Trip report on Salta and northwest Argentina

Posted on May 25, 2010 by jen

We just got back from a weeklong trip to Salta and northwest Argentina, and let’s just say that we’re very appreciative of all that Buenos Aires has to offer. We’ve heard that the rest of the country thinks porteños are snobby and that, in reverse, porteños think people from the provinces are unsophisticated and that Buenos Aires is far superior. Got to say, we’re starting to feel more like porteños every day . . . .

Our itinerary took us to see the top sights in northwest Argentina: Valle de Calchaquí, the wine-producing town of Cafayate, the salt flats of Salinas Grandes and the small village of Purmamarca (as well as the two biggest cities in the region, Salta and Jujuy). As you know from Ryan’s previous post, we made the mistake of using a local guide for the first two sights, then covered the rest on our own.

Salta

After our epic 20-hour journey on FlechaBus, we were very eager to arrive in Salta and check in to our hotel. We had heard that Salta is a beautiful and charming city, so we were excited to see it for ourselves. It has a wonderful central plaza surrounded by colonial buildings that are artfully lit at night. But we were somewhat surprised to find that the city is dirty, noisy and really polluted – Buenos Aires is a far bigger city, but the pollution was much worse in Salta.

Salta's main plaza is surrounded by lovely colonial buildings. They've got the lighting thing down for sure.

The Salta region is famous for its empanadas, and we ate them at least once (sometimes twice) every single day that we were there (to be fair, partly because they were good, and partly because there weren’t many other appetizing options). The best we had by far were at the Doña Salta restaurant just down the street from our hotel in Salta – yum!!

We love to eat empanadas as much as we love to play with them!

Valle de Calchaquí

The scenery on the drive to Cafayate through the Valle de Calchaquí is truly amazing – a beautiful landscape as far as the eye can see. Some parts were red, others dusty brown and even green. The colors kept changing around every turn.

These hills had just about every color you could imagine

The drive takes somewhere around 3 hours, depending on how often you stop. We stopped to explore the Garganta del Diablo (interestingly, we’ve identified at least 3 other places in Argentina with the same name, including the crazy 3-sided waterfall we saw at Iguazu) – a huge canyon in the red rocks right off the highway. Ryan climbed up a ways, and I graciously offered to stay below and take pictures (had nothing to do at all with my fear of heights).

Um, this is really high . . . not sure how I'm going to get down

Wine country of Cafayate

Once we arrived in Cafayate, we checked in to our hotel – the Patios de Cafayate (a Starwood luxury property) that used to be the estate of a winemaker’s family – the winery is still operating and is attached to the hotel. The property is absolutely beautiful, but they’re definitely missing the mark on some of the basics to make this hotel truly as spectacular as it could be (review of Patios coming soon).

We like pretty hotels

Cafayate is one of Argentina’s wine-producing regions, known for having fuller-bodied wines than those produced in Mendoza – one of our favorite everyday wines is from Cafayate (Quara malbec, 14 pesos/bottle – that’s around US$4). We tasted at two wineries in Cafayate chosen by our guide and were underwhelmed by both. Domingo Hermanos is located right in town and had a very basic tasting room pouring very mediocre wines (and only 2 of them!).

Wine by the gallon - got to be good

Finca de las Nubes is located just outside of town at the base of the hills. Their property is charming and has a great view, but their wines leave something to be desired. Impressively though, the entire winery is operated by just 5 employees – we saw them applying labels by hand while we were there.

Not a bad view from the winery, even though their wine sucks

Despite our disappointing tastings, we did discover a few great new malbecs while we were there – we haven’t seen these wines in Buenos Aires (though we didn’t know to look for them) so bought a few bottles to bring back with us just in case. Interestingly, we learned that the wines that are available in Buenos Aires are actually significantly more expensive in Cafayate (we saw our aforementioned-standby Quara priced at 25-30 pesos in the wine shops vs. 13 pesos in the big city). Wouldn’t you think they might be cheaper closer to the source, before all the shipping and logistics expenses? Clearly not.

Cafayate itself is a small town – the central plaza is quaint, surrounded by restaurants and shops. We ate at Colorado (owned by 2 Americans who relocated to Cafayate) and Terruno (located on the plaza, relatively good food). There are a handful of wineries/tasting rooms in town and a shop selling homemade alfahores – you can’t miss the massive sign from the main plaza. We bought an assortment to take back to our Spanish teachers in Buenos Aires for our ongoing debate over the best alfahores and conitos.

