Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 2: Drink)

Posted on January 23, 2011 by ryan

2 cities enter. One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question: If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Last week we covered the food category and while Santiago had a strong showing and was far and away the winner on diversity of food options, we declared Buenos Aires the winner for the Food category overall – they may have limited menu options, but damn do they do them well. Check out the full review of Buenos Aires vs. Santiago food.

We’re ready to move on. Today’s category is…

2. Drink

This category is almost as important as food and despite bottles and bottles of intensive research, it is very difficult to declare a winner. Let’s start with wine.

Category 1) Wine: Winner – Buenos Aires/Argentina (though these are 2 of the best countries in the world to drink wine)

This is not really a Santiago vs. Buenos Aires thing, but rather a Chile vs. Argentina thing. Both Argentina and Chile are deservedly proud of their wine traditions and more and more, they are gaining attention internationally for the quality of the wines they produce. Both are pretty damn good and we had a rather fantastic (though for some reason, difficult to remember) time researching this category 🙂 By the way, if you are in Buenos Aires and like wine, you should do a wine tasting with Anuva – check out our original review on them for details: Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Argentine wine tasting research with Anuva image

We like research

In both countries, most wine is grown right along the Andes with the largest regions being almost directly across the mountains from one another (Mendoza, Argentina and the many regions surrounding Santiago). After visiting wineries in both of these regions and doing some additional research (Jen had to write a report for Spanish class on something…), we learned that while the regions are quite close geographically, being east vs. west of the mountains actually leads to some pretty significant differences in grape growing conditions – one of the largest differences being that on the Argentina side, the climate is quite a bit drier. This and other differences lead to different types of grapes being better suited to one side vs. the other. It’s why Argentina dominates global Malbec productions and is one of the only regions in the world to produces Torrontes and why Chile tends to export a broader array of both red and white varietals including the Carmenere which is largely exclusive to Chile. Before we get into our sub-sub-category ratings, let’s start with some context on both regions.

Context

Argentine Wine Industry:

Argentina is currently the world’s 5th largest wine producer. The vast majority of the wine produced in Argentina stays in Argentina – currently only somewhere between 20% and 30% is exported. Up until the 1970s, Argentina produced more wine than pretty much any other country in the world. They were apparently producing 22 tons per acre whereas most quality wine regions in France and California at the time were only producing ~2-5 tons per acre. How did they do it? Three words:

1) Super

2) low

3) quality

Everyone used to have a big jug that they would go fill up every couple of days in the middle of town at a big wine keg type thing. It was called “vino de mesa,” or “table wine.” Back then, Argentines were drinking more wine per capita than any other country in the world (seriously, they were drinking something like 24 gallons/year/person on average vs. less than 1 gallon/person in countries like the US and UK), but virtually none of it was exported because, you know, it sucked.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that international wine experts started taking a closer look at Argentina. After seeing the soil conditions, the lack of humidity, the lack of pests and the altitude, there began to be a lot of talk about the incredible potential Argentina had to produce top quality premium wines. Slowly over the last couple of decades more and more of the industry has changed their practices away from mass produced low quality table wine to export-ready premium wine. This has been largely driven by foreign investment. When we were in Mendoza, we were told that back in 2002-2003 after the most recent Argentine economic collapse, there was an average of something like 3 new wineries opening every day as foreigners took advantage of low prices and saw an opportunity to make great wine. This process still has a long way to go as they still only export a small fraction of the wine produced, but I think we can expect to see more and more Argentine wines in the international market in the years to come. It is also worth noting, that the days of jug-wine are for the most part gone in Argentina and now even most of the wine produced for domestic consumption is quite high quality.

That said, we did experience some pretty bad jug wine up in Salta

Chilean Wine Industry:

Chile produces only a little more than half of the total wine that Argentina does and drinks only a small fraction of the wine that they produce; they export the rest. In fact, they export 70+% of the wine that they produce which, despite the relatively small size and population of the country, makes them the 5th largest wine exporting country in the world (under France, Italy and Australia – Argentina is #8 at about 63% of the export volume of Chile). It wasn’t always this way. Similar to Argentina, the wine industry in Chile largely produced low quality wines for domestic consumption up until the 1980s. Once they solved some political and economic issues, they recognized that they had the potential to turn wine into a big business, and they did. Starting back in the 80s, they began using modern wine techniques from around the world and geared up their wineries to start producing great quality wines designed primarily for export. They rapidly climbed the export rankings and continue to be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

You may have seen our earlier post on our visit to the Concha y Toro winery in Santiago – it’s the largest winery in Latin America and the 8th largest in the world.

You may recognize these labels... they are sold all over the world

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’m not sure really. The important thing to remember is this… Chile is big in the business of exporting wine and Argentina is big on the tradition of making and drinking wine. They both make great wine, but this context leads to some different outcomes.

Enough information, onto our totally subjective opinions…

Sub-category 1) White wine – Winner: Chile (by a lot)

Argentina: Our experience was that Argentina focuses far more on red wine, and while we did find one Chardonnay that we liked, the vast majority of the whites that we tried there we thought were terrible. Obviously this is subjective, but I’ve yet to hear anyone rave about a white Argentine wine nor have I ever seen one for sale in the US – if you have a different opinion, please let us know. There is an exception to this… Northwestern Argentina is quite proud of their own unique white varietal known as Torrontes. Many people talk it up as being a fantastic alternative to the more traditional varietals and the Argentines from the region (Salta) beam with pride whenever it is discussed. We wanted to like Torrontes. We really did. Sadly, we could not. After tasting several versions of it at a few of the wineries in Cafayate, the best way we can describe it is that it smells like very sweet dessert wine, yet somehow tastes like water. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not good.

Chile: Chile has fantastic white wines. Virtually every white that we tried there we thought was excellent and if you are ever staring at the 100s of bottles of wine in a liquor store wondering what Chardonnay to buy, your odds of picking a good one are pretty good if you grab pretty much anything from Chile.

Sub-category 2) Red wine – Winner: Too close to call

This is too close to call. They both have fantastic red wines. Some of the Malbecs from Argentina are absolutely amazing (others taste like kool-aid) and Chile has some fantastic big Cabs, Syrahs and others. We are going to take a pass on this one. Suffice to say, you can acquire fantastic red wine in either country.

