of the cottages.  It actually reminded me a lot of the Thousand Islands, a place my family has vacationed many times. 

Yesterday we went on  tourist trip that Susana arranged for us.  We took a 1 hour bus ride from downtown Buenos Aires out to the Pampas (the plains, countryside) for Gaucho (cowboy) themed day.  We arrived at a ranch-like place where the guys were all dressed up like Gauchos.  I went for a horse drawn carriage ride, relaxed in the shade, and had some fun taking pictures.  There was a great lunch (beef, obviously) complete with entertainment (dancing, singing, horse show extravaganza). 

A few other things of note:
- I am officially overdue for a dental cleaning for the first time in my life.
- I'm still growing my hair and it's still short.
-In an effort to curb our meat eating we introduced the family to broccoli.   They literally were unable to identify what it was when we brought it home, but upon tasting it all seemed to think it was 'ok'.