Game 2: Argentina 4, Korea 1

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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.

Argentina World Cup Jerseys Image

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!!!”

Rooney Image

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.

Maradona Image

"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…

Young Maradona Image

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.

Messi image

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!!

World Cup game 1 – gano Argentina!!

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The month-long World Cup in South Africa started last week, and so begins the madness.  The country is legendary for its passion for football (sorry, we’re training ourselves not to say “soccer” while we’re here), and it’s easily spotted in the swarms of people walking around in their team jerseys and the talk about the football games overheard in every shop and restaurant (yes, we can actually understand!!).

For the big kickoff game Saturday morning, we called ahead and booked a table at Buller Brewery in Recoleta, which has a huge screen covering the back wall of the restaurant.  And we’re thankful we did – when we arrived just as the game started, the place was packed, and our reservation meant we didn’t have to stand out in the rain and wait.  Everybody in the bar was decked out in team regalia, and we vowed to have our own jerseys in time for the next game.  The restaurant had a minimum purchase we had to meet, so this is what we had for breakfast:

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Pints and onion rings - breakfast of champions!

We cheered with friends as Argentina won their first game (1-0 vs. Nigeria), and we’re psyched to be part of the excitement over the coming month.  Apparently the US played England on Saturday too.  Nobody cared.

Next game is Thursday morning at 8:30 – think we’ll skip the brewery this time around . . . especially if we hope to make it to school after the game!!

Argentina World Cup game 1 image

We were just about the only table in the bar not wearing blue and white - won't make that mistake again

New category system in place

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Hey all, you may have noticed that we overhauled our categories in hopes of making them more useful and a better reflection of what is on the site.  Hope it is helpful, please let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions for improvement!

Thanks!

Definitely NOT one of the 5 major food groups

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Ever had tripe stew? No? Oh, how I wish I could say the same. Suffering from a cold last week, a hot bowl of stew sounded good for lunch, so after class we headed to Cumana, a legendary Buenos Aires restaurant known for its empanadas and stews.

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Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

Their menu lists ~10 different homemade stews. We had tried 2 before and asked our server which others she recommended, and her top suggestion was the mondongo. Now, my Spanish is not great, but I’m pretty sure she said it contained tomatoes, onion, and a part of the cow (while gesturing toward her back). We had been to Cumana before and told our waitress that we didn’t like “organs” (seemed like the easiest word to use to get our point across), and she assured us that none of their dishes contained organs, quickly putting us at ease. So this time I didn’t think twice and went for the mondongo suggested by our server.  Bad idea.

My stew showed up after our fabulous empanada appetizers, and I quickly noticed a substance floating on top with texture not often found in food. It was smooth on one side, and wrinkled and lumpy on the other – think cauliflower. I dodged this and instead tested the waters with a bite of broth and vegetables. It wasn’t terrible, but it seemed to have a funny taste that I didn’t particularly like, so after a few more cautious bites, I left it relatively untouched.

Guiso de mondongo image

Looked like a relatively innocent stew . . . with certain unidentifiable ingredients

When we got home, I decided to google “mondongo” to see what it was – turns out it’s a traditional Argentine tripe stew. Mm, mm, cow stomach – just what I was hoping for to help get rid of my cold.  Apparently that’s not considered an organ here?  Thought we’d been relatively clear when we said we didn’t like organs in our food – guess next time we’ll have to say “mondongo” as well, along with all the other non-meat parts that us Americans shy away from. Lesson learned.  Now if only I could find Campbell’s chicken noodle soup here . . .

Campbell's chicken noodle soup image

Sometimes you really need some "mm, mm, good"... But if you're in Argentina, there is NO SOUP FOR YOU! Only tripe!

The 5 major food groups of Argentina

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

5 food groups image

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:

Argentine food pyramid image

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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 . . .
    Argentine pizza image

    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.

  3. 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.

    Argentine sorrentinos image

    Fresh homemade sorrentinos stuffed with ham and cheese and covered in fresh bolognese

  4. 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.

    Buenos Aires empanadas image

    Different shapes for different flavors

  5. 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.

    Flan with dulce de leche image

    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!

Kayaking in Tigre on the Parana Delta with El Dorado Kayak

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This post is WAY overdue. Thank you for the reminders!

Almost 2 months ago we went on a day trip to the Tigre Delta to go Kayaking. Our spanish school (Vamos!) recommended a tour company to us called El Dorado Kayak. A day of kayaking outside of the city sounded great, so we signed up for a Sunday. We’ve been here in Argentina for just about 3 months in total now and I would have to say that the day we spent in Tigre with these guys probably ranks as one of the best days we’ve had, and El Dorado Kayak is by far the best tour company we’ve worked with.   I wrote a review about them on Trip Advisor here awhile ago, but figured it was about time I wrote something a little bit more thorough. So, here goes…

What is Tigre (some context)?

