Argentina Archives - Page 3 of 4

Mate

Polish people love their vodka dutch people love their liqorice and argentinian people absolutely loveeee their mate. Yerba mate is dried, chopped leaf of llex paraguayensis which preparation is a ritual and social event:) it's prepared in a gourd which needs to be almost filled with yerba and then hot water needs to be poured over it (not boiling because than it burns the yerba). There is always one person who prepares mate and later on is responsible for refilling it and passing it to everyone. Everybody shares the same gourd and the same silver straw with filter on it (so filtering with your teeth is not necessary). It tastes a bit like really strong green tea, bitter and really herby. Argentina is the biggest producer and consumer of it which is visable everywhere! Doesn't matter if one goes to the beach or skiing, there always needs to be a thermo with hot water and mate gourd. That necessity created an unbelievable market for hot water. We have seen signs with (agua caliente -hot water) absolutely everywhere! In kiosks, hotels, gift shop, you name it!

Away from civilisation

Here we are in the middle of nowhere on a farm that we found via WWOOF. The closest "city" is 23 km away. And it's definately adventurous. There is no internet, no heating (and its not warm at night), no warm water to wash the dishes and obviously no washing machine. What we do have is mice, snakes, frogs and plenty of problems because everything is falling apart. We even had a gas explosion from an old kitchen stove, so we got an opportunity to use what we have learned at Shell, who would have ever thought... (Hopefully we are not gonna practice it anymore as the kitchen stove is exchanged now).
But we are surrounded by amazing people. The farm belongs to a family (couple in their 50' and children in our age) and they are exchanging every week so that someone from the family can be here to lead the volunteers (us and 2 other people). Incredible people who want to share everything with everybody which makes the experiment warm and pleasant. Jandirk is particulary enjoying cooking classes from Vivi (the mom).
Actually the farm is not existent at the moment as it was left unattended for years so we start from zero building a greenhouse, chicken house and making the houses liveable. It makes it even a more interesting experience to see it's growth and learn. And after a day of work we can chill with the horses, read all of the books that we ever wanted and stare at the stars.
I heard once that everywhere you can find a sky but the one that we have found here is incredible. Every night it's seems like an open air exposition, full of stars and constellations...:) and while lying on the grass enjoying it, we smell mint which grows here wildly everywhere.

Foodie in BA

Buenos is a really interesting place when it comes to food. The cow is the queen here with 55 kg per capita per year. In every supermarket you can buy every cut of beef possible and it's cheap. There are also numerous meat shops and shops with veggies, fruit and meat in one. The quality of their meat is amazing and we have been enjoying it everyday for the past 2 weeks. Until yesterday when we got food poisoning from choripan (grilled chorizo in bread). But even the best Argentinian meat needs something more, it needs Chimichurri!!!!:) it an absolutely delicious mix of dried spices like oregano, parsley, rosmary in olive oil, water and vinegar with a big dose of fresh garlic. Especially after a few days it's something absolutely incredible. But there is much more than meat.
Around 48% of the population of Argentina is from Italian descent because of various waves of migrations that brought Italians here. It all started in late 17th centry but the biggest migration took place between 1880-1920. And it's visable in their cuisine. We have seen many shops making fresh ravioli, differently shaped pasta and gnocchi and all of that on really big scale with industrial machines. For lazy ones, supermarkets offer gnocchi dough in a package. And not just usual ones, no! There is of course a variety of gnocchi so there is even a pumpkin gnocchi dough. The same goes for pizza. I don't think many people use it as we saw many people in all the pizzerias enjoying freshly made pizza. And since fall is quit a warm period (it's 32°C now) I can imagine that they need a good ice cream all year long. And that's what you can get on every corner. Amazing ice cream, thousands of flavours. And since it's Argentina and people here love to eat a lot, you buy a 1/4 kilo, 1/2 kilo, 1 kilo rather than a small scoop. 🙂

