Warning: Buenos Aires apartment scam

Posted on November 5, 2010 by ryan

UPDATE 1/9/2013: To avoid any confusion, this article/warning is NOT about the rental company DiscoverBA.com. We were recently contacted by the owner there who told us that this post has a high Google rank for “DiscoverBA review” due to a few similar keywords. While we don’t have any experience with DiscoverBA, they seem like a legit company and the scam below is definitely not referring to them.

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A reader recently emailed us asking if we could help publicize the story of how he got scammed out of getting his deposit back when renting an apartment in Buenos Aires in an attempt to shut-down the scammer (which has been remarkably successful thus far–read on…) and to help other people avoid becoming victims. We hate scams (and in Argentina, there are MANY), so we were happy to oblige.

Everything is done in cash in Buenos Aires (because no one wants to pay taxes), the police are corrupt and crime is high so you have to be extremely, extremely careful no matter what you are doing–being taken for your deposit on a rental apartment is, unfortunately, incredibly common unless you go with one of the reputable companies (which may cost a bit more, but you are guaranteed a great place and you will get your deposit back, so in my opinion, well worth it). Check out our guide on how to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires for some tips/tricks to minimize your risk and some mini-reviews of several agencies that we worked with.

The scam

Below is a reprint of the story that was just sent to us:

My six-month stay in Buenos Aires ended on a bad note this past Tuesday when I was scammed out of the deposit for the apartment I had been renting for three months starting in August. The apartment owner’s name is Valeria de Santos and the unit in question is located in Recoleta, at Larrea 1393 at the corner of French, apartment #PB2. I found it on Craiglist and jumped at the chance to live in a nice area for a relative bargain, though in hindsight renting through an agency or through a referral may have been the smarter way to go.

I had told Valeria that I needed to check out at noon because a cab would be waiting to take me to the airport. She arrived late with her mother and inspected the apartment to make sure it was in good order (it was). Valeria said that my deposit was waiting for me at her mother’s office, which was supposedly just a few blocks away, off of Pueyrredon and Santa Fe. She asked if her mother could get in the cab with me and get dropped off by her office where she would retrieve the deposit and return it to me.

I had dealt directly with the mother before when I first occupied the apartment so I didn’t find her suggestion odd. But I now realize that I made a number of mistakes. First, I returned the keys to Valeria before getting my deposit back. Secondly, I let my guard down and didn’t think to accompany her mother to the “office” after we dropped her off at the corner, opting instead to wait for her in the cab with my luggage.

The mother disappeared down the street and never returned. I waited 45 minutes and called Valeria a dozen times before telling the driver that we needed to leave because I couldn’t miss my flight. I called her numerous times at the airport and e-mailed her with no response. I was finally able to reach her Wednesday, when she assured me that she would wire the funds to me via PayPal that same day. Well, it didn’t come through, and I’ve been calling and e-mailing her since with no luck. My messages to her have gotten angrier and angrier to the point where I threatened to hop on a plane the next day and come looking for her — which I would be crazy enough to do if I was confident I could track her down.

The strange thing is that Valeria and her mother were a pleasure to deal with during my three-month stay in the apartment, responding to my calls and e-mails and showing up to address any problems promptly. It’s bizarre that they would pull something like this off at the very end.

I’ll continue to call and e-mail and harass Valeria and her mother in any way I can until I get my money back, and perhaps I’ll find myself in Buenos Aires sooner than I think. But for now, I’d just like to defame her on every relevant forum I can find and bring awareness to what I went through. Hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes.

It’s really too bad that this happened, but I will say that to get out of Buenos Aires after 6 months and only be scammed out of $200 is actually pretty darn good. In our 6 months, we encountered taxi scams (fast meter), counterfeit money scams, tour guide pricing scams, and were almost taken for $400 on the deposit for our first 2 week apartment. Good times.

