Montevideo Day 2

We woke up (yes, late again) to a driving rainstorm. We had planned to take a taxi out to a winery in countryside outside of the city, but the storm is supposed to last all day and neither of us was really excited about going out in that. So we decide to take a day off from our vacation and just hang.

Stacy was dying to get her manicure repaired, so after a nice breakfast in the flat, she set out to find a nail shop she had researched on the Internet. Nail shops are not nearly as prevalent in South America as back in So Cal so she had her work cut out for her. In order to do so, she had to learn all sorts of new Spanish words surrounding getting a manicure/pedicure.  Now, class, here is your Spanish lesson for the day:  the word for fingernails is uñas de dados (or just uñas, for short). A manicure is una manicura, whereas a pedicure is una pedicura. However, Stacy needed to get her acrylic nails filled (las uñas acrilicas llenada), so she needed to get (necesita obtener) an appointment (una cita) for that afternoon (esta tarde).  Once she had this figured out, then she had to find a nail shop which worked in acrylic nails, and then she had to call an make the appointment.  Amazingly, she was able to make herself understood , and off she went. Aren’t you glad you can now do this for yourself in a Spanish-speaking country?!!!

I returned to Brasilero for a sandwich and a glass of wine–really nice place.

That night, failing again to find any restaurant other than a pizza joint or a snack shop open in the Ciudad Vieja (the old town), we returned to Dueto for our third dinner. Yum!

Montevideo Day 1

We arrived at the peak of a heat wave here in Montevideo. Fortunately, our flat at Casa Sarandi has excellent AC, so we slept well. After all the early morning wake up calls on the Patagonia trip, it was very nice to just sleep in without an alarm!!!!!!

We got up late (did I already say that?), and had a leisurely breakfast at a local restaurant called Brasilero that our landlady, Karen, recommended. We walked around the old city, and headed down the pedestrian street to the port. There was lots of smoke in the air as preparation for lunch at the many asado restaurants was in full swing. Stacy was able to find our favorite travel souvenir– Christmas ornaments from the places we visit.

They do a big Carnival show here but it looks like the performances are on the weekends so we will miss that but we walked by the grounds and it looks like it would be an impressive show.

At this point of the day it was getting quite hot so we headed back to the guest house for a little siesta (when in Rome and all that) before heading out again. In the late afternoon we went to the newer part of town and walked around the Plaza de Indepencia. Not a whole lot going on but some interesting architecture.

I’d bought some gin from the duty free shop on the boat coming over so we retired back to the flat and had G&Ts for happy hour while we enjoyed the AC and fast internet connection (the things we take for granted back home).

Interestingly, we picked several possible restaurant choices for dinner and they were ALL CLOSED on a Tuesday night. Not sure what that was about so we went back to Dueto and had a fabulous dinner from the a la carte menu this time.

Ferry to Montevideo

Today we said farewell to our Tauck Patagonia friends and headed off for Uruguay. After a nice lazy morning, we checked out at noon and got a ride to the Buquebus terminal. Buquebus is the ferry service from BA to Montevideo. We bought business class tickets and the service was very nice. They had quite the duty-free shop on the boat, and the seats were big and leather upholstered.

Upon arriving at Montevideo we cleared customs (immigration was done back at BA on departure), collected our luggage and caught a taxi. All was fine until the taxi blew a stop sign and was hit by a bus. Our taxi was totaled. Fortunately, Stacy saw it coming and braced for impact. I, however, was bent over trying to figure out how many Uruguayan pesos the taxi ride was going to cost, so instead of bracing for the impact, my head impacted the glass separating us from the driver. I was a bit stunned. The whole thing was a mess. To our driver’s credit, he immediately got us in another cab, and we were on our way before we might have been detained with a lot of questions. Miraculously, no one was hurt. And we arrived at our lodgings, Casa Sarandi, minutes later.

At Casa Sarandi, we were met by our landlady, Karen. Karen is a delighftul woman originally from the UK who, with her Uruguayan husband, Sergio, manage some rental properties in Montevideo. She is a great hostess, and totally briefed us on all the ins and outs of Montevideo, especially the old part of the city where we were located.

She gave us a wonderful dinner suggestion for a restaurant called Dueto, which we took her up on and had a fabulous meal served by the couple that own and run the restaurant.

Last Day on the Patagonia Tour

Sunday – Today was the last day of our Tauck Patagonia Tour. Once again, our awesome tour director, Marcos, had a full day planned for us. Again, the weather was great (if a bit warm) so we were able to experience everything the Tauck team had planned. For a last day, it was magical in all respects!