Top 4 suprises in BA

1. Buses- we were really positively suprised by the buses in BA. They look really nice, kind of old school American style full of charm and all the colours in the world. You can either buy a ticket with coins or say to the driver where you're going or how much you want to pay and use a special card on which you put money prior to the bus ride. As far as we heard max price with the card is 4 pesos (40 euro cents) but like everything here the rules are not written anywhere (at least not that we know or see). It's also not really clear to us where does the bus stop as only some stops are marked. Once in the bus there is no indication of next stop or the route so it can be adventurous. But what is the biggest suprise is that in this seemingly chaotic system there is an order. Besically waiting for the bus people create a line, really straight line, one by one. If there are multiple buses stopping in one place there are multiple lines. Amazing way to see the city:)
2. Paying by card in a supermarket- everytime we do it we get a different kind of transaction but it's always fun. We always need to show our passport, sometimes before the transaction, sometimes when we say that we pay by card. Many times few workers of the supermarket need to think together how it could be done. Sometimes they need to fill in all of the passport and card info to the cashier machine. And that when the problem starts because our passports are not in Spanish and our passport number doesn't only have numbers...:) and today we discovered that the workers copy the card with a pan and piece of paper.
3. Buying a ticket for a bus to get out of BA- well that's a challenge and a suprise. So it seems easy bacause you can buy in online and pay with all the cards that you can imagine except that you can't... Because when you fill in all the info and go to payment there is no other option than visa. Since we don't have one we needed to go to an office. Seems simple, we entered one, there were many desks and many ladies to sell us the ticket. All of them not really busy. And no wonder because they don't sell tickets... They only give numbers that you have to call to get one and number of a cabin that you can use. So we called.... And than we had to wait and wait and wait. Finally when we proceeded we needed to spell all of our data and on the phone the "p" became "b" etc. Then when we spelled everything we got an option of payment to choose: one was by cash.... Unfortunately when we came to passport details we realised that we didn't have my passport. And too bad because I would love to see how we could pay cash on the phone....:)
4. Fresh fruit and veggies- we expected Argentina to be meaty!! That's for sure (and it is) but we didn't expect it fruity ! There are plenty of small shops run mostly by Bolivians or Peruans which offer a big selection of fruit and vegetables. Everything fresh and for very, very good prices!

So beautiful and so touristic

Up till now we actually haven't seen crowds of tourists or street propaganda. It all has changed today when we went to "Caminito". It's a part of La Boca which is not really cosy due to pick pockets (probably because of those crowds of tourists which are an easy target). Caminito used to be just a grey, sad neighbourhood of poor people who didn't escape south of BA when yellow fever came (more wealthy people moved to the north of Buenos). But it changed in the '50 when Benito Quinquela Martin (famous artist from LA Boca) decided to change the boring area into a living piece of art. In result houses have been painted with bright, vibrant colours. And it does look incredible! And when something is that beautiful, it becomes a tourist attraction sooner or later. And this is what happened here. But unfortunately to the extreme. There are plenty of propaganda people inviting to numerous restaurants and in every one of them there is a couple dancing tango. But we still enjoy the view:)

Street art

We knew that Buenos Aires was famous for meat, football and tango. But what we discovered over here is that it is actually an amazing open-air museum! While walking we are always surprised by amazing graffiti and when we say graffiti we mean actually incredible street art. It begun in the '50 as artists were paid to paint slogans for political parties. During the military dictatorships when protesting was banned, the street art was drawn back. But as soon as democracy reached Argentina, people started expressing their minds on the walls of the city. But it's not all about politics, there are incredible art pieces which are vibrant, joyful and humorous. Almost every piece is signed by the author and some even have a web page written on it. Even though it's still banned, it is tolerated probably because it makes otherwise grey buildings look fresh and cheerful. Actually nowadays a lot of the street art is commissioned and the artists are being more and more recognised. Some are able to sell their canvas in art galleries. Perhaps also because so many of them have an artistic background like graphic designer or architect. What is incredible about that type of art, is that it changes very often as every wall can be painted over and over again.