It takes two to tango…just not us two!
No we didn’t take this trip to learn to dance! We went to eat MEAT MEAT MEAT! If you’re a fan of Tony Bourdein’s travel show, No Reservations, you’ll recognize that line. He muttered it from the depths of the food coma he’d eaten himself into at the huge parilla in the market at Montevideo.
A parilla is a gargantuan grill loaded with meat & stoked with constant additions of wood. YUM! Paired with the wonderful wines of Argentina (to negate the cholesterol factor), we looked forward to feasting on meat & vino! For 3 weeks straight we ate drank ourselves silly. Did you know that the average Argentinean eats 70 kilos of meat a year? That’s over 150 POUNDS of carne! Three pounds of meat weekly, ½ pound daily. Forget the fish here!
We flew into Montevideo, Uruguay & headed straight for Tony’s parilla. We ordered the sampler platter & even we foodies went into shock at the mountain of meat put in front of us! We dug in with delight. We’ve hardly eaten any meat since moving to Panama. If you’ve ever eaten Panamanian cow you know why-tough is an understatement! It’s like chewing elastic bands! Not so Argentinean meat! It melts in your mouth-WOW! Two hours later we still sat eating, drinking & enjoying the “entertainment”.
Some soccer fans had taken over the restaurant, singing rousing songs of their team & shouting raucously. It must have been a soccer event as everyone wore their team shirt, so when a rival shirt-wearer dared to enter the restaurant these guys BLASTED him out with their singing & shouting. The roar felt deafening! As we slowly slid into our own food coma, the guy next to Hans decided Hans was his best buddy. He threw his arm around Hans’ shoulders & began babbling happily at him.
He insisted that they take a photo together & even gave Hans his team hat-hilarious!
Montevideo reminded us of a European city, with sidewalks that invited you to stroll & stop at the outdoor cafes along the way. My favorites were the produce shops-Frutas y Verduras-fruit & veggie stands. 
Gorgeous displays of luscious fruits & vibrant veggies, a rainbow of colors arranged like artwork. Lovely to look at & even better to eat!
The ‘ramblas’ or walkway along the beach is a non-stop parade of people. Such fun to walk along & watch the ‘weirdoes’-us among them! But beware of ‘landmines’…dog shit bombs line the sidewalk-YUCK! If your gaze strayed from your feet for too long you risked a messy step for sure.
Next we took a day trip on the public bus to Punta del Este, a resort town about 2 hours from Montevideo.
This was another place we’d thought of relocating to & are glad we did not! So Panama looks better the further away we travel. It’s a high price place with not the best beach either but plenty of Argentineans vacationing there. We did enjoy one of the most outstanding meals of the 3 weeks here-always all about the food!
We took the ferry to Buenos Aires, a 3 hour boat ride up the muddy river.
If we thought Montevideo felt like Europe, Buenos Aires put that city to shame. The architecture & vibe of BA is a mix of Italy & France. Beautiful buildings, with plenty of parks & green spaces to hang out, which people do a LOT!
No stress there. Probably why heart disease is not the killer it is in the US, despite the gluttonous meat consumption. Businesses open at 9am, close from noon to 4:00, and then open again for a few evening hours. The only downside to this is that they eat at 10 PM! So when we’d start the supper search at 7:00 every eatery was empty! Since we rise & shine (or not) by 7AM, we hit the sack by 11, just when these folks are revving up! Quite a culture shock.
We did manage to stay up late one night without turning into pumpkins. We actually went to a Tango show! What a slithery serpentine limb flinging riot of movement! Just the whirling knees would cripple me for life! Fun to watch though! We left the show after midnight & saw an interesting phenomenon while walking back to the hotel. People (NOT beggars!) went systematically through the trash bags set out on the sidewalks, separating out all recyclables & loading them onto handcarts! This is a reputable small business endeavor for folks & they earn a decent living while providing an environmental service. We saw the same in Uruguay but there they drove horse carts!
We wondered why this does not exist in Panama? People could use the extra income & it sure would beat the hell out of burning that crap! Guess they get high on the fumes-LOL!