Alfahores and conitos from Cafayate image

Ok, so we bought more than a few, but it's for research!!

One other unique activity in Cafayate is to visit the goat cheese farm on the outskirts of town, where we met some of the producers. Our tour of the farm in Spanish was ok, but turns out our goat-farm vocabulary isn’t that great. Go figure.

Hello - I'm a goat and these are my friends

Renting a car

After heading back to Salta for one more night, ditching our guide and reserving a rental car, we were ready to hit the road and explore the region north of Salta. Neither of us had driven in foreign countries before (Canada and Mexico don’t count) and were a little nervous about renting a car and driving to the middle of nowhere. We were lucky to quickly find a car available through Alamo, who we’d read good reviews about. The employees we dealt with were all great – excellent English and very good customer service. It was a bit scary driving in Salta and trying not to get run over by buses, but once we made it out of the city we were good to go.

We hit Jujuy on our drive up to Purmamarca, our base for the next two nights. While some friends rave about the city of Jujuy, to us it just seemed like a biggish, mediocre city in the mountains. We stopped and had pizza for lunch at Chung-King (yep, that’s actually a pizza place, and no, they don’t serve Chinese food at all) and that was enough of Jujuy for us.

Purmamarca

Purmamarca is this cute little village up in the mountains. It’s one of the most popular places to overnight if you’re visiting the region north of Salta, partly because it’s developed a bunch of restaurants and hotels, and partly because it’s situated right at the base of this really pretty hill.

See, I told you it was a pretty hill

And our room on the top floor had a view of the hills (and a broken shower . . .)

Salinas Grandes

We’d read that the massive salt flats were not to be missed and also that they were best viewed toward the end of the day, after all the tour buses have left. So we cut short an intense game of chess in a café in Purmamarca and hit the road. And not just any road. It’s a 1-hour series of switchbacks straight up the side of the mountain to 12,000-ish feet. With tour buses and big trucks barreling down at us. Fun.

So after this lovely drive, we made it to the salt flats just as the sun was going down. Here’s our take on the famous Salinas Grandes: big, wide open space that’s white and crackly-looking. Kind of cool? Yes. Worth 2 hours of driving on scary mountain roads, the last bit in the dark? Maybe not. But we did take a few of the obligatory pics while we were there.

Hello from the really tall shadow people

Probably the most fun part was sneaking in to use the fee-for-use porta-potty after it was closed, then being confronted by a grumpy saltminer wanting her 1 peso on the way out. We were happy to pay, but it’s not our fault she didn’t have change for a 5!

You know this is going to be a classy bathroom with a sign like that

Humahuaca and Tilcara

These are two of the town that are regularly mentioned as destinations on any tour of the northwest. The drive to visit them was interesting, but if you’ve spent time in Northern California, Washington state or anywhere with mountains, I don’t think you’d be blown away. Maybe people get excited by the drive there? To us, it was ok, but not exactly a must-see.

It's a nice change from the city, but it's not exactly the most amazing landscape we've ever seen . . .

Maybe it was the towns themselves? We didn’t even stop in Humahuaca – just drove through and were ready to head back. It was interesting to see an Argentine pueblo, but there are plently of those that aren’t hours from anywhere. Tilcara was a little better. After walking for 10 minutes or so, we had pretty much seen the town so found a place to have lunch (empanadas – what else?) and a café, then headed back to our base in Purmamarca.

Heading home

On Sunday, it was time to make the trek from the small pueblo of Purmamarca in the hills all the way back to the big city of Buenos Aires. Our drive to the Salta airport took ~3 hours, leaving us with plenty of time before our flight. After our previously-posted experiences with FlechaBus and Aerolineas Argentinas, we were done taking chances on our transportation and booked a flight back with LAN. And what a good decision that was!!!!!

In comparison with our experience on Aerolineas Argentinas: LAN promptly checked us in (no waiting in line for 45 minutes because the computers were down and they were trying to come up with a back-up plan on the spot – see AA post). They made announcements in Spanish and English, didn’t combine our flight with another flight going to a different city, didn’t cancel all seat assignments, didn’t even land in another city that wasn’t on the itinerary (in case you’re wondering, yes, every one of these things happened when we flew with Aerolineas Argentinas to Iguazu). Instead, we boarded our flight on time and in an orderly fashion and actually pulled back from the gate 3 minutes EARLY. We landed in Buenos Aires, promptly received all of our checked luggage and were on our way home.