This is just a random yet classy picture of wine glasses that I thought fit well here

The difference is in how much you have to pay for it, which leads us to the next category…

Sub-category 3) Value for $ – Winner: Argentina

Value for the money is a pretty important dimension in determining what wine you’ll actually be able to try wherever you go and a big part of the reason why I provided so much context on the histories of the wine industries in each country up front.

Chile: Prices in general are a bit higher in Chile than Argentina for pretty much everything at the moment (though, with ~30% inflation per year, Argentina is rapidly catching up – until the next economic crisis). The difference in wine prices is remarkable. The reason for this is that Chilean wine is for the most part produced for export and priced at export pricing levels – we often saw the same bottles of Chilean wine that we’d bought here in the US for sale in Chile at the same or higher prices. It’s not that it’s super expensive, it’s just that it’s internationally priced. Argentina is different.

Argentina: Argentina exports only a small fraction of their wine and that wine is often labels that aren’t even sold domestically, so when you go to buy wine in Argentina, you are confronted with prices that were designed entirely for the local, relatively low-income, wine-loving market. The vast majority of the wines in any store are priced at AR$15-30 which is US$3-7. The staple wine that we drank all the time in Buenos Aires literally cost ~US$4/bottle. That wine was awesome, and a bottle of that quality would easily cost $15-20 in the US (or Chile for that matter). The value got even better if you were willing to spend a little bit more… we took back with us a few extremely expensive (on Argentine standards) bottles of wine that are easily some of the best wine we’ve ever had (and when we were consultants, people used to give us some pretty fancy wine from time to time!) – these super expensive bottles cost ~US$20, I’d put them in the ~US$100 range for something of similar quality here in the US. Another great thing is that it’s easy to experiment with different high-end bottles in restaurants as the mark-up tended to be only 10-20% over store prices vs. the 2-3x mark-up that is common in the US (Chile also had a high restaurant mark-up).

So good AND so cheap! Just look how happy we are.

On value for $, Argentina is impossible to beat.

Sub-category 4) Variety of new wines to try in-country: Argentina

There is no question that Chile has great wines, but because they export so much of their wine, the wines that you’ll see in Santiago are pretty much the exact same wines that you’ll see in the Chilean section of a wine store in the US. I’m sure that there are wines that you have to be in the country to experience, but in general, you can sample most of the Chilean wines from pretty much anywhere in the world.

On the flip-side, the vast majority of Argentine wines are currently impossible to purchase outside of the country. You can be certain that a trip to Buenos Aires will expose you to an awesome variety of wines that you’ve never seen before.

Category 2) National drink: Winner – Santiago (by miles and miles)

Chile: Chile’s national drink (other than Nescafe) is the Pisco Sour. It’s made from Pisco which is a grape based liquor and varying forms of sour mix. Often there is egg white put on top, but the Chilean version usually skips that part. It’s important to note that Pisco Sours are also very popular in other parts of Latin America (most notably Peru), but the Chilean version is their own. The Pisco sour has the remarkable quality of tasting almost non-alcoholic – kind of like lemonade – yet having the ability to absolutely knock you on your ass in a very short period of time. They vary in alcohol content depending on the type of Pisco used, but at one venue we had one drink each at around 5pm and were not able to walk straight again for about 4 hours. The girl we were with threw up upon walking out of the bar. After one drink. Three hours later, we still wished that we had thrown up wih her. They are dangerous, but we love Pisco Sours.

Pisco Sours make us happy

Argentina: Buenos Aires has an obsession with a very special kind of liquor called Fernet. It’s made out of grapes and a variety of spices. It’s often mixed with Coca Cola. We tried a Fernet and Coke one time while in Buenos Aires. Despite the fact that it was mixed with a fair amount of Coca Cola we could not drink more than a few sips. It was without question the worst tasting thing we have ever put in our mouths. This is of course subjective; there are many, many people that claim to love this drink – we suspect this is merely a form of hazing.

Fernet makes us sad

Category 3) Coffee: Winner – Buenos Aires (unless you are looking for a little something extra with your coffee..)

It may seem odd to have a category devoted to coffee, but the coffee/cafe cultures in these two cities are so remarkably different, we thought it was worth mentioning. For us, we preferred the leisurely cafe experiences in Buenos Aires, but to each their own as these are very, very different. Here’s the deal…

Buenos Aires: Cafes are a big deal in Buenos Aires. The strong Italian roots of the city are likely the reason behind the strength of the cafe culture. There are usually several cafes on every block and for the most part, they all serve fresh ground, strong and quite tasty coffee. The standard ‘cafe’ is actually what we would call an espresso shot in the US, but there are several variations involving more or less amounts of milk (e.g., cafe con leche, cortado, lagrima). It’s all good. Pretty much any cafe you go to will serve some cookies and a glass of water with every coffee you order. The locals spend lots of time hanging out in cafes sipping their espresso and reading the news. There is no such thing as a to-go cup… when you’re going to have coffee in Buenos Aires, you are going to sit down and drink it for as long as it takes. That’s just how it’s done. Coffee is a big part of the culture here and a good deal of pride is taken not only in producing top quality drinks, but also in providing a great cafe experience. If you’re in a hurry, it can be pretty difficult to get a quick cup of caffeine in this city, but then again we found that we were rarely in a hurry in BsAs.

Coffee, cookies and water

Santiago: The cafe culture is very different in Santiago. There are 3 main differences: Experience, quality and legs.

1) Experience: There are still many cafes, but for the most part they are designed for getting a quick cup of coffee rather than as places to leisurely hang out for a couple of hours. In fact, a large percentage of the cafes downtown don’t even have seating… everyone just quickly drinks their coffee while standing at a bar. We found that getting coffee was typically a 10 minute experience. This is not really better or worse than the BsAs style, just different. On top of that though, we also found that many of the cafes were favorite destinations of smokers and sometimes there was so much smoke billowing out of them that we couldn’t breathe. Starbucks is actually doing quite well in Santiago and many of the people we talked to suggested that a big part of their success might be that they are one of the few non-smoking cafes.

Stand-up coffee bar

2) Quality of coffee: For various historical reasons which we never quite fully understood, Chile has a national obsession with Nescafe instant coffee. Upon ordering coffee, the default offering you will get even in a fancy hotel or restaurant will be an empty cup and a plastic single-serve container of Nescafe. After which, they will offer to fill your cup with either hot water or hot milk. While instant coffee can be convenient when you need some coffee and don’t have any alternatives, it seems odd to order coffee in a coffee shop and get it. To be clear, you can definitely order an espresso drink if you’re in the right kind of place, it’s just not the standard-Nescafe is everywhere.