The entertaining part

The above story was actually posted on the local Buenos Aires expat forum. Within about 5 hours, there were 100+ responses by the expat community. Many of them decided to use some clever online detective skills to determine that this woman and her mother had been running scams on tourists in BA for years – not only via apartments, but also through a fake Spanish school, a fake tour guide business and many others. They also found her real name, address, phone number and other personal details (including where she has claimed to be an Oxford trained lawyer on Wikipedia among other places).

As the expats diligently uncovered more and more information about this woman, strangely enough all of the websites and references to her many ‘businesses’ started disappearing from the internet. Clearly many of the expats are software developers though and they were able to backup pretty much everything and rehost on alternate off-shore servers. The thread on the forum showing this whole thing unraveling is long, but extremely entertaining and worth taking a look at: http://baexpats.org/expat-life/11930-stay-away-apartment-rental.html

A summary of what was uncovered

One of the members on the expat forum put together a nice summary of many of the facts uncovered which I’ve reposted below. Note: this isn’t interesting reading, I’m just reposting it so that there is yet another website that has all of these keywords in hopes that any future potential victims do some googling before doing business with her.

So, in summary this thread is a warning about Florencia Marina Daud (aka Florencia Daud Othacehe). It is strongly advised that you avoid any kind of business dealings or financial transactions with her. If you do enter into financial dealings with her it is recommended that you proceed with extreme caution. She has disappeared with the deposits of several visitors to the city who entered into temporary rental agreements with her.

Florencia Daud
DNI: 26260151
CUIT: 272626015115 (click on the green arrow to see a picture from the website http://www.nic.ar/entidades.html)

She has gone under the names Valeria de Santos and Veronica and often uses the username flormarina on the internet.

Her mother has used a name similar to Maria Eugenia

She has had various businesses registered to her addresses:
Discover BA
Florencia Marina Daud (discoverba@hotmail.com)
+1.5411480527
Fax:
Av Pueyrredon 2261
Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1119
AR

D&A Daud & Asociados
Av. Pueyrredon 2261 2nd floor
BUENOS AIRES – ARGENTINA
tel/fax +54-11-4805-2742

Recoleta Spanish School
Pueyrredon 2261, 2nd floor
Entidad Registrante: Florencia Daud
País: Argentina
Actividad: Otra
Domicilio: Chenaut 1967 4 A
Ciudad/Localidad: Buenos Aires
Provincia: Buenos Aires
Código Postal: 1426
Teléfono: 4776 3188
Fax: 4776 3188

D&A Daud & Asociados Buenos Aires, Argentina
Address : Av. Chenaut 1967 4 A, Buenos Aires 1426, Argentina
Phone No. : +5411-4776-3188

According to the Colegio Público de Abogados de la Capital Federal, she’s licensed to practice law here in Capital. Click the green arrow for a picture from the website.

Other phone numbers she has used:
15-5346-4957
15-5259-1319

And email addresses:
sweetmarina2007@hotmail.com
valeriadesantos@hotmail.com

She has advertised her apartments on craigslist
She appears in wikipedia
She has an account on EchangeVacances.com (click for pictures)

and has had various personal and business web pages of her own most of which have been taken down since these accusations have appeared:
http://www.buenosairesguest.com/
http://florenciamarina.blogspot.com/
http://daudlegal.com/

If you have been a victim of a scam as a visitor you can contact the following authorities:

Defensoría de Turista, 4302 7816. Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1835 (Museo de Bellas Artes “Benito Quinquela Martín”) La Boca.
Mail: turista@defensoria.org.ar

Comisaría del turista
Av. Corrientes 436
0800 999 5000 / 4346 5748
mail: turista@policiafederal.gov.ar

If you have returned to your country and are unable to retrieve funds owed to you by identifiable persons as a last resort you can tell them you are going to contact AFIP (the revenue authorities) to have their tax records reviewed:
http://www.afip.gov.ar/contacto/
Centro de denuncias : 0800-999-2347

There is also another thread about the activities of Florencia Daud on TripAdvisor

In Summary

Be careful in Buenos Aires (and/or wherever you are traveling) and if something like this happens to you, let the online communities know about it – they may or may not be able to help you directly, but they can certainly help get the word out so that it’s harder for scammers like this to be successful.

