Wednesday 28 July - Thursday 4 August: Buenos Aires - Salta - San Antonio de los Cobres
Instead of taking the direct BA flight to Buenos Aires (like any sane person would have done), we decided, for some reason still unclear to me, to take an indirect flight via Dallas. So after a 9 hour American Airlines flight (with AA being one of those airlines which clearly stopped recruiting new flight attendants in the 1960s) and a 6 hours stop-over in the home city of the Dallas Cowboys, we finally boarded our connecting flight to Buenos Aires in the evening (which in itself took another sweet 9 hours). It did give us the opportunity to have a burger at a classic Dallas burger joint with the best name ever (and with a dyslexic owner for that matter): Fuddruckers.
First impression of Buenos Aires: damn it is winter here. Sunny but chilly, with temperatures ranging between 5 and 15 degrees. Having checked-in our back-packs at Hotel Carsson, we went for a typical Argentinian breakfast at a place with a real "Argentinian" name: Richmond. The breakfast should have been called "Death by Sugar", it included cakes, ehm, more cakes and let me think, oh yeah cakes. I.e. it fitted in perfectly with my diet.
We did get down to business quite quickly though and we did what we came out to do here: eat steak and lots of it. So spread out over our 5 days in Buenos Aires, this is where we went:
We started at Resto (serving modern Argentinian cuisine, with sensible proportions of steak), we moved on to Cabana Las Lillas (special thanks to Julian for recommending this place to me already 3 years ago) for something which must have been at least close to a kilo of meat (these guys have their own ranch to supply the meat), then we had some T-bone at La Brigada, a parrilla full of signed football jerseys owned by Hugo, a wannabe and less fat version of Diego Maradonna) and finally ended in Don Ernesto in San Telmo for some excellent bife de lomo for just 32 pesos (or just 5 pounds).
Not speaking a word of Spanish caught up with us on multiple occasions, the most notable being me asking for an Australian mining company (Rio Tinto) instead of a bottle of red (Vino Tinto) which resulted in us getting two chilled beers in a giant cooler instead.
We also got the opportunity to watch part of one of the local league games on TV and found out that Argentinian football is basically an even more violent version of the Dutch Total Football, only with more handbags. They basically kick the shit out of each other while the referee waves "play on". Nigel de Jong would fit right in.
We also did some real touristy stuff of course, we had lunch at the famous tango place Cafe Tortoni, we went to see Evita's grave at Cemeterio de la Recoleta, got stuffed with a fake 50 pesos note in a bar in Palermo, went all cultural in the MALBA, visited the Governmental palace at the Plaza de Mayo (Casa Rosada), strolled through the street markets on the cobblestones in San Telmo and tried to get into Teatro Colon (and failed miserably).
After 5 days of steak bonanza and walking around the city, we were introduced to our tour guide from Gap Adventures, Christian Suarez, an ex-professional sand-boarder with the grand title of CEO or "Chief Experience Officer". He introduced us to the other 14 people in our group with whom we would travel through Argentina, Bolivia, Chili and Peru over the next 4 weeks.
First stop on our way up north was Salta, a city in the north of Argentina, 2 hours from Buenos Aires by plane. Salta (population of 800,000) is home to the Empanadas Saltenas, a local specialty which basically is a warm pastry with meat inside. We also had the chance to go up to San Antonio de los Cobres, a sleepy mining town located at 3,750m above sea level, traveling through the impressive Grand Canyon-like valleys of the Andes on our way there.
So much for our first week in South America.
Next stop: Sandboarding in Chili
Instead of taking the direct BA flight to Buenos Aires (like any sane person would have done), we decided, for some reason still unclear to me, to take an indirect flight via Dallas. So after a 9 hour American Airlines flight (with AA being one of those airlines which clearly stopped recruiting new flight attendants in the 1960s) and a 6 hours stop-over in the home city of the Dallas Cowboys, we finally boarded our connecting flight to Buenos Aires in the evening (which in itself took another sweet 9 hours). It did give us the opportunity to have a burger at a classic Dallas burger joint with the best name ever (and with a dyslexic owner for that matter): Fuddruckers.
First impression of Buenos Aires: damn it is winter here. Sunny but chilly, with temperatures ranging between 5 and 15 degrees. Having checked-in our back-packs at Hotel Carsson, we went for a typical Argentinian breakfast at a place with a real "Argentinian" name: Richmond. The breakfast should have been called "Death by Sugar", it included cakes, ehm, more cakes and let me think, oh yeah cakes. I.e. it fitted in perfectly with my diet.
We did get down to business quite quickly though and we did what we came out to do here: eat steak and lots of it. So spread out over our 5 days in Buenos Aires, this is where we went:
We started at Resto (serving modern Argentinian cuisine, with sensible proportions of steak), we moved on to Cabana Las Lillas (special thanks to Julian for recommending this place to me already 3 years ago) for something which must have been at least close to a kilo of meat (these guys have their own ranch to supply the meat), then we had some T-bone at La Brigada, a parrilla full of signed football jerseys owned by Hugo, a wannabe and less fat version of Diego Maradonna) and finally ended in Don Ernesto in San Telmo for some excellent bife de lomo for just 32 pesos (or just 5 pounds).
Not speaking a word of Spanish caught up with us on multiple occasions, the most notable being me asking for an Australian mining company (Rio Tinto) instead of a bottle of red (Vino Tinto) which resulted in us getting two chilled beers in a giant cooler instead.
We also got the opportunity to watch part of one of the local league games on TV and found out that Argentinian football is basically an even more violent version of the Dutch Total Football, only with more handbags. They basically kick the shit out of each other while the referee waves "play on". Nigel de Jong would fit right in.
We also did some real touristy stuff of course, we had lunch at the famous tango place Cafe Tortoni, we went to see Evita's grave at Cemeterio de la Recoleta, got stuffed with a fake 50 pesos note in a bar in Palermo, went all cultural in the MALBA, visited the Governmental palace at the Plaza de Mayo (Casa Rosada), strolled through the street markets on the cobblestones in San Telmo and tried to get into Teatro Colon (and failed miserably).After 5 days of steak bonanza and walking around the city, we were introduced to our tour guide from Gap Adventures, Christian Suarez, an ex-professional sand-boarder with the grand title of CEO or "Chief Experience Officer". He introduced us to the other 14 people in our group with whom we would travel through Argentina, Bolivia, Chili and Peru over the next 4 weeks.
First stop on our way up north was Salta, a city in the north of Argentina, 2 hours from Buenos Aires by plane. Salta (population of 800,000) is home to the Empanadas Saltenas, a local specialty which basically is a warm pastry with meat inside. We also had the chance to go up to San Antonio de los Cobres, a sleepy mining town located at 3,750m above sea level, traveling through the impressive Grand Canyon-like valleys of the Andes on our way there.
So much for our first week in South America.
Next stop: Sandboarding in Chili
No comments:
Post a Comment