3) Legs: We covered the Coffee with Legs/Cafe con piernas phenomenon at length in a previous post (see it here: Cafe con piernas = coffee with legs). Coffee shops that are part strip club or even brothel are not representative of the coffee culture in Santiago, but are certainly a significant part of it. If you are into this, then the incredible number and variety of cafe con piernas establishments in downtown Santiago may well trump all of the other drink categories and make Santiago the city for you.

coffee with legs cafe rio santiago image

Ah the memories...

Overall winner for best Drink: Buenos Aires (barely)

There is plenty of good drinking to be done in both cities. If you’re all about trying new red wines that are really cheap and good you should prioritize Buenos Aires. If you prefer white wine, go Chile. If you like drinking gasoline, go to Buenos Aires and try some Fernet. It really depends on you. We happen to love red wine and were blown away by the incredible value we got in BsAs on awesome wine, so despite how much we miss Pisco Sours, we’re going to award this category to Buenos Aires by a slim margin. We can’t declare a strong overall winner in this category, but hopefully we’ve at least given you some good context to draw your own conclusions.

Quick recap on the cage match thus far…

Round 1) Food – Buenos Aires came out strong and won round 1 with best overall food despite Santiago’s superior variety

Round 2) Drink – Buenos Aires barely edged out Santiago driven by the incredible value for your money on unique red wines

So far Buenos Aires has Santiago on the ropes, but the first two categories have definitely played to Buenos Aires strengths, so we expect big things from Santiago in the coming rounds. Next week, we’ll get into round 3 and tackle the issue of which of these two cities would be more attractive to live in as an expat.

Do you agree or disagree? Let us know what you think!

Disclaimer: Keep in mind these are just our opinions based on our personal experiences and we’re very happy to have people disagree as this is quite subjective – if you do disagree, please speak up and tell us why!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Posted on September 7, 2010 by jen

Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro. (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.) If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float. A lot. This sounded cool, so we signed up. What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold. Really, really cold. We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna. Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset. This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum! Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long. One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour. Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English. With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish. We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away. We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?). This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon. They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude. They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car. And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van. Not exactly adventure travel.

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat). Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around. And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit. The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature. After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all. Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it. Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust. He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING. Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago. It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music. The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak. There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon. Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks). Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome. By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!). This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka. They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours. We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!! We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant. This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag. It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done. We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert. We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude. Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had. He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered. The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy. We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table. It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day. The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good. We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added. Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter. We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town. We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation. It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95). The room was pretty, done in adobe. But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors. The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have. For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value! Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!! All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast. The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun. The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here. It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible. We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again). Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

Posted on September 6, 2010 by jen

We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat. San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world. We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen. Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below). This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went. We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome. This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon! (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions. We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor. Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up). Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro. It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one. We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this. Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed. We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding. We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing. Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria. Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over. We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset. Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town. First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am. The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark. The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there. We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing. And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing. I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own. The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air. But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning. The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up. But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs. Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there. It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places). It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill. It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later). The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary. And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year. What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro. A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky. We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away. We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars. Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible. He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard. Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars. He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries. He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them. We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!! And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly. And lots of other cool things. We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les. He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip. It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done. I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!! Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro? Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update: Part 2 is posted: Trip Report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

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?

Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

Posted on July 30, 2010 by ryan

Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…

Cafe con piernas: The background

So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless. After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening). I was wrong.

What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years. It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost. It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown). At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day. So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing. Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.

In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops. Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences. As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…

Cafe con piernas: The news report/video

I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….

…

(sorry, just had a flashback)

Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):

Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)

Ok, can’t put it off any longer. On to our personal experiences…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning

As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’ We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!” As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…

Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)

Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe. These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.

Cafe con piernas -- Cafe Caribe storefront image

Looks perfectly normal from the outside

Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view. Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).

Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand. After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying it was “a cultural experience”. If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them. Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.

I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that. Here is a direct quote from her: “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.” Seriously, that’s what she said. There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual. I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 2: First attempt

There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one. Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there). It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female. Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated. We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go. If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.

That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas. Understandably, he laughed. Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries. He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen. Makes sense. The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!

The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over. Again, I was wrong. We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???” I said, “Really? Still?”

Her: “Yes! He said I could go!!”

Me: “Ok…”

We decided to attempt the same plan. We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:

We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy

We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking. About a block away we encountered this place:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio image

We have a winner

We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative. Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.

Oh boy.

Seriously, this is challenging to write. Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)

The room was about the size of a bedroom. The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back. There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space. There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember). Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.

We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all. She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like. She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing. We ordered 2 coffees. She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee). Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her. Jen gave her another 2,000.

She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle. This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us. It probably always will be. Whether we want it to be or not.

At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff. We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right. We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers. In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.

Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2

In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors. The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance. Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl. And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service. Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.

Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left. I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me. Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her. We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother. She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit. She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol). It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly. We were out within 10 minutes. Jen was no longer excited. We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop. Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio 2 image

2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day

It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back. Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.

After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe

Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research. It was a world of difference. There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Cafe con piernas, santiago - Cafe Caribe image

I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below

This was basically just a normal coffee shop. In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing. This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Epilogue

It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us. Writing this has been cathartic. Let us never speak of it again.

Cafe con piernas: Our advice

If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti. If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio. Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.

Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links

A female expat’s experience and perspective on cafe con piernas: http://eatwineblog.com/2010/03/26/coffee-with-legs-santiago-style/
Another blog with some interesting thoughts on the sexism of it as well as some conversations with an owner and a bit on the economics: http://www.chipsites.com/chile-travel/fun-activities-cafe-con-piernas.html
A food blog’s perspective: http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/snapshots-from-chile-cafe-con-piernas.html
Additional perspective from the Travel Tart: http://www.thetraveltart.com/starbucks-coffee/

Trip report: Wine tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

Posted on July 25, 2010 by jen

We decided to use Ashley’s visit as an excuse to go wine tasting in Mendoza (the top wine-producing region in Argentina, especially known for its malbecs). We only had 2 1/2 days there before heading to Santiago, but we really enjoyed it – here’s a quick trip report:

Wine tasting: Choices, choices, choices!