Thanks again for the tip!

Kayak.com does more than you might think

Posted on August 2, 2010 by ryan

You may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks we added a Kayak.com flight search box to our sidebar (over on the right). You may have wondered why. “Why would they do this?” you might have said to yourself. You may be saying it to yourself even now. Fear not, I am here to answer that question for you.

We decided to become affiliate advertisers for Kayak.com for 3 reasons:

1) Travel is awesome. Everyone should do it more often.

2) Kayak.com is one of the very best tools out there for finding ways to travel cheaply (if anyone out there doesn’t already know about Kayak.com, it compares fares against virtually every airline and aggregator (e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and helps you find the very cheapest/fastest/best way to travel.

3) We don’t want to have to get real jobs anytime soon. Someday we’re hoping to make some money off of this blog, and if you access Kayak.com through us, we will! Wouldn’t that be great? To be sure, we won’t make much money, but empanadas are cheap (another reason why everyone should travel).

But wait, there’s more!!

I only recently learned about this feature and it blew my mind. It may blow your mind too. You should sit down.

Have you ever been sitting around thinking to yourself:

“I really need a vacation… I wonder where I should go?”

“I finally have a free weekend, maybe I can plan a trip!”

“I only have $300 to spend, I wonder if there is anywhere I could go for that much…”

Kayak.com can answer these questions very quickly for you. Check out this link: Kayak: Where can I go from San Francisco in Fall of 2010 for under $1200?

This feature allows you to tell it your origin city, your price range and your time of the year and it will tell you on average what it would cost you to go anywhere in the world within that price range at that time of year. If you want to, you can even include activities (e.g.,where can I go skiing from Chicago in Jan for <$500). Instead of skiing, you could also tell it beach or a temperature range or a few other things. Seriously, this is cool.

In my opinion, this feature is under-marketed… I had never heard of it before I randomly stumbled upon it. It’s extremely useful for preliminary trip planning to spur ideas when you know you have some time off at some point, but aren’t sure where to go AND also very useful for last minute travel when you suddenly have a few days and just want to get away.

Let’s review what we’ve learned

1) Kayak.com is awesome

2) Kayak.com is even awesomer than you may have thought

3) You don’t want Ryan and Jen to have to get jobs; you want them to eat more empanadas. To enable this goal, when planning or booking travel you should consider starting with the Kayak.com flight search box here on Consulting Rehab.

Word?

How to learn Spanish (Part 1)

Posted on July 10, 2010 by jen

When we arrived in Buenos Aires, Ryan knew a fair amount of Spanish from studying in high school and college but hadn’t spoken in ages, and I didn’t know more than what’s on a Mexican restaurant menu. Now, after ~3 months of class, we both speak decently and can get around just fine. Our conversations about politics and current news are a bit choppy sometimes, but we’re pretty excited to be able to have those conversations at all!

Through our quest to learn Spanish, we’ve tried a number of different resources, including:

Group/private classes
Fluenz (a computer program somewhat similar to Rosetta Stone)
Traditional and electronic dictionaries
Workbooks
Computerized flashcards
Lots of other stuff

In this post, we’ve covered our thoughts on classes and other interactive learning methods (stuff that’s most useful while you’re living in a Spanish-speaking country). In our next post on this topic, we’ll tell you what we think of a bunch of self-study resources that we’ve used.

GROUP CLASS

What it is: We’re not sure about other places, but in Buenos Aires, this generally means attending ~20 hours of class a week in a group of 4-7 students. Prices generally range $150-200 per week.

A class at Vamos Spanish in Buenos Aires

Pros: Lots of exposure to Spanish, relatively low cost per hour, opportunity to meet other students. Great way to learn grammatical structures and new vocab (particularly at more beginner/intermediate levels).

