Chile and Argentina

Last tango in Buenos... If only they allowed guys in sandals to dance, I would have showed them a bit of Slavic power. Seven weeks passed so fast - again... But in the process I learnt quite a few new interesting facts and curiosities, about myself as much as amazing Chile and Argentina:

• You can sleep 8 hours straight on a bus,
• If you want your head spin, drink loads of pineapple ice-creams with extras,
• In Spanish you pronounce 'y' and 'll' the same as sh or yo
• Vines should be planted north-south for maximum sun exposure
• Roman wine must have been a plock
• You can slide down a volcano,
• You can see a whale when strolling on a pier
• Penguins lay always to eggs
• You never stir yerba mate
• Short-cuts do not always make the road shorter and
• There are things that cannot be washed off your shoes
• You do not need to get everyone drunk to get the whole room to dance
• You can fit three wine bottles in an average backpack 
• In some places 70km/h winds are considered normal
• You can sit 4 hours in one place to see one summit
• Getting down to the ice cave is easier than getting out of it
• Sea snails taste like chicken
• Bife de chorizo has nothing to do with sausage and 
• Bife de chorizo is the best beef cut you can get
• You can cook your fish with no heating but lemon alone
• Milanesa Neapolitana is an Argentinian dish
• You can cross 18-lane avenue in one go but you need to be fast, usain fast
• Dollar blue has better rate the normal dollar and
• The best rate you get in cambio with 'we do not exchange money' sign
• You have free wi-fi everywhere apart from 5* hotels
• You can eat only crackers for four days in a row
• Punta del Este is actually in Uruguay
• Suburban train can take 1,5h to get to the city centre
• Despite proofs US can deny everything
• Despite poverty life can be good in South America, provided you are rich
• You can fight mosquitoes in midday on a sunny beach
• You can have all four seasons in one day, several times a day
• You can buy Xmas presents wearing flip flops
• You can move from +30 to - 10 degrees in just one flight, but this tomorrow...

As you see there is much to discover, so need to plan a trip back. But next time I'll take my tango shoes...

Uruguay

Initially Uruguay was not even planned - all because I actually thought that Punta del Este is a resort in Argentina... So when taking a 1-hour ferry ride through brown Rio de la Plata to Colonia del Sacramento I expected a bit more of the same. But once you leave the board it seems like you had come to a different continent. After noisy and grand Buenos Aires, Colonia with charming small houses, cobbled street and slower pace is a big surprise. Yet common history, language and culture quickly make it all fit nicely. Asians would say 'same, same but... different'. Montevideo also appears to be BA's smaller brother (or sister :-) but Uruguayans are so much more at ease, the city is just more accomodating and happy with itself that one feels so much more relaxed. Unfortunately most of travelers do not even stop there (we did!) and head straight for the Monaco of the South America - Punta del Este.
Casinos, big yachts, Gucci shops, fancy seafood restaurants, all surrounded by amazing white villas, big condos and trimmed lawns - you get the feeling. But again like all of Uruguay, even though it is similar to Marbella, Capri or Miami, it does not aspire to be one and just enjoys being itself, a world-class resort with amazing nature, limitless sandy beaches and good quality South American silicon. You feel just like you are about to meet stars from 'Hola' or 'Gente' magazines, Uruguayan, Argentinian, Brazilian or Spanish. Punta or Uruguay do not discriminate or impose and that is why it feels so good here...

Argentina on a plate

I have just realised I did not write much about food recently. And as you know me searching eating spots takes some of my time when travelling... Not easy to please :-)

But first things first. Breakfast in Argentina is really uneventful - usually toasts or medialunas (like croissants) with plenty of dulce de leche (condensed milk like toffee). Dulce de leche is also a main ingredients for alfajores, a snack of cookie sandwich with added fruit paste. Lunch often means empanadas and breaded or fried meats - milanesas (sort of wiener schnitzel). Italians brought not only milanesas - pastas are big too; not spaghettis or pennes but hearty tallarines, ravioles, noquis or sorrentinos. All followed with great ice-creams and downed with yerba mate sipped through a bombilla.

Nothing special, huh? It would be so if not for the Argentinian meat; and it means not only beef but also lamb or pork... Eating meat is an institution in itself - Argentinians call it asado (large bbq). And they grill everything: sausages (chorizo, morcilla), lamb, pork, ribs and beef (not the best cuts though). All are slowly grilled (around two hours) unmarinated until usually quite well done and eaten with only chimichurri sauce (spicy olive oila and herbs mix). Asado is also kind of a social event and for me meats are good but not exceptional. The best meats go solo! Lamb (cordero) is a Patagonian speciality - with calafate sauce is just so tasty. And then there is beef...