We spent 5 fun days in BA & time passed so fast we realized we had less than 2 weeks left of our trip-YIKES! So much still to see with so little time to organize the travel that we did the unthinkable & went to a travel agent! Santiago set us up for a whirlwind tour of northern Argentina! We flew the circuit from BA to Iguazu Falls, onto Salta, down to Mendoza & back to BA, packing in a grand total of 9 tours in 11 days!
IGUAZU FALLS
We arrived in the jungly frontier town of Iguazu in the middle of the day. “Mad dogs & Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” (A Noel Coward quote, voiced on his trip to the steamy jungles of Vietnam). After tromping around town in the scorching heat & soggy humidity for over an hour I slid into mad dog status, snarling, snapping & all but foaming at the mouth at Hans. I had a flashback to sweltering Singapore & felt myself morphing into Swampthing, that evil other that takes over my psyche when I sweat myself into a sodden mass of irritable bitchiness (most unlike my normal sweet self!).
I looked at Hans through the veil of sweat pouring down my face & muttered “I need A/C NOW!” Recognizing impending doom Hans turned on his heel & we hightailed it back to the hotel & our cool room. I hate that I simply cannot handle intense heat & humidity anymore, as I’m otherwise an intrepid & sturdy traveler, but so it is!
The next 2 days we visited Iguazu Falls, both Brazilian & Argentinean sides. The description below is from Wiki Travel BUT words fail to describe the breathtaking beauty of this natural wonder.
The waterfall system consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometers (1.7 mi) of the Iguazu River. Some of the individual falls are up to 82 meters (269 ft) in height, though the majority are about 64 meters (210 ft). The Devil’s Throat, a U-shaped, 82-meter-high, 150-meter-wide and 700-meter-long (490 by 2300 feet) cataract, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil.
Iguazu currently has the second greatest average annual flow of any waterfall in the world, after Niagara, with an average rate of 1,746 m3/s (61,660 cu ft). Its maximum recorded flow was 12,800 m3/s (452,000 cu ft/s). By comparison, the average flow of Niagara Falls is 2,400 m3/s (85,000 cu ft), with a maximum recorded flow of 8,300 m3/s (293,000 cu ft/s). The average flow at Victoria Falls is 1,088 m3/s (38,420 cu ft/s), with a maximum recorded flow of 7,100 m3/s (250,000 cu ft/s).
In other words this is one whopping waterfall! The flow when we visited was twice the normal rate due to deluging rains upstream, causing the cascade to shine brown with mud from the run off. We saw photos from years ago with crystal clear water, before the clearing of the forest resulted in extreme erosion. Sad.
The Brazilian side affords the most panoramic vistas; while the Argentinean side lets you get up close & personal with the falls. You literally walk over sections of the waterfalls, so that if the metal ‘trail’ gave way, over you’d go! Saturating mists soaked us as we went right into parts of the cascades! It’s not surprising that the original inhabitants believed spirits resided in the falls. The powerful roar of the water reverberating through our bodies made believers of us too!
The boat ride right up to the base of the falls beat the hell out of any rides we’ve ever experienced in any fun parks! The cascading water crashed down with such force we couldn’t even open our eyes for fear it would pound out our eyeballs!
The boat captain backed the boat up to the waterfalls at one point so we could look up at the amazing sight-awesome!
From Iguazu we flew to
SALTA
In the NW corner of Argentina, Salta sits at the foothills of the Andes. At 1,152 meters above sea level, the weather is dry & cool-heavenly! It rates its nickname, “Salta the Fair City”, as it has preserved its colonial architecture in pristine condition. There’s even a PINK church!
But no flamingos anywhere! Our favorite activity here was to sit in the lovely plaza eating empanadas, drinking wine & watching people wander by.
An empanada is akin to a ‘hot pocket’ but not-LOL! It’s a small doughy pie stuffed with meat, cheese or chicken, along with whatever else they load into it-potatoes, peas, onions, etc. We decided it depended on what leftovers they had from dinner the night before! For less than $6 we ate a plateful of them and a carafe of vino-YUM!