Cons: Can be lots of volatility in other students in the class (compatibility of learning style and level, weekly turnover of students), less time to practice speaking, not customized to your needs.

The verdict: We chose Vamos Spanish in Palermo as our school. We found that group classes were most effective at the beginner level, and it became more difficult to get as much out of classes at the more advanced levels. First, there are just a lot more beginners than advanced students, so you’re more likely to be in a class with compatible classmates who are learning the same things as you and have more or less the same speaking ability. At the more advanced levels, it’s more difficult to find compatible classmates, as the students have often studied different things and have different strengths – for example, one might be a very fluid speaker but mess up their subjunctive verb usage, while another speaks more or less correctly but lacks the fluidity and vocabulary of the other student. May not sound like a big deal, but this can be really frustrating for both students. Also, at the more advanced levels, typically what you need to work on is speaking, which is not what a group class is optimizing for (see notes on private lessons below).

A few words on class size: At first, the typical class max of 6-7 students sounded really small, but we soon realized that there’s a big difference between a class with 3-4 students and one with 6 or 7. We were lucky enough during our first few weeks of studying to be in very small classes (1-3 students). When our school unexpectedly tripled in size one week, we also got to experience classes with 6 students, and they felt completely different. In a larger class, the teacher is teaching the materials but can’t necessarily give individualized attention to make sure everybody understands. The larger classes focused more on doing exercises in small groups and less on talking – simple math: more people in the same amount of time means everybody gets to talk less. Friends at other schools have experienced the same – any more than ~5 students and it starts to feel more like a lecture and less like an interactive class.

PRIVATE LESSONS

What it is: One-on-one lessons with a private tutor. These can be arranged through Spanish school with one of the regular teachers (we’ve seen prices of ~$US25/hour) or through someone who only does private tutoring ($US10-15/hour generally). Private tutors may have training or not, while teachers at the Spanish schools generally have to have some sort of training to teach.

Pros: Customized, one-on-one attention, lots of practice speaking, don’t have to worry about whether other students are compatible with your skill level and learning style.

Cons: Generally fewer hours of exposure to Spanish for the same price (since privates are more expensive), no space-out time since you’re the only one in the class.

The verdict: We started supplementing our group classes with private tutoring after about a month and a half and found that this was a great way to (1) get practice speaking (which was our primary goal in studying Spanish) and (2) get focused help/practice on the specific things we were messing up. We felt that we needed more practice using the things we were learning in our group classes in order to be able to more quickly incorporate them into our speaking – something you can’t really do in a group class, since you’re sharing that time block with multiple other students who also want their chance to speak. And at the more advanced levels for the reasons mentioned above, a group class can become less effective. We both saw our speaking ability improve significantly by working one-on-one with a tutor and think we would shift the mix of our study time toward this method (and away from group classes) in the future.

LANGUAGE EXCHANGE

What it is: Meeting with native Spanish speakers who want to practice English (or your native language) and spending half the time talking in each language. These can be group events (our Spanish school hosted one each week; most groups charge small fee) or one-on-one (generally free).

Group language exchange, or intercambio

Pros: Opportunity to practice speaking and meet native speakers.

Cons: Language partners aren’t trained teachers so may not correct you or teach you “correct” Spanish. More notably with group exchanges, you can tend to have the same conversation over and over (where you’re from and why you wanted to learn Spanish, etc.).

The verdict: We had high hopes for this one but didn’t end up using it much. The group exchanges we tried had an imbalance of English vs. Spanish speakers, and we found that group chats were dominated by the most advanced speakers, so beginners/intermediates didn’t get to do much more than listen in. We didn’t try one-on-ones, partly because finding a language buddy seemed hard and we are lazy.

PART 1 SUMMARY

Overall, these are all useful methods to learn Spanish and the best way to take advantage of living in or visiting a Spanish-speaking country for an extended period of time. For us, the mix shifted over time – heavier on group classes in the beginning and more private lessons as we have become more advanced.