Tigre is a town just outside of Buenos Aires that is situated right on the edge of the Parana Delta. The Parana Delta is a massive delta (5400+ sq. miles) with tons of islands, many of which have vacation homes or B&Bs/hotels which are very popular place to spend a nice day outside of the city, and many others as you get further out which are pure wilderness.

Aerial_view_of_the_Lower_Paraná_Delta Image

An Aerial view of part of the delta

You can get to the town by train from Retiro station in just under an hour–and it’s a local train that stops frequently, so it’s really not very far away. The train costs ~$AR2 per person, which is about US 50 cents. Not bad.

Tigre_delta_map image

Not that far...

Our adventure

We were told to meet one of the guides in the Tigre station at 9:30am as they are based in Tigre, which meant that we had to be on the 8:30am train from Retiro, which meant that we had to get up at like 7:30am. Did I mention it was Sunday?? This was a rough start, but we made it. Then, we met Juan in the Tigre station next to the big map of the delta on the wall, which is pretty hard to miss.

Tigre_Delta_Map_In_Train_Station Image

See, pretty hard to miss

It also helped that Juan was the only guy walking around carrying a kayaking paddle. We weren’t really sure what to expect from him as you never really know what you’re getting into with local guides here, but we were immediately very impressed. His english is basically fluent and he’s quite a dynamic guy–aside from running kayaking trips, he is also in the middle of finishing an advanced degree in anthropology with a focus on Andean pan-pipe music (if I remember correctly) and teaches English.  Additionally, he is widely traveled outside of Argentina and even lived in Europe for a couple of years which gives him a much broader perspective than most.

As we followed him out of the train station, he told us that he had invited along one of his english students for the day so that he could be more exposed to english. Sounded great to us! Ignacio was ~13 years old and a nice addition to the trip. We followed Juan to the ferry station where he bought us tickets and then we got onto a ferry.

Tigre_Delta_Argentina_Ferry image

Lots of ferries leave from here all day--no roads, only boats

He explained to us how big the Delta is and showed us on a map how far out we were going. I don’t think we believed him about how far we were going until we had been on the ferry for an hour and still weren’t at our destination–and the ferry goes pretty fast 🙂 Really cool scenery along the way though–lots of beautiful houses and people having big BBQs and enjoying the day. Very cool “this is where the locals go on weekends” sort of vibe.

Tigre house image

Lots like this, all with their own docks

It was a little over an hour on the ferry before we were dropped off at a fairly non-descript dock and walked a bit futher to the base camp of El Dorado Kayak:

El Dorado Kayak house Tigre Image

Home base with plenty of kayaks

Their house was literally the last one on the very edge of civilization. This was great, because it meant that we’d get to kayak away from all of the ferrys and other big boats that leave big wakes and get to see some real nature.

When we arrived at the house, we met Juan’s business partner Chapa. Chapa also spoke great english and was incredibly welcoming. He had kayaked out earlier so that he could have lunch ready for us when we arrived. The 5 of us sat down and had some delicious cheese sandwiches and Mate for a bit, then got ready to hit the river–very easy to leave stuff in their house while you’re on the river, so don’t worry about bringing stuff with you, it will be safe and you won’t have to take it in the kayak with you and get it wet.

El dorado kayak dock tigre image

This was their dock, and that dog is one of the only dogs that has been willing to play with Jen in all of Argentina

We got our brief onshore paddling lesson and then off we went. Chapa stayed behind to begin preparations for the massive Asado (aka huge BBQ with several courses of meat) that we would have when we returned. We took 2 tandem Kayaks, me and Jen in one and Juan and Ignacio in the other and followed a route that took us way, way out there–there were points where the water was almost too shallow even just for our kayaks, so definitely no other boats; other parts were more populated so we got to see lots of beautiful houses as well. It was beautiful, and it didn’t hurt that the weather was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny all day.

Tigre el Dorado Kayak trip image

Ah, pure nature

Tigre delta el Dorado Kayak trip image

...And some civilization as well

Juan set a great tone for the trip. It didn’t feel like we were tourists on a guided trip. He clearly knew an enormous amount about the area and shared a lot with us, but it felt more like we were just out kayaking with a friend and sort of hanging out, chatting about whatever came up. We kayaked for about 3.5 hours, which to be honest was probably an hour more than we needed… we were very tired when we finally got back to the house (and quite sore for the next several days). Along the way, Juan mentioned that his fiance and a friend of hers were going to join us for the Asado; we were excited to meet them (and have meat with them).