We did 3 tours from Salta, including the best of tours & the worst of tours! The best was with “Laughing Lucas” as we called our tour guide. A really fun guy who obviously enjoyed his job. Though he didn’t speak much English, he made an effort to translate the tour for us & let us know what was happening. With him we traveled to the canyon of Cafayate.
Stunning views reminded us of the American west & at the end of the road a winery tour topped it off!
The next day “Grouchy Jose” rated as our worst tour guide of the entire trip. He claimed he spoke Spanish only, although all tour guides speak some English as part of their job description! He even refused to direct us to the bathroom on the pit stop! To add insult to injury (literally) it rained most of the day & I sat squashed in a seat next to a whirling dervish brat-child who kicked & poked me the whole time-GRRR! At lunch the brat sat across from Hans & slid down in her chair to deliberately kick him! When he gave her a dirty look, her mother took umbrage & we became pariahs on the bus. No worries! We entertained ourselves by making fun of them & blessing our own child free life! WHOOHOO!
We visited the ancient village of Purmamarca which has pre-Hispanic origins and is marked by its urban planning centered around the Saint Rosa’s church.
Today’s buildings are primarily constructed with adobe, clay, and straw, with cardon roofs and mud tiles laid using technology passed down through generations of town dwellers. Probably quite quaint if it had not been reduced to a sloppy muddy mess by the recent rains!
Next we went to Tilcara. The main attraction there is its pre-Inca ruins.
The setting in the valley with mountains on either side is dramatic, though the ruins feel a little artificial and fake as they have been meticulously restored. Luckily the sun shone briefly so we could see the beauty of the surrounding hills.
In Humahuaca we ate llama for llunch! Not a very tasty meat but we like to sample the llocal fare. These tours are all day affairs, driving to various destinations from Salta, with several photo ops enroute, eating lunch & then returning in the evening. We did the same from the next place we flew to
MENDOZA
Mendoza is a city in western Argentina, in the desert Cuyo region. Mendoza is the center of the Argentinean wine industry, for which it is world renowned. It is also near the Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. . The movie ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ was filmed outside Mendoza!
Although it is situated in an extremely dry desert region, Mendoza has an extensive artificial irrigation system, which allows for greenery throughout the city as well as the growth of the grapes used to make its famous wines. Olives are also big business here. Most streets have irrigation channels on either side, with bridges for pedestrian and vehicular traffic. These are periodically flooded with water diverted from the river. For each baby born, the city plants a tree! Wide tree lined boulevards make this a most pleasant place for shady strolls around town, stopping in one of the many fountain filled parks to people watch, as we did often!
To the immediate west is the Pre-Cordillera of the Andes towering over the city, with the snow-covered (throughout the year) Andes peaks beyond.
One of our tours here took us to Alta Montana-High Mountain-4200 meters/13,780 feet. BRRRRRRR! Freezing cold, wild wind & even SNOW! I didn’t bring a jacket, so stood shivering in my pink shirt, enjoying the view.
Worth every shiver!
The van climbed higher & higher up a narrow, twisty dirt road to the top of the mountain, right on the border to Chile. Outstanding views of both Chile & Argentina. We lucked out with the weather-a brilliant blue sky day with miles of panoramic vistas. Two days before it rained with so much fog you couldn’t see a thing plus the road became an impassable quagmire. This is now my screen saver-daily chill pill!
Here in a small village we ate one of the best ‘native’ meals of the trip. We stuffed ourselves on the local treats, to the delight of the chef-stews, salads, hunks of meat-YUM! Then we noticed that our tour mates only ate French fries & never touched the salads, meat & unidentifiable dishes…even though they were Argentineans! No wonder that woman got so excited about us eating everything! They missed out!
From the peaks of the Andes we descended into the depths of the Atuel Canyon. Called the “Grand Canyon” of Argentina it’s a spectacular sight, though more along the lines of “Great” rather than the “Grand”…
The wine & olive tours gave us some tasty treats but left us wanting more! We plan to return to Mendoza in the not too distant future for our annual dose of MEAT MEAT MEAT!