We started out by heading to the countryside outside of Buenos Aires. Our first (non-technical) stop was at the Draghi family silversmith’s museum and shop in San Antonio de Areco. We watched a video on the importance of silver to the gauchos and listened to Mariano, the current lead family artisan on the meanings he imparted to his exquisitely detailed silver work. He was very passionate about his work and the message behind the art.

We then headed to Estancia La Bamba in the Areco countryside for a day full of traditional Argentine cuisine and culture. The estancia is a former ranch which now operates as a hotel and center for showcasing gaucho traditions. I believe they also raise and train polo ponies at the facility. When we arrived, the welcome team from the estancia was all lined up to greet us with cool towels and a chilled glass of wine, along with meat & cheese snacks called”picalitas”.

We were then taken to a huge outside open air dining hall filled with long tables. The La Bamba team had prepared an immense and delicious traditional asado meal, featuring grilled steak, sausages, ribs, pork and veggies, which were grilled before our eyes. Naturally, the meal was paired with some great Argentine wines! Our meal was capped off with a killer dessert of crepes filled with dulce de lechwe, seared with a branding iron and topped with vanilla ice cream. As Meredith would say, ” Nom! Nom! Nom!”

Our afternoon at La Bamba was completed with an authentic demonstration of gaucho horseback riding skills. These guys rode like Valkeries or the knights at the Medieval Times show. After they finished, it was time to board the bus for our ride back to BA. After the huge meat-fest, it was good to be able to nap for over an hour on the ride back. Especially since our day was not yet done!

To conclude our great tour, we had a reception with our Tauck tour “peeps”, and then headed off to a late dinner and a tango show at Gala Tango. It was a tremendous demonstration of the art and music of tango and the costumes were incredible!!!

Then we said our fond farewells to our terrific traveling companions, and crept off to bed. A quick word just to acknowledge how great this group was. We thoroughly enjoyed everyone’s company, and would consider many of them friends after our shared adventures. Once we return to California, we welcome them to come visit, or at least, to let us know when we might get together again for another tour! Buen Viaje, our friends!

Tomorrow, Montevideo, Uruguay!

Back to BA

Thursday we packed up our things, checked out with Karen and headed back on the Buquebus to Buenos Aires. The storm had cleared out, but it was very windy. It was looking like the crossing could be rough. One we got on the boat and got to the middle of the river, though, things quieted down and the ride was fairly smooth.

On the way over I noticed that they had a money exchange on the boat that was offering attractive rates to change dollars to Argentine pesos. If you aren’t familiar with how this works in Argentina, let me explain a little. The Argentine government has an official exchange rate of about 8.5 pesos to the dollar. If you pay for anything with your credit card, you only get the official rate. The economy is so troubled here, however, people don’t trust the currency and are willing to pay a premium for dollars, so there is what they call a “blue dollar” rate (really a black market, but “blue dollar” sounds better). The blue rate is currently almost 13 pesos to the dollar, so you can see you get quite a bit more purchasing power changing at the blue rate. The problem is that this is not really legal in Argentina (although people do it all the time), and the folks that perform the exchanges tend to work on the street and are usually a bit sketchy.

I didn’t really like the idea of following some guy down an alley with large amounts of US cash in my pocket. It is also common to get counterfeit bills from these guys. So I was really interested to see this money changing operation (Cambio) running out of a nice glassed in booth with official rates posted and everything. They were offering 12.8 which was pretty close to the current blue rate. They can do this because the Cambio is officially Uruguayan. They actually (on paper) change your dollars to Uruguayan pesos and then change those to Argentine pesos. Pretty slick! So I took advantage of this big time because if you pay with a credit card in Argentina you get the lousy rate. The only way to get the blue rate is to change your dollars and pay cash. Unfortunately, the largest bill they commonly use in Argentina is a 100 peso note. So if you change a lot of dollars, you end up with a lot of Argentine bills. Anyway, I ended up looking like a money launderer with a big wad of “A pesos”.

We got back to BA, and Tauck had a driver waiting for us at the dock who took us to our hotel, the Caesar Park. Interestingly, they had just renamed it The Brick Hotel, so it was a little confusing.

We got checked in and headed out for some walking and shopping. Stacy had heard about a place that custom makes beautiful leather jackets in 24 hours at a very reasonable price, so we went over there and ordered jackets to be picked up the next day.

