Argentina Vacation 2008!

Well, we made it back from Argentina in one piece, despite a 36 hour trek back to the States. It was a fantastic trip!

To start, we flew to Chicago to catch the first leg of our flight (we got a good deal if we flew out of Chicago) and spent the night there. It was ridiculously cold!! We still got out and wandered around though. We walked the Magnificent Mile and found this cool jelly bean statue in Millennium Park. I like how you can see the city lights if you look closely at it.


We also indulged in some authentic Chicago deep dish pizza, although our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we could barely finish half of it. We took it to go and the bag seriously weighed about 8 pounds.

This is one of my favorite random photos - I took it in an art/home decor store while A was trying to look up the information. See if you get the joke if you read the message on the wall...

When we got to Buenos Aires on December 31st, we spent New Year's Eve and the 2 days after in Buenos Aires and met up with the Haas group to celebrate. It was extremely hot that weekend (notice me worshipping the cold bottle of "O2" sparkling Chandon wine), so we had a Haas party on the roof deck of the apartments in which most of the group was staying and got 360 views of the city - and of all the unofficial and official fireworks that went off at midnight. I have other party wreckage photos, but you'll have to ask for my full set of trip photos to see those!

The day after New Year's, we explored the centro, San Telmo and Puerto Madero neighborhoods. (The day before, I'd checked out the famous cemetery in Recoleta where Eva Peron was buried - it was literally a mini-city of mausoleums):

Anhow, here I am in the microcentro (you can see the obelisco way behind me in the background).

This is the Casa Rosada, a famous government building where the Perons used to give speeches during their regime (think "Evita" and you will be in the era of Peronistas).

In San Telmo, things were pretty quiet (no tango dancers to be found in Plaza Dorrego) but the neighborhood had a lot of character.

In Puerto Madero there has been a lot of rebuilding and there are all of these piers that have restaurants in them. Here I've found yet another steak restaurant that has cows everywhere.

That evening, we went to our friends (Lisa and Michelle)'s parents' house in the Buenos Aires suburbs for an authentic Argentine asado, organized by our Argentine classmate Marcelo and his friend Esteban. They barbequed all different kinds of meat. Everything tasted amazing!

The rest of the group left to go to the beach getaway of Punta del Este in Uruguay the next day, but Andrew and I stayed in BA to wander around the Palermo neighborhood. We ate lunch at this restaurant called Cluny on El Salvador street which was amazing. I got a quiche, steak (lomo) entree, dulce de leche cheesecake dessert and a glass of wine for something like $25 USD.

After lunch we found some great parks, and a Barbie christmas tree in the window of one of the stores (photo below with me doing my best Posh Spice impersonation).

Later that evening, we went out to dinner at Cabana las Lilas, which is one of the most well known steak restaurants in Buenos Aires. The Argentines are known for their succulent, delicious steaks, and great wines and we'd have to agree after our dinner. Mmmm..... meat.

On the 3rd we flew to Salta, which was to be the origination point for our exploration of the northwest region of Argentina and its wine country. We spent the 3rd exploring the smallish town of Salta. We had our first of many afternoon snacks of empanadas and local beer and got to see some of the local sights (including this Church of San Francisco, which was built in the late 1890s). Later that night we had dinner at El Solar del Convento, where I ordered.... more steak and malbec.

The next day we drove three hours down to the northwest's wine region in Cafayate. As we left Salta we went from verdant green farmlands to reddish monolith rock structures that were amazing to behold. Then eventually the Andes mountain ranges parted to reveal the vineyards of Cafayate. Apparently Cafayate is home to the highest-elevation vineyards in the world.

Here is Andrew trying to scale the "Devil's Throat" rock formation:

The Quebrada las Conchas (Ravine of Shells):

Arriving at the WineSpa/Hotel:

In Cafayate, we stayed at Patios de Cafayate, a Starwood Hotel that is actually a WineSpa. The first day we did some wine tasting and explored the town (more empanadas and cerveza). The next day we indulged in the wine spa. I got a grapeseed exfoliation and wine wrap and then a hot Andes stone massage. Both were pretty damn good, although the wine wrap is probably the stickiest I have ever been! After we had been detoxed at the spa, we proceeded to polish off a bottle of champagne from the hotel by drinking mimosas at lunch and to pass out on daybeds by the pool, which resulted in some respectable sunburns. So much for detox!

Below are two more pictures of the pool and grounds at the Wine Spa (I was a bit obsessed with the view) -- one looking out by day and one looking back at the hotel by night.

Later in the afternoon, we checked out some more wineries and scenery, and then grabbed dinner at this great little restaurant called Machacha in town. On our way backto the hotel, we ran into the very intimidating looking frogs pictured below (lower right). They looked very serious. It was kind of funny.