All in all, it was a fun trip and nice to experience a different part of the country. At the same time, it didn’t quite measure up to all the hype that we’d read and heard. It’s a great place to see if you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t call it a must-see international destination. Some of the landscapes are beautiful (valley on the way to Cafayate) and it was wonderful to visit a few villages that are on the other end of the spectrum from life in BA.

Buenos Aires, we missed you.

Vacation #2 . . . via 20-hr. bus ride???

Posted on May 16, 2010 by jen

After hearing so many great things about Salta and the northwest of Argentina, we’re off this evening to check it out for ourselves. Planning the trip has been fun so far – we’re hoping it pays off when we get there. More to come, but in the meantime, here are a couple of thoughts on the major parts of trip-planning so far:

Decision #1: How do we get there?

The two options are flying or taking a bus. Our default would normally be to fly, but after our last experience flying with Aerolineas Argentinas, we’re open-minded about other transportation options. We’ve vowed to avoid Aerolineas whenever possible, and flights on LAN (the only other carrier covering the route) would have cost us almost as much as our monthly rent. Which leaves the bus.

Going to Salta is like crossing the entire country of Uruguay . . . 3 times

Now, you may not realize that Argentina is big. Really big (see map). We’re about halfway down the east border of the country, and we’re going to the far northwest. That’s a long way. Hence, it takes ~20 hours to get there from Buenos Aires. Yep, that’s almost a full day. We board at 6pm tonight and get in sometime around 1 or 2 in the afternoon tomorrow.

Apparently, bus travel is great in Argentina. They have numerous classes of service, including the “cama suite” that we opted for – supposedly seats that lie completely flat, have full curtains and includes all your meals (and wine with dinner – yay!). So we’re giving it a shot – will let you know what we think on the other end.

Decision #2: On our own or with a guide?

Turns out that a lot of the stuff you go to Salta to see isn’t really in Salta. It’s an amazing region with incredible landscapes and natural wonders, but they’re all spread out and all take a full day to visit. So our choices were to (1) rent a car (crazy expensive), (2) join a bus full of tourists (could be fine but we’ve heard it feels a lot like cattle herding for the Salta tours) or (3) hire a private guide to take us around for a few days. After reading unanimously positive reviews about one particular guide in the area, we decided to book her. We’ve had a bit of trouble connecting on email so don’t really know what our itinerary with her is going to be, but we’re trusting all the good reviews on tripadvisor and hoping she’s booked our hotel for us by the time we arrive (after the aforementioned 20-hr. bus ride – think we’ll be excited for a room and a shower by that point).

Wish us luck on our epic bus journey – we’ll post more from Salta!

Our first vacation from vacation: Iguazu Falls

Posted on April 26, 2010 by ryan

Just got back from 3-days in Iguazu falls and didn’t want to pay the AR$60/day for internet access at our hotel, so apologies for the lack of posting lately.

Awesome trip! Iguazu is truly spectacular. We stayed in the Sheraton which is the only hotel in the park itself on the Argentina side and it was phenomenal. Plus, we stayed there on Starwood points, so it was a very cheap trip (thanks consulting!). We’ll write a more thorough review of the trip in the days to come, but in the mean time, here’s lots of pictures: Iguazu Pictures Enjoy!

p.s., it’s pretty wild to return home from a vacation and not dread going back to our regular lives… all of you out there that are still consultants, take note!!

How to find a Spanish school in Buenos Aires (we love ours!)

Posted on April 21, 2010 by jen

One of the major reasons we wanted to come to Buenos Aires was to learn Spanish. We didn’t realize at the time that Argentine Spanish is a bit, shall we say, special – they use “vos” instead of “tu” to mean “you”, and they pronounce everything with a lovely Italian-sounding accent (you may be familiar with the word “pollo” – pronounced “poyo” through most of the Spanish speaking world but “posho” in Argentina). So, it’s not exactly your standard Spanish, but it’s lovely just the same and we were super excited to start studying.

After a few days settling in to Buenos Aires, we started our search for a Spanish school. There are well over a dozen different schools here in Buenos Aires, most located in or near the center of the city. The standard schedule is 20 hours a week, typically with classes running ~9am to 1pm-ish, and the schools usually have classes at various levels running each week. Prices range from $150-200USD/week, and pretty much every school offers a small discount for paying for multiple weeks upfront.

