Lomito Completo

A little something to drool over.

Chels and I aren´t particularly big steak eaters, so we´ve been doing our best to try and appreciate the great beef that they have here in Argentina. One thing that we have found, and love, are the lomito sandwiches. mmmm … lomo, jamon, queso, huevo, tomate (steak, deli sliced ham, cheese, egg, and tomato). perfecto!

Buenos Aires

So while you`ve all been in the dark as to what`s happening down here, we`ve been enjoying the sights (and wine) in Buenos Aires. Cities are cities, so we`ll keep this short, but here are some highlights of our touring (aka drinking) so far.

Meeting up with friends from home and partying with new friends at the SAE social…

Taking in the street fairs and tango performances…

Enjoying the beef (and wine)!!

Marveling at the city scenes…

Buenos Aires is pretty much the New York or Paris of South America with tons of trendy cafes, bars, shops, etc. and a unique scene that blends Argentine culture into a definitively international city. You hear a lot of English here, so it can be more challenging to pull yourself away from the gringos and pubs and into the parillas, but whichever scene you experience, it`s definitely a great city with lots to see and experience… But don`t expect to be on a normal tourist schedule here, the dinner rush doesn`t start until 10pm and the clubs don`t close.

Got a package coming to Argentina?

Good luck getting it out of customs!!

Luckily, I have first-hand experience and can vouch for how much fun it is. It all begins with a 2 hr bus ride to Ezeiza Airport (or you can opt for the more expensive cab), once you find the terminal de cargas, navigate through the buildings to the customs building (dock B)…and don`t forget to get certified first or you`ll have to go back and do it all again!

Then, once you get to the offices with all your paperwork and original passport, WAIT to be helped, but don`t ask for assistance. Once allowed to enter pretend not to speak any Spanish so they take pity on you and follow the directions to offices: 1,2,cargo,2,3,2,1,2,3,cargo. Hopefully after 10 stamps, you`ll get your goods with only having to pay ¨storage fees.¨ The unlucky ones may have to pay more ¨taxes¨ or get more stamps from other offices in different buildings…

here is a map in case you find it helpful:

Finally, you can sleep on the 2hr bus ride back to the city…

My advice would be don`t get anything sent to Argentina unless it`s absolutely necessary…and if it is, embrace the Argentine way. Although curiously strange, it is definitely amusing. Good luck!!!

Happy Thanksgiving from Buenos Aires (day 100)

Well, it’s a monumental day, we’ve hit the century mark for this trip. whoot! and it happened to fall on Thanksgiving day, pretty nifty. So, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We were originally pretty bummed to be missing the holiday season this year in order to be travelling, but things are slowly looking up. Tonight we won’t be enjoying any turkey and stuffing, however thanks to SAE we do get to go to an all-you-can drink Thanksgiving bash here in Buenos Aires, so neener-neener :p

Well, we just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving from Buenos Aires. Eat some extra turkey for us

Argentina 3, Bolivia 0

Unfortunately we picked a time to be in Buenos Aires when there aren´t any normal league games going on for a couple weeks due to an international break for things like Euro Cup and World Cup qualifier matches. Luckily though, Argentina had a World Cup qualifier right here in B.A. and so instead of getting to see Boca Jrs. play we got to see the Argentina national team play (Messi, Tevez, Riquelme, etc) …

The game was held at the River Plate stadium, the largest in Argentina, and ended with a 3-0 result in favor of Argentina, naturally. One fun thing that you are not likely to see at a game in the states is that during the second half it was getting very hot for folks in the sunny parts of the stadium, so the fire department opened up some hoses to cool people off. Luckily we were in a shaded area which was actually quite pleasant =)

Iguazu Falls

So, after saying goodbye to our parents in Rio we hopped a quick 26 hr bus ride (with no tvs or movies!) to get down to Iguazu which lies on a triple border between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Oddly enough this is was one of our least anticipated major stops on our trip because we had this expectation that it would be a bit boring and that we´d just end up looking at some waterfalls for a few hours and be done. Well, we couldn´t have been more wrong.

Iguazu Falls is a massive complex of literally hundreds of waterfalls all kind of chained together along 2 km of river. There is no place on ground level which allows you to see the whole set of falls at one time, so you have to make your way up and down the river to see the whole thing. And to make it more interesting the falls is split mostly between Brazil and Argentina, with each side containing their own interesting vantage points for viewing the falls. So rather than spending a boring couple of hours looking at some waterfalls we spent 2 days hiking around the parks on both sides. I could try and remember some of the details about the falls, but you´re better off just googling or checking on wikipedia, so lets just see some pics …

After our couple days in Iguazu we continued south to Buenos Aires where we are now, unfortunately we haven´t done a whole lot here the past couple days because Chels hasn´t been feeling too well so we are resting up at the moment and should be back on the trail shortly.

Ilha Grande and Rio de Janeiro

okay. been a little while since the last post and we´ve been hitting a few spots here in Brazil before heading into Argentina and making our way down towards Patagonia.

So, from Lima we hopped a flight (overnight, of course) over to the eastern coast of South America and landed in Sao Paolo, Brazil where we then quickly grabbed a bus off to the costa verde and Ilha Grande. Ilha Grande was a nice introduction to Brazil since it was basically deserted until around 10 years ago and since then has slowly been converting into a tourist destination. The appeal now of course is that hardly anyone goes there yet, so the island is large and empty, a good place to relax for a few days before hitting the big city …

After a three good days relaxing on Ilha Grande it was time to meet our parents in Rio for a week. You´d think that a week was plenty of time, but it flew by and we could have spent even more time there. Rio certainly has one of the most unique and interesting locations for a city we´ve ever seen and there is a lot to see. Some of the weeks activities included … biking around the lagoa and Ipanema, watching a soccer game at Maracanã stadium, touring through a couple of Rio´s favelas (ghettos), Sugar Loaf and Christ Redeemer, getting stuffed on feijoada, and of course – lots of caipariñas.

And now we are off to Iguazu Falls and Argentina!

Cebiche

So we are actually off in Brazil now enjoying beaches and tropical fruit juices, but before posting about that we had to say at least something about cebiche. As you may know, cebiche is basically the national dish of Peru and is taken very seriously here. We´ve eaten as much as we could stomach (no pun intended, it hasn´t made us sick yet), but it’s just not always appealing to eat a cold fish dish. In any case, along our way through Peru we made the best of our opportunities and tried cebiche in not one, not two, but three different cities, all with a style of their own.

The photo above is from our first tasting, a mixed cebiche plate we got in Trujillo (northern coast). It has half of a fish cebiche and the other half a mixed seafood cebiche with octopus, squid, etc.

Our second tasting was actually from a cebiche class we had in Cusco where we watched someone actually make cebiche from scratch! This cebiche is a traditional Cusco version made with a lake fish called Kingfish.

And for our final tasting we went all out, a full cebiche sampler plate at one of Lima’s finest cebicherias, Segundo Muelle. What you are looking at above is three different cebiches, one traditional and two mixed. The cebiche on the left is mixed fish and seafood, the center is the traditional style with just fish, and the right is a purely seafood cebiche. Yum!