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, and Stacy and I love it here. We went to dinner at one of the best traditional Steak Houses in the city, La Brigada, in the San Telmo area, and had a fabulous steak dinner. The place is a little funky, because although it’s decorated like a sports bar honoring all things soccer (or as they say here, fútbol), but it is a fine dining steak house with linen tablecloths, fabulous service and a terrific wine list (we had the Catena Zapata Angelica vineyard Malbec). We, of course, had the steak, and it was the most tender we have had in Argentina. The waiter cut it with a spoon!

Travel Day to Buenos Aires

Saturday – today we left Patagonia and flew from El Calafate to Buenos Aires. After a little discussion with the check-in counter agent about the weight of Stacy’s camera bag (thank you local guide, Sebastian!) the flight on Aereolineas Argentinas went smoothly.

We got into the big city a bit early and had time for our local guide in BA, Dario, to drive us around town a bit before heading to the hotel.

Our first stop was the Recoleta cemetery. This was easily the most elaborate city of the dead I had ever visited. It sort of reminded me of the one we saw in Havana, only more elaborate. The mausoleums are definitely more elaborate than those in the Lafayette cemetery in New Orleans. The lovely thing about this cemetery is the wide, tree-lined walkways between mausoleums, and the multitudes of cats who apparently live in the cemetery and slept on the graves without any regard for the importance of its human occupant.

The cats of Recoleta

The cats of Recoleta

The cats of Recoleta

Eva Peron’s Tomb

The highlight of this stop was visiting the tomb of Eva (Evita) Peron. Eva Peron is still widely revered here as a champion on the poor and dispossessed.  The beautiful thing is that every day, people still leave fresh flowers at her tomb. There’s a wild tale about the weird and disturbing travels of Evita’s body before it came to rest here, but that can wait for later.

We toured down many of the wide Boulevards of this beautiful city and reveled in many fascinating stories told by Dario. The Spanish spoken by Porteños (as natives of BA refer to themselves) sounds a lot like Italian. It’s really fun to listen to them talk! Dario is a truly talented storyteller.

We headed down to the bohemian neighborhood of La Boca. It was nice to go here with the group because, although fascinating, it isn’t that safe after 6:00pm. We saw lots of colorful buildings (pictures to follow), sidewalk cafes with tango shows and interesting shops.

We still had time to visit the “pink house”, the official office of the President, and arrived just in time to witness the ceremony of the lowering of the flag at the end of the day. Plaza de Mayo , which is just in front of the Pink House, is also the site of the weekly gathering of the grandmothers of those who “disappeared” during Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970s.

The trip back to the hotel and cocktails with our traveling companions rounded out a very full day.

Ice, Ice Baby

Friday, our last full day in Southern Patagonia, we visited Los Glaciares National Park again, this time to see the legendary Perito Moreno glacier. This monster glacier is not far from where we visited yesterday. It is located in a very unique geographical location, however.

As we drove around Lago Argentino to get to the National Park, our terrific tour director, Marcos, made all of us camera-mad photographers happy by stopping at the estuary right outside of Calafate so we could photograph the flamingoes and swans.

Right before you get to the Park, there is a vantage point known as El Mirador de Suspiros (the viewpoint of sighs). Basically, everyone who first sees this view of Perito Moreno, sighs and say”OHHHHHHHHH!!”

 

 

Perito Moreno glacier basically splits and runs around two sides of a peninsula. The National Park has built a series of high-quality catwalks all over the faces of the peninsula (read: lots and lots of steps up and down for all you Fitbit pals), facing the glacier so you get a very up-close-and-personal view.

This glacier is also known as the “talking glacier” because of the noises it makes as pieces break off and fall into the lake below. This process, known as calving, creates very loud noises that sound like cannon shots as the ice breaks off. Although Perito Moreno is considered to be a glacier which is “in stasis” (meaning that it is neither growing or shrinking), it is also one of the glaciers that experiences the most calvings.

The catwalks are ideally located to view the whole show. Since once again we had a great warm day, there was a lot of calving activity.

We were lucky enough to see three fairly large calving, but these photos don’t do justice to the drama they cause when they go.

Then back to town and a fun evening spent with our tour crew. Tomorrow, Buenos Aires!