We started our search by reading through posts on the various BA expat blogs and google searches. We found a few schools to visit that were recommended and had decent prices – we wanted to check them out in person, and Ryan needed to take the placement test (pretty much every school has you take a placement test if you’ve ever studied Spanish so they can place you in the right class for your level – go figure). We decided to visit IBL, expanish and Vamos Spanish. Here’s our quick takeaway on each:

IBL: Located in a cool old building turned into a shopping arcade and office building on busy pedestrian Florida Street. Let’s just say that we weren’t in the best mood after battling the crowds on the street to get to the building. The school is located on an upper floor in the building with an enclosed patio area used for breaks and for a smoking area. The staff (which seemed to be mostly locals) was friendly and said most classes had ~5 students. Overall, the school was fine but didn’t particularly wow us, and we weren’t excited about the daily rush-hour subway commute to get there. Cost: $175/week.
expanish: Definitely the busiest and most commercial of the schools we visited, expanish is a volume operation. They have great marketing and a bustling space with a central “living room” area (they’re strangely proud of the countless pictures of students sleeping on their couches that are plastered all over the walls – we’re not sure exactly what’s up with that). There were at least 15 students/prospective students hanging out in the common area while we were there. The school offers the standard 20 hr/week class schedule and is also located downtown-ish, just off the massive 9 de Julio street. We got the sense that this is the choice for backpackers and younger, single crowd looking to meet other independent travelers through classes. Cost: $160/week.
Vamos Spanish: We wanted to visit this school because it was pretty much the only one we found in Palermo, walking distance from where we were living. The school occupies its own antique building, with a common room on the ground floor and classrooms upstairs. It’s a smaller school than the others we visited, typically with 10-15 students in a given week. The mostly-foreign support staff is very friendly, and we got a good vibe that the experience was a bit more personalized here than the other schools we visited. Cost: $160/week.

We decided to go with Vamos (partly because we really liked the feel of it and partly due to location) and have loved our experience so far. We’ve spent more than 80 hours each in class (we’re in the running for the title of longest-running students ever!) and have learned a ton over that period of time. Class sizes are small – my classes have each been 1-4 students (including one week where no other students were at my level, so I got private one-on-ones with my teacher), and the curriculum is customized. The teachers adapt the topics covered and the materials used based on the needs of the specific students in the class, unlike other schools that follow a fixed teaching plan (e.g., colors day 1, telling time day 2, etc.). The school develops its own teaching materials, and we’ve found that the teachers are great at finding the right exercise to help with your confusion over este vs. esto vs. esta or correct use of direct object pronouns. As you might guess from our backgrounds, we’ve both been through quite a few classes and educational programs at top schools, and we’re both very impressed with the teaching style and talent of our teachers at Vamos.

Outside of the classroom, Vamos puts a lot of effort into offering additional activities to its students. These range from practical post-class “workshops” (e.g., how to recognize and prevent getting stuck with counterfeit bills, how to navigate the crazy BA bus system) to weekly “intercambio” language exchanges for practicing your blossoming Spanish with locals to advice and assistance on booking tourist activities and trips. One of the employees formerly led trips all over South America and is a great source of recommendations, and she’s more than happy to help you with as much of the booking/planning process as you want. The school has a strong community vibe, and we really look forward to seeing the staff as well as the other students each morning when we arrive.

While we’re clearly very satisfied with our choice, there are plenty of good options in Buenos Aires. Key things to think about when choosing your school:

Location: Morning rush hour sucks. Especially if this is your vacation. And especially if you haven’t been waking up to an alarm clock for a while – it’s a rough transition back to having a schedule. Figure out how you’re going to get to and from the school and make sure you’re actually going to do it.
Volume of students: There are pros and cons here. Fewer students generally means a more personalized experience. It also means it might be harder to get a class together that’s at your level (becomes more of a problem as you get to more advanced levels). We went with a smaller school, and it’s sometimes been a challenge for them to pair Ryan with compatible classmates.
General vibe: The schools vary a bit in terms of the type of environment and students they attract. Some are definitely geared more toward backpackers or those who want a 1-2 week basics class, while others draw an older student group or people living in Buenos Aires for longer. The vibe from the staff and the academic director are also good indicators of what a school is like, so pay attention to these.