There are several different wine valleys within an hour or so of Mendoza, the closest of which is Lujan de Cuyo. Wineries aren’t the same as in California, where you can just show up and do a tasting – here you have to make an appt. in order for the guard at the gate to let you in, and you usually have to go on a tour of the winery before you get to the tasting. As for how to get there, there are a couple of options:

Bike to the wineries: Basically rent a bike and cycle around to various wineries. This is the cheapest option, but not the safest: people have been mugged, and we’ve also heard of traffic accidents since bikers share the road with everybody else.
Private driver: Hire somebody to drive you around for the day, but you make all the appointments, so you have to know where you want to go–this is harder than it sounds, there are ~1300 wineries in the area!!
Private guide: Same as the above, but the driver makes the appointments and supposedly knows a lot about wine and has contacts at the wineries. There are a dozen of these on Trip Advisor, all highly recommended (usually by people making their first post), and at least 4 of them are named Javier.
Small group tour: Tours arranged by a private company, usually with a max of 6 people per tour.
Large group tour: Think tour bus.

We ended up going with the small group tour – we’d heard great things from several friends who had gone, as well as numerous positive reviews on Trip Advisor. We chose Trout and Wine, one of two main companies running such tours from Mendoza, and it was awesome (the other is Ampora which we also heard good things about)! Our guide was Michelle, an American who studied abroad in Mendoza during college. She was great – very friendly, knew a lot about the area and the wineries and great to spend the day with. It was very cold the day we went, which made the vineyard tours a little less comfortable, but it was still awesome. We visited 4 wineries, including lunch at one:

Kaiken: Just started giving tours and tastings about 4 months ago. This was our first stop of the day and was freezing cold when we started the tour out in the vineyards – seriously, we could see ice on the ground.
Cold but beautiful - how often do you get to visit wineries with the snow-capped Andes looming in the background?

After a tour of the vineyards and facilities, we went to the tasting room to try their two high-end reds. Unfortunately, the tasting room wasn’t much warmer than outside – the wines were too cold to really taste them, so our host suggested we warm them up with our hands . . . not that our hands were any warmer than the wine after half an hour out in the freezing cold! We think the wine was good, but again, it was hard to tell.
Sottano: This was our favorite of the day, due at least part in to our awesome host, Diego. He greeted us all with a glass of rose sparkling wine then gave us a quick (~10 min) tour/history of the winery before moving us into the (heated!!!!) tasting room. The tasting room has a glass floor that looks into the barrel room below – very cool. We tasted 4 different wines here, which were all very good, and had a great time chatting with Diego throughout the tasting – very casual, very fun.

Ryan and Ashley in the tasting room at Sottano - note the barrel room below

Club Tapiz: We did a 5-course lunch at Club Tapiz in the second floor of the restaurant, overlooking the vineyards. Wines were paired with each course (and poured generously) – this was a bit less of a tasting (without a lot of description of each wine as it was served) and more just drinking. Food was not out of this world but definitely good and went well with the wines – we like having steak for lunch.
Beautiful dining room at Club Tapiz overlooking the surrounding vineyards

After lunch, we headed downstairs to do an olive oil tasting (they also have olive trees at the winery), but the olive oil was frozen solid in the tasting room . . . upon discovering it was frozen, they told us that this is the sign of a high-quality olive oil which is either an interesting fun fact, or an impressive bit of improvisational olive oil salesmanship–we are equally appreciative either way.
They eventually found us some olive oil that wasn't frozen to taste
Alta Vista: Our last stop of the day, this is a classic winery for tasting in Mendoza. We did a quick tour of the winery, including seeing the old concrete tanks (something they use just in Mendoza) and the owners’ personal stash.
Hmmm, wonder how we could get a key to that? There were bottles over 50 years old in there!

Our tasting upstairs was great fun – the host was super friendly and poured great wines (we brought one to Santiago with us, will make sure it’s still good when we haven’t been drinking for 6 hours). We also tried the Alto wine, their top wine – great way to end the day!

This wine was phenomenal! 95 points means it's important

At most Mendoza wineries, you’re typically expected to go on a tour before the tasting. We’ve done a number of winery tours (especially while living near Napa and Sonoma) and weren’t really excited about going on a tour at every winery and hearing the exact same thing, but we were pleasantly surprised by our experience in Mendoza. The tours were very informative and we definitely learned new things – for example, at Kaiken we learned that you can graft branches for one type of grape onto the rootstalk of another in order to shorten the time from planting to production – we saw malbec vines grown from a chardonnay root base (didn’t know you could do that!).

Old chardonnay rootstock grafted to malbec branches - produces malbec grapes faster than planting new vines and waiting for them to mature

The wineries also did a nice job of not all telling us the exact same thing (we suspect this was thanks to Trout & Wine), and we only did a full vineyard tour at one winery, while the others focused on different parts of the production process or showing us what was unique about their wines/facilities. We definitely came away with new knowledge about the winemaking process.

Overall, we were impressed with our experience with Trout and Wine. It’s expensive relative to other options (we paid US$125/person during low season; high season rate is $150), but it was worth it. High-quality transportation (mini-bus), great guide, tastes of reserve/high-end wines and a very customized experience – we were the only people there at every winery we visited. Also, when you consider the base costs for wine tasting on your own, this wasn’t much more. Average tasting fees are around US$10 (just for the basic wines, not the higher end ones we tasted with Trout & Wine), and the winery lunches are typically ~US$45, so that’s US$85 for 4 wineries, even before transportation. And they sent a bottle of wine to our hotel before the tour as well – nice touch!

On day 2, we took a taxi to Clos de Chacras winery which was about 20 minutes away and did a tour/tasting there. The tour was pretty good, but the tasting was somewhat mediocre (though possibly we had destroyed our palates and livers the previous day). While it was relatively easy to do a tasting here (just had the hotel call and make a reservation and then hailed a cab), the seemingly lower quality tasting and more generic tour made us appreciate our experience with Trout and Wine all the more.

Where there’s wine, there’s food!