Argentinians cut up their cows differently so it is not easy to translate but best are bife de chorizo (rib-eye steak) and bife de lomo (tenderloin). Bife de chorizo is not so tender but has so much more taste... Unlike asado meats best beef is at most medium-done but rather medium-rare. Nice Malbec wine to go with and you lost me for an hour :-) So far my best meat was in small restaurant called 'El Obrero' in la Boca pictured - bife de chorizo mariposa, so butterfly shaped cut - I guess by now you can picture me smiling... Just to make sure the smile does not fade away so quickly I'll make sure to try some more :-)

Hungry?

Buenos Aires

Argentinians living outside Buenos Aires often say BA should not even be considered a part of Argentina - it is just BA and its citizens are simply portenos. For me BA is like a condensed Argentina - full of extremes but winning you over once you give it a chance.

Even coming to BA proved extreme - storm delayed our flight by 4 hours, but then after 8h with no food we managed to get to the hostel from the airport in just an hour. Hostel seemed nice but seeing our voucher simply said that they were full with no trace of our reservation... Disaster was solved with help of 4* hotel next door with hostel's price :-) All was good until we opened our bags - backpack covers apparently do not work during storms and half of the clothes were wet... Chinese run automated dryers do miracles and finally with some delay we hit the town.

And extreme BA keeps on coming. Hip cocktail bars in run-down art nouveau buildings, futurist places neighbouring Dirty War memorials, palms competing with Xmas trees, crazy football fans walking along garbage collectors... If this was not enough we went to Boca part of BA where even locals told us not to go (unaware of the apparent danger eventually helpful lady got us out to a main street...) but there found a local restaurant with best steak I have ever had in my life. Extreme enough? Then found a US$ exchange place with rates 30% higher than banks (really not a scam, just parallel economy), lost a camera to find it 5 minutes later, walked like maniac crossing 18-lane street with biggest Coke adverts I've seen. To relax we even went to see 'Hobbit' - another high octane emotions which made me fight orcs all night... And this was just the first 24 hours!

BA pushes you to extremes, that sometimes your mind processing kind of jams and you just freeze. You know the feeling - like when you leave the cinema into dark and empty city not knowing where you actually are. But the best thing awaits you when you finally wake up - you are still in Buenos Aires...

Iguazu falls

Flying from El Calafate to Puerto Iguazu is much more than just hopping to another Argentinian natural world heritage site. It felt a bit like betraying windy Patagonian plains and mountains, which felt so homey after three weeks, for humid and tropical selva and rivers.
But coming to a new place, especially so different than previous ones, is always exciting. All senses are at full alert ready to look, smell and taste. Yet coming after sunset spoiled the excitement a bit, but forget it, here it is not about the countryside landscape - here it is all about the magnificent Iguazu cataratas - falls.
As Perito Moreno glacier, they are a true star - the falls played a part in many movies, including Bond's Moonraker, the Mission, or Indiana Jones, but was also a leifmotif in Wong Kar-Wai's 'Happy Together' (as you know Asian cinema is dear to me :-) Iguazu falls act in a movie as a soothing factor, example of something truly beautiful and a way of mending a dysfunctional relationship. It was just a movie but apparently it is not very far from the truth. Negative ions in the air that falls produce make people happier and many even start to giggle. Or maybe it is just the magnificence of Devil' Throat (Garganta del Diablo) semicircular falls at the end of a long path. And then you can see them drinking wine on Argentinian side or sipping  caipirinhas on Brazilian side - just to make you even happier...

Mercosur again...

Today's gonna be political again. Forgetting the landscape for the moment, when travelling in Argentina and Chile one feels like in an average European country. Cafeterias, boutique shops, good restaurants... Maybe it does not look that affluent and the cars on the street are not top brands, but shops have most of the European or global brands - almost the same, only much more expensive, roughly double the Polish prices. I know we hang around tourist areas but still Polish GDP per capita at purchasing power parity of $21,3k is higher as compared to $17,8k of both Chile and Argentina (World Bank 2011).