All in, we think our 80/20 approach to finding a Spanish school was quite successful! I went from not knowing how to introduce myself to telling stories in the past tense (which anybody who’s studied Spanish before knows is way more painful than it sounds), and still more to come. Let the adventures in Spanish continue!!

Our first tango show (and lessons!)

Posted on March 21, 2010 by jen

To mark our one-week anniversary as porteños, we decided to get our first exposure to the sensual dance that started right here in Buenos Aires – tango. Our language school recommended Complejo Tango (which offers an evening of “lessons”, dinner and a show for ~US$60/person), so we got all dressed up and headed out across town to the theater. We were a bit surprised to arrive right on time for the lessons and find only 4 other people there. The room slowly filled up as the buses sent to pick up tourists from all the hotels in town arrived, and we started half an hour late (not bad for Latin America!). We quickly learned one basic step and then practiced while trying not to step on the toes of all the other tourists crammed into the tiny dance studio. While we’re hardly pros now, it was fun to get a taste of what dancing the tango might be like, and we’re hoping to try out real lessons once we get settled into a routine here.

We were highly skeptical of the food that would be served in a small theater prior to the show, but we were pleasantly surprised. As we’ve noted in previous posts, our food experience has been somewhat hit-or-miss so far. But this easily ranked in the top half of dinners we’ve had thus far- and the endless wine helped too! The show was entertaining – walked the audience through the evolution of tango over the last century, using different costumes for each period. The live band was a nice touch, and while we heard a bit too much from the lounge singer between dances, the dancers were incredible and solidified our resolve to learn to tango while we’re here.

Argentine tango involves dramatic costumes and a lot of leg

While this definitely had the potential to be a cheezy tourist trap, all in all it was a fun introduction to tango and a good evening out. Next, it’s off to the milongas!

Week 1 in Buenos Aires

Posted on March 19, 2010 by ryan

We’ve officially been Argentinian for a full week now! Soon, we won’t even remember how to speak english.

We’ve been bad about updating the blog, mainly because we’ve been mostly out exploring, and then the little time we do spend online has been prioritized for one or more of the following:

-Researching spanish school: We start on Monday at Vamos Spanish

-Looking for a longer term apartment: There are roughly a bazillion apartment rental companies and it is a bit overwhelming to sort through all of the options–I think we spent 8+ hours researching yesterday alone. We are going to visit our first couple of apartments this afternoon, so we’ll see…

-Trying to figure out where to eat: We had some good and some very bad luck with walking into random restaurants on the street. I think we don’t yet know how to recognize a place that sucks, so we’ve been reading more reviews lately.

–Using Google Translate: To prepare ourselves to go out and do things like drop of laundry: “Para lavar y sacar. debemos regresar manana a las 11?”

-Using our spanish learning software Fluenz: Expensive, but really good!

-Trying to figure out what futuristic Argentine technology makes this possible:

Anyway, we promise to post more regularly and do more than just bullet point summaries (especially once we have a more comfortable apartment), but for now here are some pics from our first week: Buenos Aires Week 1 pics

Ciao!

Quick catch-up on first few days in Buenos Aires

Posted on March 15, 2010 by ryan

We have been lax in posting over the last couple of days, and we don’t have much time now, but we thought we should do a quick summary of some highlights of our first couple of days here in Buenos Aires (with more details to come later):

-Our apartment is just ok, but it is in a cool neighborhood

-Jen found a cockroach in the bathroom; this is worrisome.

-There was a failed attempt by 3 hoodlums to steal Jen’s purse in the park yesterday–we will definitely write more about this as it was quite comical

-We went on a cool free walking tour and saw Retiro and Recoleta; we also learned that if you have private health insurance here (~$120/month) you get one free plastic surgery each year. Our guide pointed out all of the artificially enhanced locals along the tour.

-It seems that Argentinians walk very quickly as we frequently get passed on the street which didn’t happen back in SF–though, this could be because Jen is always gawking at a building

-We have had some very good food and some VERY bad food so far–walking into random places off the street has not gone well for us; we will seek out recommendations going forward

-The wine is good

-Tomorrow we start spanish school and have to be across town by 8:30am–this will be very hard seeing as though we have not yet woken up before noon.

-We don’t have to go to work tomorrow, do you 🙂

More to come, and pictures!

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