The Mendoza food scene isn’t exactly Buenos Aires, but we did find a few great places to eat. Dinner the first night was at Azafran – we’d read online that you go into the cellar with the sommelier to choose your wine. In reality, it wasn’t quite as cool as it sounded, but they do have a wine room in the front of the restaurant (with a window out to the street – wonder how that works for preserving the wine?). We also went to Francesco, a fancy-ish Italian/pasta place off of Plaza Independencia – really good pasta but expensive for Argentina. And check out what we walked past on our way to the restaurant:

At first we thought this was a massive leftover Christmas decoration hanging over Plaza Independencia, but apparently not. Definitely . . . weird.

We also visited the much-acclaimed Vines of Mendoza wine bar. Lesson 1: not open on Monday (when we tried to go, of course). When we went back on Wed., we were impressed with the wine selection and the knowledge of the bar staff, but annoyed that we couldn’t buy a bottle to share amongst the 3 of us. Apparently, they only sell by the glass and wouldn’t sell us a bottle . . . The place was freezing, and people kept coming in and out of the tasting room every minute or two the whole time we were there, usually leaving the door wide open behind them. Might be better in summer, but we don’t really get all the hype about this place after visiting. They’ve got a good website with info about stuff to do in Mendoza though . . . and they have a good cheese plate.

Where to stay? No easy answer

We learned through planning this trip that Mendoza doesn’t exactly have a plethora of great places to stay that are affordable. The market is roughly divided into super-expensive top end hotels, guesthouses/B&Bs with mediocre reviews, business hotels and hostels. We had originally wanted to stay in a cute B&B, but even the top rated ones on Trip Advisor had some pretty bad (and consistent) reviews.

We decided to stay in the Hotel Aconcagua, a business hotel located about 3 blocks from Plaza Independencia, which was super convenient. We booked a triple room online and they ended up giving us two adjoining rooms, which was great. The rooms were clean and quiet, breakfast was included and the staff was very friendly and helpful.

Nothing fancy but perfectly nice - clean, quiet room and great location ~2 blocks from Plaza Independencia

The only problem we had were the obnoxious children running (yes, literally running) through the lobby while we were downstairs using the wireless. For example, these 6 children ran to and fro through the lobby for a good 2 hours, at one point playing on the luggage dolly and slamming it into a glass dividing wall, at other times jumping over the reception counter to take pens out of the hands of the front desk staff – seriously, we saw this happen. Keep in mind the parents were sitting chatting in a corner of the lobby and made no effort to control or discipline their children at any point over the 2 hours nor were they at all concerned by our very explicit gestures of displeasure. We’ve noticed similar, ahem, behavior, throughout our time in Argentina – have we just had bad luck, or have others noticed this phenomenon? Anybody have an explanation for what’s going on?

En fin

We definitely recommend Mendoza for wine if it’s in your budget – from what we know thus far, the wine’s better there than in Chile. We had been considering skipping Mendoza during our time in Argentina since we weren’t impressed with the wine tasting experience in Cafayate, but we’re very glad we did it – the experience is completely different and really worth the trip (and we found it to be unique and worthwhile even compared to our frequent trips to Napa/Sonoma). There are a bunch of outdoors things to do as well, but we unfortunately weren’t there at the right time of year. Overall, great trip – we just wish it had been warmer!!

Here’s the full album of pics from our trip if you want to see more: Our Mendoza pictures

Resources

We used several different resources for planning our trip. If you’re doing the same, these might be useful:

Trip Advisor: Particularly the forum (for info on different wine tasting options) and the hotel reviews
A Gringo in Buenos Aires: Good post on Argentine wine
Globetrotters travel blog: Detailed Mendoza trip report
Other travel blog: Detailed Mendoza trip report

Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Posted on July 22, 2010 by jen

You don’t have to go all the way to Mendoza to taste great Argentine wines!!!

We’d heard good reviews from friends who’d done tastings of Argentine wines here in Buenos Aires with Anuva Wines and had been meaning to do it for months. When Ryan’s sister came to visit and we thought we wouldn’t have time to visit Mendoza, we decided to book a tasting with them ($40 per person when we did it). Due to Ryan’s sister’s obsession with Argentine malbecs, we requested to do a malbec-only tasting, and Sarah from Anuva ordered in a few special wines for us from Mendoza.

Logistics:

Anuva’s tastings used to be held in owner’s home in Las Canitas, but they recently moved them to a trendy new hotel in Palermo Hollywood (the Rendez-voux Hotel) because the neighbors were starting to wonder at all the random people coming to the building every evening and leaving drunk and happy. We were a little disappointed when we first found out that they’d moved, because we’d planned to go to dinner in one of the many great restaurants in the Las Canitas neighborhood afterwards, but we ended up loving the location in Palermo (and Palermo’s not exactly short on great places to eat). The hotel looks brand new and is decorated in a cool modern design. The tasting was held in the the hotel’s lounge/cafe area, with bright orange upholstery – sounds weird, but it worked – see?

So many glasses, so little time

It might have been strange if hotel guests were using the lounge area, but for our tasting it was just us so worked great. We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by Sarah, who I’d emailed with beforehand and who was hosting our private tasting. Sarah had the table beautifully laid with an assortment of Anuva-branded tasting glasses at every seat (we like seeing lots of wine glasses waiting for us . . . means lots of wine).

The wine tasting experience:

We started with a tasting of a sparkling wine (the only non-malbec of the night), paired with a green apple/Roquefort cheese bruschetta (may sound weird, but it was really good!!). Our next wine was a malbec rose, followed by 4 traditional red malbecs. It was a great selection of wines – all with their own distinct personalities, all from different boutique Argentine wineries that we had never come across. The wines were paired with quite a plate of munchies – as I recall, a massive carne empanada, several different cheeses, a cheese and quince-paste spread, several sausages and 2 different types of chocolate – yum. I didn’t exactly realize they were each meant to be paired with a specific wine so started digging in when Sarah brought them to us . . . oops. It was really cool when Sarah led us through each wine with its paired food–despite many, many trips to wineries in California (we are lushes) we had never really had a great food pairing experience like this–it really does make a difference.

Our favorite wine of the night was the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec – despite the name, it’s actually located in Mendoza. It’s possible that Sarah skewed our opinions by telling us this was her favorite before we’d even tasted it . . . Who cares, it was awesome.

This isn't our picture because we were too tipsy to remember to take one, so we got this one from Anuva. That's the wine we loved on the right!