One of the coolest things we saw that could not be photodocumented was this garden outside of the hotel that was just full of lightening bugs/fireflies. There were literally hundreds of them. It was like standing in a moving constellation!

The next day we drove back to Salta, stopping to check out the scenery and find a llama for me to befriend.

Back in Salta, the inevitable happened: as is the case with most of our vacations, we found golf. This golf happened to be at the Salta Polo Club. We arrived with no reservations so I had to negotiate in my rusty Spanish to get us on the course. But at the end of it all, we were given a set of older mens' clubs (we swear they were from the '70s) and were paired up with a nice caddy named Julian Enrique who told me all about his family, tne local wildlife and sundry other topics (our whole four hour conversation was in Spanish!). Julian is trying to look all "tough guy" in the photo of he and me below, but he was really a teddy bear and gave us enthusiastic hugs and kisses when we gave him his tip.

To end our stay in the Northwest region of Argentina, we tasted a few more wines with our authentic Argentine dinner:


On the 7th, we flew down to Patagonia, specifically El Calafate. We spent the day getting settled and exploring the little Aspen-like town. The next day we joined up with the group and went on a tour of the local scenery, including a stop in a goat pasture, with our end destination being the national park where we got our first view of the Perito Moreno glacier. The tour bus really amped up the cheese factor as we got closer to our "first view" of the glacier. First they played some techno, which then morphed into a few bars of Beethoven's 5th, and then finally the theme from "Star Wars". Wow. Just wow. The glacier was impressive to behold though and we took lots of pictures of it from the park's catwalks at lunch.

By Lago Argentino:

Hanging out with goats...

Some US-Canada glacier buddies:


The ladies take advantage of the glacier backdrop:


Can't beat the amazing peaks on the glacier:


The tour was great, except for the last 20 minutes where the tour guide had the bus driver drive us down near the lake to see a flock of flamingos in a lagoon. (Flamingos? in Patagonia? We weren't sure we had awoken from our overheated bus nap and were extremely confused.) Then, the the bus driver practically drove us into the lake (seriously, we were in the sand just feet from the lake) to show us the lake. It was a bit bizarre. Ultimately, we made it back to El Calfate properand a few people came back to the hotel for a drink in our pimped out hotel room.

Because we couldn't get enough glacier, the next day we went back for "Big Ice", an 8 hour trip to, on and from the glacier. This was thanks to our friend Keith who had to go through multiple rounds of negotiating with the tour companies to get everyone out to the glacier (making reservations with them was a story in and of itself). A picture's worth 1000 words so here are some photos from "Big Ice":

Me modeling my harness and "crampons" (spikes to walk on the glacial terrain):

Checking out our first sinkhole:

(Here is a video of our guide throwing in a rock to show us how deep it is:)

And here is a view down into it (it went on forever!):

Here are the ladies modeling our sassy footwear:

Resting at lunch by the glacier lake:

Potential Christmas Card photo? :)

Andrew finds another mini-lake.

Here is a video of me hiking on the glacier (I am proud to point out that I am NOT the person who eats snow and falls over in the video - I am the one wearing the pink hat):

Hiking back towards our starting point:

Our guides get really excited about a crevasse:

Walking back to the boat, with view of the glacier:

The glacier hike provided some of the most beautiful, amazing vistas I have ever seen, but it was definitely a workout clomping around up and down snow dunes and ice with our crampons. To reward us for all of our hard work, our guide leader, Willy, treated us to some scotch with glacier ice on the boat back.

That evening we went out for a group dinner (with exceptionally slow service, which seemed to be the norm rather than the exception we found) and then a few of us went out to a bar and grabbed some drinks, taking the time to appreciate the sweet, brain-numbing sounds of this artist called "Bossa". (She does soft rock, acoustic, elevator music-type covers of popular American songs. It's hard to explain, but on our bus the day before they played one of her CDs on repeat and pumped up the heat and it pretty much made everyone brain dead and put them to sleep. And her covers? Imagine someone strung out on some kind of mind-altering drug substance singing Guns 'n Roses' "paradise city" like a roses and sunshine lullaby and there you have it.

On the walk back to our hotel, we noticed that there were still vestiges of daylight in the sky, even though it was past midnight. Being so close to the South Pole really prolonged our daylight. Below is a photo of our hotel around midnight - you can still see some light on the horizon.

All good things must come to an end, so on the 10th we headed back to the States and got back to Palo Alto a mere 36 hours after leaving Patagonia.

Hasta Luego Argentina - thanks for the memories!