We’ll post again soon about the different tools we used for self-study – hope this is useful!

World Cup Game 6: #&%**##@ @@#$)!

Posted on July 3, 2010 by ryan

Germany is good

Game 3: Argentina 2, Greece 0

Posted on June 23, 2010 by ryan

We’re relatively new to this, but as far as we can tell, Argentina always wins. This is probably a good thing as it’s usually much better to hang out in crowded places with very passionate drunk people that are happy rather than angry. We watched this game (which was thankfully at 3:30pm rather than early in the morning) at a bar called Sugar in Palermo with a few friends. Sugar was a decent venue with a couple of big screens, but it was more of an international crowd which is a little less fun than hanging out with just the locals. If it’s nice out during the next game we’ll likely head over to San Martin Square where they have big screens setup outside and tons of people turnout to watch.

Anyway, Argentina vs. Greece…

I have to believe that there is some good comedy to be had regarding each of these countries’ ability to have massive economic crises… Greece thinks they’re all that for almost taking down the EU this year, but Argentina does that sort of thing more or less every decade whether they need it or not (hey, I tried). Not only is Argentina better at screwing up its economy, it turns out they are also much better at futbol.

Argentina_Greece_Worldcup_2010_stats image

I'm no expert, but seriously Greece... only 3 shots on goal?

It wasn’t a very exciting game until the last 20 minutes or so. Argentina appeared to only be half trying–likely because they had already qualified to advance to the next round and didn’t want anyone to get hurt in this game. Also, the 2 guys that have been scoring all of Argentina’s goals so far weren’t even in the lineup for this one. Presumably, they were just sitting this one out to conserve energy for the next round–that said, it’s become more and more apparent that the basic strategy is to get the ball to Messi who then runs through 6 or 7 defenders by himself and ricochets the ball into the net off one of his own players; so basically, the other guys just need to stand near the goal and he will score via them. With so many players on the field it seems like favoring one player so much is a suspect strategy, but it clearly seems to be working.

In spanish, this expression translates roughly to: "You guys... always trying to take the ball from me... so cute"

A theory…

Other than Messi being unstoppable, I think I know why Argentina was able to beat Greece so easily…

Exhibit A: Greek flag

Notice the shade of blue--much darker than the Argentina flag blue right?

Exhibit B: Argentina’s Away uniforms which they wore for this game vs. Greece

Look familiar?

Clearly, Argentina was able to fool the Greek team by wearing jerseys that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Argentina colors, but rather very closely resembled Greek colors. The Greek players likely had no idea why they had so many teammates on the field or where their opponents were–you can imagine their surprise when their teammates started scoring on them (this is why Argentina had to wait until near the end of the game to start scoring). This is similar to the kind of clever strategy that earned Maradona his nickname “the hand of god.” (<–for those unaware, this nickname is based on him using his hand to knock in a game winning 1986 World Cup quarter-final goal vs. England and then proudly telling the press how he managed to trick the referee into thinking it was his head by putting his hand really close to his face when he did it–the goal is one thing, bragging about it later is a whole new level)

What hand??

Highlights

If you missed the game, here is the highlight reel. Be sure to watch how Messi plows through the entire Greek team and then basically makes it impossible for Palermo not to score in the second goal (this sort of thing happens often)

Good luck Mexico, we’ll see you Sunday 🙂

p.s. for some perspective on just how seriously this sport is taken here in Argentina, check out this great blog post: http://www.vamospanish.com/blog/2010/06/22/when-game-is-on-buenos-aires-is/

Game 2: Argentina 4, Korea 1

Posted on June 21, 2010 by ryan

Game 2 was pretty sweet. It was at 8:30am on a Thursday, but that didn’t stop us from getting a gang together (including our spanish classes and teachers!) to watch it at a packed cafe. We decided to stay sober this time given how early it was, but suffice to say, not everyone in the cafe made the same choice and when they started scoring a lot towards the end, it got pretty entertaining.

Jen got us jerseys!