The company (Anuva wines):

Through the tasting, we peppered Sarah with questions, especially as we had since decided to add in a trip to Mendoza and wanted to know all the right wineries to visit, her favorite restaurants and any other pointers she had. She was very knowledgeable and at the same time just fun to spend the evening with – we really enjoyed our time with her. At the end of the ~2 hour tasting, we decided to take 2 bottles home with us – Anuva has a cellar there at the hotel, so we walked out the door with our bottles that night. And – this is awesome – we didn’t have to worry about bringing the right amount of cash as Anuva accepts both Paypal and credit cards – Sarah just billed us for the balance of our tasting and the bottles we took home. If you haven’t spent much time in Argentina, I can’t tell you how (1) uncommon and (2) appreciated this is! Anuva also has a business shipping wine to the US, so we bought enough to last us through the rest of our time here, knowing we could get more once we got back to the US (and decent prices too – lots of stuff under US$20).

Anuva wine tasting in Buenos Aires 3 image

The aftermath - a very happy Jen and Ashley with our host, Sarah (right)

The Verdict:

Overall, we’re big fans of the Anuva wine tasting. We tasted wines from really special, unique wineries (that we didn’t come across during our time in Mendoza – definitely not on the standard tasting tour route). Their willingness to do a custom malbec-only tasting as well as Sarah’s wine knowledge and personality made this a great evening and money well spent. We don’t normally post ads for places we’ve reviewed (in fact, we have never done it before), but we really liked this, so if you’re going to do the tasting with Anuva, book it through us and help us fund our South American wine research – thanks!!

Bottom Line: Argentina makes some of the best wines in the world, so if you’re coming to Buenos Aires and you like wine even a little bit, it would be crazy not to do a tasting with Anuva! And when you do, please remember to click through from this ad–that way, we can avoid getting jobs just a little longer 🙂 Enjoy!!

Avuna private wine tasting Buenos Aires booking image

Click here to book with Anuva!

p.s. Anyone that does a tasting with them, please let us know what you think!

p.p.s For those of you not planning to be in Buenos Aires any time soon; Anuva distributes wine in the US as well. Click on the link above and you can see what they have on offer–everything they have is hand picked, great Argentine wine and for the most part quite affordable. Some of you have asked what Argentine wines to try at home–buy a few through Anuva or join their wine club and we’re sure you’ll be quite pleased; maybe start with the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec, it’s awesome) We will definitely be buying wine from them after we go back to the US.

Santiago, Chile is awesome; let’s live there!

Posted on July 21, 2010 by ryan

We like Chile a lot!!

So much so, in fact, that we have added a new “Chilean Adventure” category to the blog and are going to go live there for a month starting on Friday (2 days from now).

I was there for a few days in ~2002 and remember absolutely loving Santiago. Back then, I was shocked at how modern and sophisticated it was and just loved the energy. Jen and I had always planned to get over there and check it out while down here in South America, but over the last 4 months of living in Buenos Aires and constantly hearing from everyone here how dull and boring Santiago is, we almost didn’t go (seriously, people in BA tend to really talk smack about Santiago–we are beginning to develop an understanding of why and will explore further in future posts). We are so glad that my sister coming to visit provided us with a compelling reason to make the trip!

As you may know, we had been trying to figure out what to do with ourselves for the next month and been tentatively planning to fly up and check out Ecuador and Columbia, but the pricing is crazy–the last straw was when we realized it would actually be cheaper to fly back to San Francisco first and then buy flights to Quito/Bogota/Cartagena from there than it would be to buy them from Buenos Aires (by the way… did you know that you can often get tickets from Miami to Columbia for under $100??) So, we were left unsure what to do next that would be feasible with our budget (like a fine wine, unemployment becomes more complex over time), but lucky for us, Chile is awesome! Santiago seems extremely live-able, refreshingly different than Buenos Aires, affordable, a good base for some travel and exciting–sign us up!

So what makes Santiago so awesome?

Thing 1: The insanely ridiculous mountains

Seriously, if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand how crazy this is. The photos don’t even come close to doing it justice, but I’ll try…

Andes mountains around Santiago, Chile image

We literally didn't see the mountains for our first few hours in town because we weren't looking high enough. You have to crane your neck back. Seriously.

The city itself is at an altitude of only ~1,600 feet above sea level, the mountains that surround it on ~3 sides and are extremely close get up to 21,555 feet – that is a difference of ~20,000 feet in altitude (~4 miles straight up) that takes place just outside the city. For comparison, if you have been to Denver and thought that the Rockies looked impressive from there, know this: The city of Denver is already at an altitude of ~5,200 feet and the very highest peaks in the Rockies (not really visible from the city) are around 14,000 feet – only a difference in altitude of ~9,000 feet.

So basically, imagine the view of the mountains from Denver and then move the mountains closer and add ~2 vertical MILES to them and you’ll have something similar to the view of the Andes from Santiago. Crazy? Yes.

That is a pretty tall building. Looks pretty small compared to the 4 miles of vertical mountain behind it...

Seriously, look higher--those aren't clouds

Thing 2: The culture and people

The culture of Santiago is very different from Buenos Aires in many ways. I’ll write more about this in the future after we’ve spent more time there, but there are several things that jumped out at us right away:

Safety: The first night we were there, we saw people all over the streets walking around in business clothes carrying laptop bags. This would never happen in Buenos Aires, even during the day. If the locals have a backpack in BA, they leave it unzipped so that it’s obvious they don’t have a laptop in it. This alone gave us an immediate impression that the city is significantly safer–this perception only grew over time.
Police presence (related to safety): There are Carabineros (Chilean police) everywhere and the people seem to enjoy talking with them. We asked around and were told that not only are they NOT corrupt, but they are consistently rated as the most trusted and respected institution in the country. Suffice to say that the police are generally held in a slightly different regard in Buenos Aires.
Friendliness: People were SO friendly! Virtually every person we met went out of their way to be nice to us and chat with us for awhile. They seemed genuinely curious about us and proud to share their country with us.
Cleanliness: The city is unbelievably clean! The sidewalks don’t have holes in them, the subways are super modern, the buses are quiet and don’t have huge trails of black smoke billowing out of them. It’s very impressive; and it’s not generic either… they definitely have a style all their own, they just like it clean.
Efficiency: Things just work well. They have good systems in place and clearly seem to value efficiency–this is exceptionally rare in Latin America and, while there may be pros and cons associated with valuing efficiency, it certainly was a refreshing change of pace for us.
This sign basically means something like: " For a nicer subway, please stay to the right to make it easier for everyone." In Argentina, walking is more like playing a game of chicken at all times.