Lago Argentino- Boat Trip to the Upsala Glacier & Estancia Cristina

Today, Thursday, we had another early rise and got on the bus to head to Punta Bandera where we boarded a big catamaran for a two-hour cruise to the part of Glaciares National Park that has access to the Upsala Glacier. Our tour director kept telling us what perfect weather it was, and as we left Calafate, Lago Argentino was flat as a sheet of glass. However, once we got out on the lake, and got up to speed, the wind seemed incredible to us (spoiled as we were by days of nearly unheard-of calm weather) and the deck was rolling quite a bit.

    

 

However, as we entered the channel that feeds to Upsala Glacier, we slowed quite a bit, and the water calmed down, also. The boat took us close to one of the faces of the Upsala Glacier where we cruised around icebergs that had calved from the main glacier. We couldn’t get super-close to the glacier face from the water because there were so many icebergs in the bay. We got some great shots up close with the icebergs.

After the water view of the glacier we cruised around to the next bay and docked at an old sheep ranch called Estancia la Cristina, that had been turned over to the National Park. Glaciares NP is to Argentina what Torres del Paine was to Chile (and probably the way we think of Yellowstone or Yosemite in the States). We immediately boarded 4WD trucks and headed up a REALLY rough road for a 30 minute trek up to a spectacular overlook of Upsala Glacier. Again, we got some more fantastic pictures!

These glaciers are part of the South American Ice Sheet, which is the third largest land-based ice mass in the world (behind Antarctica and Greenland). The glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and miles wide. Some of these glaciers are receding but others are growing or stable. They are all magnificent.

Following our hike to the glaciers, we were amply rewarded with a fabulous meal at Estancia Cristina, and a demonstration of the custom of taking maté . Stacy was the brave one and volunteered to taste the maté (thanks to Faye for the photo!).

Tomorrow we will visit the Perito Moreno glacier which is supposed to be fantastic!

Boarder Crossing to Argentina

Last Wednesday was a travel day, leaving Puerto Natales, Chile and heading to El Calafate, Argentina. We got up early and boarded the bus. Our Tour Director, Marcos, was very concerned about the boarder crossing. Apparently in he past he has had some bad experiences. You actually go through two separate boarder checkpoints, one to leave Chile and one a couple of miles up the road to enter Argentina. Leaving Chile was no problem. Actually, the entry into Argentina wasn’t too bad. A bit more bureaucracy and a little slower but no big hang ups. Stacy and I did get called off the bus at the last minute because there was a question about our Argentine reciprocity document but I think the boarder agent typed the number in incorrectly. After a few minutes of discussion among our driver, Tour Director and the agent we were on our way.

The drive to El Calafate was a long one–about 5 hours. We drove through he steppe and it was pretty desolate. The countryside looked a lot like eastern California or Eastern Washington.

Calafate itself reminded me of Bishop California or St George Utah. Trees and grass in town but pretty dry out of town. We stayed in a beautiful hotel, Los Sauces Casa, that is owned by the President of Argentina. Her summer home is right next door. Beautiful grounds with exotic birds and trees spread out in cottages over several acres.

We went to the Glacerium in Calafate, which is a neat interpretive glacier museum in town. First-rate exhibits! The highlight was a surprise trip to the ice bar in the basement–I am sure you will see pictures.

We were pretty exhausted after a long day of driving and a big late lunch, so Stacy and I had a glass of wine and went into town for an ice cream cone for dinner.

Puerto Natales, Chile – Day 3

Tuesday – Today was set aside for us to partake in some optional activities and excursions offered by the hotel. We had another day of beautiful calm weather. Temps of almost 70 degrees F. Woo Hoo!

Stacy and I along with two other couples, decided to go horseback riding. We got on the road at 9:00 am, took a short drive up into the nearby mountains, and ended up at a nice little horse ranch owed by a local family. We donned helmets and chaps and saddled up.

The ride was about two hours long and it was fantastic! Hopefully Stacy can get some of the pictures to upload. She got some great shots. The scenery was breathtaking and we really had fun with our little riding group.

Our tour group on this trip is 30 strong. We all seem to get along with each other very well and Stacy and I are throughly enjoying their company.

After lunch we took what was supposed to be a 40 minute walk into the actual town of Puerto Natales, (which was only supposed to be about 3 kilometers from our hotel, but ended up being more like 75 minutes). It was a nice windy walk along the Puerto Natales waterfront.

Stacy and I finished our activity schedule with a totally relaxing couples massage in the hotel’s spa.

Dinner was a traditional Patagonian asado, which is spit-roasted lamb with all the trimmings served in a special barbecue kitchen/dining room. It was a fabulous dinner, made all the better by more great Chilean wine!