Argentina was one of the first teams to get 6 points which pretty much guarantees them a berth to the round of 16. We don’t really know what we’re watching, but when we watch Argentina, they seem more coordinated and strategic than many of the other games we’ve watched… As I said though, we don’t really know what we’re watching. We do like the blue and white jerseys though! It’s also fun to watch the England games because it’s entertaining to hear the Argentina commenter repeatedly yell “rooney, rooooney… ROOOOONEY!!!”

This is Rooney, his name sounds funny in spanish, especially when you yell it over and over again excitedly; try it

It’s almost as entertaining to watch Argentina’s coach Maradona as it is to watch the game itself.

"The hand of god" -- Seriously, this guy is a piece of work

If you don’t know much about Maradona, you should read about him here on wikipedia, he’s got quite a history…

It's even more entertaining to picture him when he was younger... yes, that hairstyle is still popular here

One of our favorite players to watch is Messi. He’s one of Argentina’s best and apparently one of the best in the entire tournament. While we appreciate how good he is at the game, we are even more impressed by the fact that he has made it through the first 2 games without appearing to even break a sweat. All of the other players walk around in between play looking like extreme athletes, Messi looks like he’s lounging around on the beach, then he kicks everyone’s ass.

No sweat, literally

It’s hard not to become fans given all of the energy around this down here. The world pretty much stops when Argentina plays… My spanish teacher said that she would have to come to school early since the buses would likely stop running during the game (despite being during rush hour). We love it, and can’t wait for the next game on Tuesday–even better, it’s in the afternoon (aka there will be beer)!

Viva Argentina!!

The 5 major food groups of Argentina

Posted on June 8, 2010 by jen

In the US, we have a food pyramid with recommendations on what we should eat; it looks something like this:

5 basic food groups (US version)

In Argentina, they have a similar system, though it looks a little bit different. From what we can tell, this is a relatively accurate depiction:

Our best stab at the Argentine food pyramid

People rave about the food in Argentina, especially the beef, and we agree. We absolutely loved the food when we first got here, but after 3 months, it’s gotten a little repetitive. Pretty much every day when we’re trying to decide what to eat, it comes down to a few options, which we have categorized into the 5 major food groups of Argentina:

Carne. This one’s obvious (not to mention one of the reasons we came here). The steaks are spectacular, and we go out for a steak dinner at least once a week. More to come on some of our favorite spots to practice carnivourism, but we’ve already told you about our neighborhood gem El Estrebe.
Pizza. As close to 60% of Argentina’s population is of Italian descent, pizza is big here. You can find a pizza place on nearly any block in the city. Our favorite pizza right now is either pepperoni or ham, covered with lots of cheese, fresh tomato slices and roasted red peppers. It looks something like this . . .
Puts Domino's to shame

And tastes amazing. One odd thing that we’ve noticed here is that they almost always finish your pizza off with a couple of olives (usually green, but we got some black ones last time). It’s not necessarily listed as an ingredient in the pizza, but there it is nonetheless. Go figure.
Pasta. Again, due to the Italian heritage, pasta is big here, especially fresh, stuffed pastas (e.g., ravioli, cannoli) – seems that they look down on dried pastas a bit, and actually list them separately on the menu. Our experience has been a bit hit-or-miss but generally good overall. If anything, the pastas can be a bit softer (think squishy, overcooked) that we’re used to back home. And there’s something going on with the olive oil here. Not sure exactly what, but it tastes (and smells) slightly chemical-y. We always just cross our fingers that the pasta we ordered is light on the oil.
Fresh homemade sorrentinos stuffed with ham and cheese and covered in fresh bolognese
Empanadas. Best invention ever. Although the term isn’t the most appetizing, I think “meat pie” is actually the most accurate description. It’s a stuffed bread in a half-circle shape stuffed with a filling – beef or chicken are most common, but there are lots of varieties. As mentioned in other posts, this has become a staple meal for us, eaten at least once or twice a week. And they’re cheap – 40 pesos (~$10) buys a dozen that lasts for two meals. Not bad.
Different shapes for different flavors
Dulces. Dessert is its own food group in Argentina. We read somewhere early on in our time here that Argentines lead the world in their consumption of meat (obviously) and sweets. Sweets are available everywhere, and at all times of day – sweetened mini-crossaints for breakfast, dessert is included in most set lunches, more bakeries per capita than we’ve ever seen. They even have a special meal that’s basically just an opportunity to eat more dessert: merienda is the meal in Argentine eaten between lunch and dinner, most like an afternoon snack in the US. Understandable, since dinner is so late (10pm is common). The most popular things to eat for merienda are a coffee and a torta (cake) or other dulce. We’ll be writing more soon on our favorite dulces, but for now the most important thing to mention is dulce de leche. Made basically just from milk and sugar, it’s a thick caramel that’s eaten in every way you can imagine – stuffed between two cookies and covered in chocolate (alfahores), on top of flan or ice cream (helado), or on its own by the spoonful.
Homemade flan served with a side of dulce de leche - perfect finish to a light afternoon lunch!