All of the above and other things left us feeling that Santiago is a place where we could really enjoy living. It’s likely less of a tourist destination than Buenos Aires is (as BA is very much geared towards leisure activities), but it felt more the kind of place where you could have a real life. Obviously, nowhere is perfect though, and it will be interesting to see how our perspectives of it change over time.

Thing 3: The seafood

That's what I'm talking about

Chile has a lot of coast line. That means a lot of fish. While we’ll likely miss the Argentine beef, we are very excited to diversify our diets a bit.

Lots and lots of fish, and some other stuff...

This is Chilean King Crab. It will F you up.

Thing 4: Proximity to amazing coastline

We’ll write a separate post detailing our trip to Valparaiso on the coast and will certainly be visiting more coastal cities in the month to come. Just know that within a ~1 hour drive from Santiago, there are views like this:

This is from a patio in Valparaiso--not a bad view if you're into oceans and stuff

Off in the distance is Vina del Mar, a very popular beach vacation destination

Thing 5: The fantastic artwork

We are big fans of trying to buy local artwork when we travel–especially paintings. We have had trouble finding much that we liked over the last several months, but Chile really delivered. In Plaza de Armas (a big plaza in the middle of Santiago), every day there is a large group of local painters selling their wares (and in many cases painting new ones as well).

See, lots of painters. Why don't you ever believe me??

We splurged a bit and ended up buying 4 spectacular paintings to send home with my sister (they were ~$40 each!).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 1 image

Yeah, he painted that, we bought it 🙂 He actually wasn't finished with it yet when we bought it, so we watched him put all of the finishing touches on it. Also bought another one that goes well with it. Great paintings and really cool guy--he gave us his home phone number (I told you they were friendly!)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 2 image

We bought the one on the bottom, Ashley got the one on the top. We'll match! The guy in the middle is the artist--everything of his was gorgeous... we're lucky that one of his others wasn't dry yet otherwise we would have spent another $100. (he also gave us his home phone number)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 3 image

Got that one in the middle... Had to wait until the next day for it to dry. Very excited about it. Now that we own 4 paintings, I think we have officially become Chilean art collectors--we should get business cards...

Thing 6+: ??

I’m sure we’ll keep finding more exciting things over the next month as we begin our Chilean adventure, stay tuned…

Thank you!!! Also, we wanted to offer up a special thanks to our new best friends in Chile who we met through Trip Advisor and this blog (we’ll leave out their names to protect the innocent). Their suggestions for places to stay, things to do, etc. were invaluable and we loved meeting them and exploring a bit of Santiago off the beaten track together. Thanks so much, we look forward to another round of Pisco Sours and some good Chilean empanadas! 🙂

Lots more pictures in our Santiago album: Santiago photo album

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is full of surprises

Posted on July 9, 2010 by ryan

Either they have been doing some extreme experiments in genetic engineering down here, or South American animals are just very different. To be fair, the zoo did not seem all that well maintained, so it’s very possible that the animals are escaping frequently and doing some of their own ‘genetic engineering’ if you know what I mean.

In reality, there are at least 2 reasons why this zoo is worth checking out:

1) The crazy, crazy animals

2) The fact that many of the crazy, crazy animals roam free throughout the grounds rather than being confined to a cage

Let’s start with a few of the crazy animals (which also happen to be roaming free):

Exhibit A: Duck + Turkey = Durkey?

Duck? Turkey? Durkey?? And no, this is not a one-off weird looking duck, there are tons of these running around and they all look the same

Exhibit B: Beaver/Gopher/Hedgehog = BeapherHog?

This is kind of like a giant hedgehog...

Buenos Aires City Zoo Gopher thing image

...except that it has webbed feet in the back, bright orange teeth and an attitude.

Exhibit C: Our personal favorite, the Rabbit/Deer = Dabbit?

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Rabbit/Deer Image

What are you???

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Rabbit/Deer 2 image

They are decently big and they run free all over the zoo. They seem a little skittish, but friendly. And very, very weird.

The above three animals (Durkeys, BeapherHogs and Dabbits) are all over the zoo, just kind of hanging out. Other animal hybrid creations apparently are less friendly and need to be kept in cages. For instance…

Exhibit D: The Tapir

Tapir = cross between anteater and wild boar? He looks sad--it might be because he's so weird looking.

Seriously, what are you???

Exhibit E: These guys

No idea... kind of like the rabbit/deer things crossed with the giant hedgehog things. You may recognize the guy in the front as the actor that played Mr. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia movie

Exhibit F: Anteater thing

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Anteater thing Image

I think you are an anteater, but I have no idea. What I do know is that you could very easily wear a traffic cone as a helmet.

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Anteater thing 2 Image

Nice piece of tail

Exhibit G: Satan goat

Do not mess with this goat, it will haunt your dreams

Exhibit H: These guys

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Baboon things Image

And on the seventh day, god had some extra spray paint to get rid of...

In addition to having animals that you’re unlikely to have ever seen before, there are some animals that would be normal-ish except that they seem to have gone a bit crazy. For example:

Exhibit I: Smiling Llama

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Smiling Llama Image

He has lots of personality...

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Smiling Llama 2 Image

...or possibly is just unable to close his mouth due his abnormally large lower teeth

Exhibit J: Flaccid Camel

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Flaccid Camel Image

I swear, this has never happened before...

Exhibit K: Acro Elephant

Hard to capture in a photo, but this elephant attempted to perform a head stand for a good 3 minutes. He almost fell down a few times. Then he started running around his pen erratically (often backwards). Could have had to do with the roaring lion that was next door, or he is just crazy.

There were lots of other more normal animals as well of course like lions and tigers and birds and stuff. You can check out the rest of our photos in our photo gallery: Buenos Aires City Zoo Photos

Just because the lemurs and the baby hippo were particularly entertaining we took a couple of videos:
Lemur fight:

Hippo teeth:

Logistics

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is located in Palermo right next to the Botanical Garden–The main entrance is right next to Plaza Italia and it costs AR$15/ticket for a general entrance or a little more if you want to go into the special attractions (which didn’t seem to be worth it). It’s fully outdoors, so probably not fun in the rain.