Tigre kayak trip image

In case you were wondering, this is harder than it looks--especially after 3 hours

We got back probably around 3:30ish and Chapa had outdone himself on the grill. We met Juan’s fiance and her friend, who were also finishing their theses in Anthropology and spoke near perfect english, and sat down to wine, soft drinks, home made chimichurri and criolla sauce, bread, salad and potatoes as we eagerly awaited each meat course that Chapa brought over to us. It started with Choripan which is one of our very favorite things–think of a spanish type Chorizo cut in half and put in bread. It’s awesome. That was the appetizer, then it was followed by 3 courses of different cuts of steak all of which were fantastic. We clapped for the chef more than once.

El Dorado kayak grill Tigre image

This was the grill!

We sat, talked and ate for almost 3 hours and had a wonderful time. Again, the coolest part was that it didn’t feel at all like a tourist thing, it felt like we had been lucky enough to be invited out with some locals to hang out at their house in Tigre for a Sunday. We talked about Argentine customs and food rituals, which the anthropologists knew quite a bit about–e.g., the traditions around drinking Mate and the traditions around Asados–discussed local politics, compared to the US and where ever else the conversation took us. As anthropologists (and just genuinely cool people), they had some fascinating things to say.

We caught the last ferry back to Tigre at 6pm which got us back to the town at ~7:15pm or so. Then we fought our way through the massive crowd (it was a beautiful day, so the place was PACKED) to buy return train tickets and finally made it back to Retiro at ~9pm followed by home at ~9:15pm where we promptly collapsed. At 12+ hours, including 3.5 hours of paddling, this was a full day indeed.

Costs/logistics

What did we pay for such a full day? Not much. To be honest, we don’t remember exactly… it was either AR$250 or AR$300 per person including everything (US$65-75 each). Quite a deal for a 12 hour day like that, especially when you factor in all of the food.  To set it up, you just need to email them and make a reservation (just check their website for contact info)–also, you should double check pricing, as it likely varies by season.  Logistically, all you have to do is get yourself to the Tigre train station which is very easy.  Trains leave Retiro station every 30 minutes or so 7 days a week.

Summary

As I said in the beginning, this is one of the best days we’ve had down here. Tigre is a great place to see (especially on a nice day) and I can’t recommend these guys enough. A lot of people go out to Tigre for the day and just ride around on the ferry; I think that’s an ok trip, but you see so much more if you do something like this. And, by the way, they’re quite happy to customize the kayaking portion if you want something that won’t leave you sore for several days 🙂

Highly, highly recommended.

A few more photos (and some repeats) in our image gallery here:  Tigre Image gallery


Where is this blog going anyway?

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As this blog has evolved, we’ve gone back and forth a little bit over the extent to which we want it to be about:

1) keeping in touch with friends/family and letting people know what we’re up to
and
2) travel related posts with the kind of information we would have loved to have known in advance

Initially, the entire purpose was just to keep in touch and create a record for ourselves so we can someday look back and have an online scrapbook of sorts. Along the way though, we wrote a few posts that turned out to be quite useful (or so we’re told) to people traveling to Buenos Aires.  In case you don’t believe us, here are some of the posts that we’ve gotten positive feedback (and traffic) on from places like Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet and more:

How to Rent an Apartment in Buenos Aires

How to Find a Spanish School in Buenos Aires

Dear Purse Snatchers,

Review:  FlechaBus to Salta in Cama-Suite

Dear Aerolineas Argentina

We wrote these and a few others somewhat out of frustration (and for entertainment purposes) initially after going through a difficult experience here that we struggled with (e.g., trying to find an apartment, almost getting robbed, etc.), but as we got feedback about them we realized that honest writing like this about real topics here is genuinely useful to folks planning trips–and we certainly would have been far better off had we read posts like these BEFORE we experienced the real deal.  So much of the “info” out there on traveling topics is actually written by people that are just trying to promote their own tourism business (and often they don’t tell you that).  We love the idea of being able to be helpful to people and we figure it’s also actually a pretty good way to let our friends/family know what we’re up to, so… rather than choosing between staying in touch or being helpful, we’ve decided to choose both!

We brainstormed a bit today and here are a few of the topics that we are contemplating (no commitments just yet!):

  • Guide to our favorite restaurants
  • Our favorite Malbecs
  • Scams to look out for
  • BA Neighborhoods
  • Off the beaten path stuff to do
  • Several others that will have to be a surprise

Any feedback??  Any other topic suggestions?? if so, please leave them in the comments!

p.s. to summarize this post:  we are going to keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing 🙂

Quick poll about our favorite street sign in Buenos Aires

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This is a street sign that you will see all over Buenos Aires:

Buenos Aires Street Sign Image

hmmm...

Literally, these signs are all over, there is also another version where the person is wearing a skirt. While we now know what this sign actually means, we thought it would be more fun to ask you what you think it means (or should mean!). Write in votes are accepted:

[polldaddy poll=3296989]