Basically, just about anything you could eat in Argentina will fall into one of the above categories. And the interesting thing is that almost every restaurant you visit will offer all 5 food groups! Even though you’re at what seems to be a pizza place, they probably still have steak on the menu. And the empanada place may offer pasta. But, that doesn’t mean you should order it. The key is learning what to order in each type of restaurant, which we’ve learned through several strategic ordering errors. Just because it’s on the menu doesn’t mean that they do it well, and it’s critical to learn quickly what to order (and what not to order).

Another thing we learned right away: Argentines don’t like spice (to the extent that you have to specifically ask for black pepper in most restaurants), which can lead to a lot of pretty bland food. But all in all, we think we’re pretty lucky with the food options here. We’ll continue our diligence and provide additional detail on each of the 5 food groups defined above, as well as our favorite restaurant picks in each category. But now, we’re off to dinner!

Our trip to the Northwest of Argentina (the NOA) in summary

Posted on June 3, 2010 by ryan

In case you haven’t caught every post over the last couple of weeks, I wanted to put a quick summary of all of the posts related to our one-week trip to the Northwest of Argentina. As a reminder, we went to Salta, Cafayate, (through the the valle de Calchaquies) and then up north to the province of Jujuy, including the city of Jujuy, Purmamarca, Tilcara, Los Salinas Grandes (the salt flats) and the Quebrada de Humahuaca.

All in all, we really enjoyed the trip and it provided a great change of pace from the buzz of daily life in Buenos Aires. That said, we definitely encountered our share of issues on this trip, but that’s just how travelling works sometimes and you can’t let it ruin your trip. Anyway, here are the relevant posts:

1) Pre-trip planning: Some thoughts on trip planning for our second vacation-from-vacation before we left

2) The FlechaBus trip to Salta in Cama-suite: A humorous review of our very entertaining and rather uncomfortable 20 hour bus-ride to Salta on FlechaBus in their Cama-suite class of service.

3) A day in Cafayate: Photos and descriptions of a great day we had in Cafayate. If by any chance, you’re working long hours in a job you don’t love, please consider that days like this are a very viable, affordable and easy to setup alternative 🙂

4) Bad Experience with Local Guide in Salta: A copy of the review we wrote on Trip Advisor of our very unpleasant and money-wasting experience with a highly recommended private guide in Salta named Angie.

5) Trip Report on Salta and Northwest Argetina: A thorough and step by step review with photos of everything we saw and did while we were there along with our thoughts. If you only read one of these, read this one.

6) Review: Patios de Cafayate hotel: Our review of our (almost) great Starwood hotel in Cafayate

7) Photo gallery from the province of Salta: Including Salta city, Cafayate, Valle de Cachaquis, some wineries in Cafayate and a Goat Farm!