Also, they have a pretty crazy website with more info, lots of pics/videos and annoying music: http://www.zoobuenosaires.com.ar/index.php

Verdict

It’s cheap, it’s centrally located and it has most of the craziest animals we’ve ever seen. It’s always a bit depressing to see caged animals and some of these animals looked pretty unhappy, but overall we enjoyed the zoo far more than we thought we would. It shouldn’t be on the top of your list of things to do on a short vacation here, but it’s a fun way to spend a few hours and we’d highly recommend it.

Anyone out there have any idea what some of those animals are?

Feria de Mataderos — You’re not in San Telmo anymore…

Posted on June 22, 2010 by ryan

Interested in something unique to do in Buenos Aires? Read on…

“Feria” is the word they use down here to refer to an open air market. Most sell various arts and crafts as well as clothing, food and antiques. There are several of them in varying shapes and sizes all over the city (and country). Some are every day, some are only on certain days of the week. Probably the most common one for tourists to check out is the Feria de San Telmo which is every Sunday and stretches from the center of the San Telmo neighborhood all the way to Plaza de Mayo across streets that are closed weekly for the occasion. It’s usually pretty full of tourists, but we enjoy the San Telmo market… despite being quite crowded, it somehow manages to maintain a laid back vibe; this is much assisted by the fact that the vendors are super chill and I’ve never seen anything even remotely resembling an aggressive sales pitch–on the contrary, they are usually just hanging out and enjoying the day. San Telmo is roughly a 10 minute cab ride away for us, or a 30-45 minute walk. This is obviously far too convenient, so in our continued desire to get off the beaten path and find more stuff to do here in BA, yesterday we decided to go to the exact opposite side of the city of Buenos Aires to check out a different Feria: Feria de Mataderos (Fair warning: I’ve encountered very few Argentine websites that don’t begin with an annoying animated intro that includes music that plays automatically–this site is no exception)

For context, we live in the top right corner and the city is ~80 Sq. Miles; so this is a bit further than 'off the beaten path'

Why we went:

We were looking to do something a bit more adventurous than normal and see a different side of the city (literally), and this delivered. There are several ways that you can get there by bus as detailed on their website, but we decided to splurge and take a cab. The cab took nearly 30 minutes (I told you it was far), but still only cost about ~US$10. It was pretty cool driving through so many different parts of the city that we hadn’t seen before. It definitely changes as you get further out–still quite pretty, but the lower buildings and wider streets give it a more tranquil feel (at least as viewed through a car window, it’s entirely possible that some of these neighborhoods are somewhat unsafe).

Jen had heard at school that Feria de Mataderos was more traditional/authentic, far less touristy and would include lots of gaucho (~cowboy) type stuff, good food and maybe even some live shows.

For context: According to Google images, these are "gaucho pants" -- apparently Argentine cowboys wore heels

Did it deliver?

The quick answer is Yes.

There was a main stage area where they did dancing shows and other stuff that seemed exciting which was kind of cool.

If that's not a live show, I don't know what is

And of course lots and lots of booths selling all kinds of stuff

One of many streets full of vendors

Much of the stuff on sale was similar to the stuff you’d find at other ferias in the city, but this stuff seemed higher quality and more authentic on average (and was cheaper).

Feria de Mataderos booths with Argentina flags image

Argentina will never be accused of lacking patriotism

It also felt far more neighborhood-ie if that makes any sense. While I’m sure we weren’t the only tourists there, it felt like the majority of the people there were from the neighborhood and turned out every Sunday which gave it a cool vibe.

Also, unlike San Telmo and many of the other ferias in the city, at Feria de Mataderos, there is lots of food!

That, my friend, is Choripan... Grilled chorizo cut down the middle, smothered in Chimichurri and served on bread; it's obviously very healthy

Feria de Mataderos Choripan with Jen Image

...Doesn't she look healthy?

You’re probably wondering where we found that Choripan…

Some people say "where there's smoke there's fire," in Argentina it's more appropriate to say "where there's smoke, there's meat; lots of it"

Aside from lots and lots of meat (the above is only one of the multiple meat venues), there were also several booths with traditional foods from all over the country such as humitas and tamales, locro, empanadas and more.

This locro/empanada/tamale/other stuff booth had a very long line

This being Argentina and all, there were also tons of sweets–lots of fried pastries and some very fat women sitting behind freshly baked cakes that looked quite tasty (we wanted to get a picture of this, but were afraid of the aforementioned very fat women–we figured we could outrun them, but they seemed to have lots of friends). Also, there were some candy type things:

This was some sort of fruit candy with popcorn--looked really cool, but we didn't eat it; also possible that someone just spilled a bucket of popcorn on their candied fruit

We had also heard that there would be animals. We had heard right.

For instance: We were greeted by this rather smug looking and well dressed llama

Later he showed us how he really felt about us; disgusting, yet entertaining--both the event itself and Jen's excited desire to capture it on camera

In addition to our Llama friend, there were lots and lots of miniature ponies.

Of all of the ponies, this one definitely had the coolest hairstyle. If you're into punk ponies that is. (I am)

Aside from the animals wandering around, one of the highlights of this market is said to be the Gaucho shows on horseback. Apparently the Gauchos perform various cowboy skills and other feats of strength/prowess while on horseback. We did see the gauchos and the horses, but I think they must just have been warming up because not much was happening. That said, plenty of people were waiting around expectantly, so I’m sure the shows do happen.

Or... it's possible that the gaucho feat of strength is just sitting still on a horse for a long time... if so, the show was awesome!

In Summary

We had a great time and while the Feria de Mataderos is unlikely to rock your world, it is sure to be an enjoyable Sunday afternoon and will allow you to get a much more authentic glimpse into Argentine culture and tradition as well as allowing you to see a different side of the city. A perfect 3-4 hour outing off the beaten path.

Quick tip: Be sure that you have a way to get home arranged before you go–we found it to be quite difficult to flag down a taxi as this is quite far away from the city center and cabs are a bit rare (also, apparently the neighborhood is a bit iffy safety-wise if you stray too far away from the market). Either know the right bus to get you home or bring a phone and call for a cab to pick you up (which we keep hearing we should be doing all the time anyway, but we continue to tempt fate with flagging down cabs on the street).

Enjoy!