8 ) Photo gallery from the province of Jujuy: Including Purmarmarca, Los Salinas Grandes, Tilcara, Quebrada de Humahuaca and more

Our quick summary: Fantastic place to visit to see a different and very beautiful part of Argentina. That said, it didn’t blow us away–while we’d definitely recommend it if you’re in the area, it wouldn’t be the first place we’d recommend. We haven’t been to Bariloche or Mendoza yet, but we’d definitely say that Iguazu Falls is far more spectacular on an international scale (though a very, very different kind of experience).

Enjoy!

This vineyard surrounded our hotel, not bad...

Our 10 favorite things about our life in Buenos Aires right now

Posted on May 30, 2010 by jen

A quick reflection about our 10 favorite things about our life in Buenos Aires right now (in no particular order):

Dogs: We’ve told you about this before – they’re everywhere. It’s a little strange that they don’t seem to have the slightest interest in talking to us or being pet by us, but just seeing them makes us happy.
Empanadas: This is one of our greatest discoveries here. At first, we’d stop into one of the dozen empanada shops in our neighborhood and wait while they got our order ready. Now, we’ve evolved to become professional empanada-orderers, calling in our order for delivery (in Spanish – go us!!) and having them delivered to our front door 30 minutes later. It’s become one of our favorite (and cheapest) meals – we eat this for dinner at least 2x week.
Learning Spanish: When we came, Ryan hadn’t spoken his high school Spanish in years, and the only Spanish Jen knew was from menus in Mexican restaurants (and they don’t really even have Mexican food here). We’re not exactly fluent now, but we’ve come along way (reference the note about ordering in Spanish above . . . seriously, we’re really proud of that one, and no, it doesn’t matter that we had to ask for a script from our Spanish teachers). Sitting in a cafe and reading the local newspaper this morning was gratifying. We didn’t understand everything, but being able to understand anything at all felt like quite an achievement. Then we went to a Spanish movie in the afternoon . . . and were promptly reminded that we still have a long way to go!
Walking places: Buenos Aires is a beautiful city with amazing architecture and a plethora of parks. We love not only being able to walk to our school and most other places we go, but also just going for walks in general with no particular destination. Especially now as it’s turning to fall, the air is crisp and clean and it’s invigorating to get out and walk around this beautiful city.
Carne: The steak here is unbelievable, unbelievably cheap and available everywhere. When is the last time you paid $12 for the best steak you’ve every had? We ate red meat maybe once a month in the US; we eat it at least once a day here. Yum.
Vino: It’s good, it’s cheap and if you know us, you know we like to drink it. Looking forward to getting out to Mendoza (the main wine region) sometime soon . . .
Being able to take a half-empty bottle of wine home from restaurants: This is the best rule ever. Apparently, it’s tacky to ask for your leftover food to go, but if you ask for your leftover wine, they’ll whisk it away, wrap it up for you and off you go. Too bad it’s illegal to take an open container in the US . . .
Argentine culture of appreciation for the good things in life: You may have noticed that a lot of our favorite things involve food and drink – turns out that’s something the locals here really value too. On top of that, they value beauty (made clear in the architecture, the many parks, and of course the well-groomed dogs), family and relationships – witness the closing of shops for the afternoon siesta and the fact that you can’t get coffee to-go. The culture here seems to have a better set of life priorities than in the US, and despite the crazy ups and downs they’ve lived through over the last century (govt, economy, etc.), the Argentines set a great example of how to appreciate all the wonderful things in life.
The people: We don’t know a lot of them yet, but those that we do know are incredibly gracious and welcoming. We can’t wait until we can speak intelligently enough that they’ll actually want to talk to us too!
Having time to spend with each other: Cheezy, we know. But hey, we’re newlyweds, and it’s wonderful to be able to have so much time to do nothing other than just enjoy life together. It’s pretty amazing that after essentially 24-hours a day for 3 months straight, with virtually no other friends to spend time with (note #9 above), we still enjoy spending each day together.

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.

Consulting Rehab

The first step is admitting you have a problem… (then take a break and travel!)

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