But there is this feeling that there is much more to what a tourist can see.  Miles and miles of fences, hidden estancias, private property signs, even in national parks keep the intruders away. All this makes you think that distribution of wealth is not that equal in either of the countries... In fact judging by Gini coefficient, out of all OECD countries, Chile is the most income unequal (Argentina is not OECD member). By World Bank estimates income in Chile and Argentina with rates of 44,5% and 52,1% (EU 30,4%, US 40,8%) is very unequally distributed, and only lower from the likes of Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia and South Africa (highest with 63,1%) - all former colonies with rich white populations... And then as taxation is one of the main means of wealth redistribution, Argentina's tax revenues are similar to European rate (37% of GDP) but Chile's is way lower with 19%. So basically judging by simple math it seems like in Chile the rich get it their way by avoiding to pay up and in Argentina much of public money goes to waste. Maybe European economies are not so bad in the end...

Similarly Argentina's and Chile's human development index (HDIs) are high, 0,797 and 0,805 respectively (EU average is 0,867, US is on 0,910). The situation changes dramatically though once the data are inequality adjusted. Suddenly both countries drop significantly to 0,641 and 0,652 which corresponds to median human development (EU decrease to 0,793 and US to 0,771). Not such a good deal in the end.

The struggle continues...

Glaciar Perito Moreno

Today is one of our last days in Patagonia - on Monday off to warmer parts of Argentina :-) When planning the trip, seeing the Perito Moreno glacier around El Calafate was top of my list. So leaving the best for last, at least so I thought, El Calafate was the last stop of our 3-week Patagonian adventure. Maybe the expectations were too high, weather too varied, or too many tourists around, but it just has not blown my mind. The glacier is born to be a star - all bright blue with jagged ice blocks; easy to see up close from the opposite hill; advancing so fast (up to two meters per day!) that big chunks of ice keep on falling off causing noisy bangs and huge waves - it is difficult not to be enchanted by its beauty and size. But for me it looked almost ordinary and predictable, just because it is so perfect. Even when Western winds blew rain into my face, the glacier was lit by the morning sun as it should be in a 'studio' so I could take a perfect photo. Perito Moreno glacier is a stunning beauty, but I prefer El Chalten's rough mountain beasts...

El Chalten

Discovering things for yourself is a great feeling, especially when in the past it seemed all but barely possible. I remember when reading Blixen's 'Babette's Feast' I could have never imagined that I would ever try Veuve Clicqout champagne (not millesime 1860 but still - bourgogne from Clos de Vougeot still to go).

The same feeling I had when I watched for the first time Herzog's 'Scream of Stone' about climbers reaching Cerro Torre peak in El Chalten. The movie is from 1991 and was mostly shot in the area. It seemed like a profound wilderness, isolated from civilization and completely subdued to the forces of nature. Chalten in indigenous people language means 'smoking mountain' due to clouds often covering the top of Monte Fitz Roy, the highest in th area. In 1991 El Chalten was just a small pueblo with few cabins only reachable in warmer months - now it is sizeable hub for gore-tex crowd. But people then and now come for the same - unique mountains shooting up out of Patagonia's plains on one side and Southern Patagonian Ice Field on the other. And it is a great place for hiking tourists (like me) and professional climbers alike. Some of the climbs are the most challenging in the world, not only for the sheer difficulty of the mountains' vertical slopes but also for the changing weather and hundred-knots strong winds. Now when some days over 100 people reach the summit of Mount Everest, Cerro Torre (only 3.128 m high) and slightly higher Monte Fitz Roy are often successfully ascended only once a year.

Yesterday there was blue sky all around but Cerro Torre was all covered with clouds. It took 4-hour patient waiting for clouds to clear up to get just the glimpse of what the mountain is really like. I will probably :-) never climb this mountain, but by seeing something you always thought of, it just makes you want more. So next time no hostels, just tents, no trails, just tours deeper into the valleys - all just to get closer, to see the sunrise over Cerro Torre and make the relationship even closer...

Photo: Cerro Torre - left top, Monte Fitz Roy - right down, the rest me ice climbing

Patagonia still...

Hiking used to be easy. Boots, pants, t-shirts, hot sweater and some waterproof jacket. Some cherry vodka helped too. Now it is a much different affair judging by hiking crowd... Let's starts with socks - they need to have silver nanoparticles so they do not stink after. Underwear for hiking is different than normal one everyone knows:-) but it is also different from the one for skiing - at least so producers say. Then fleece... Polartec with Power Stretch with antibacterial treatment is a must. Pants and jacket is easy - you just need to decide whether Soft Shell with Dryskin material and Keprotech reinforsements and Durable Water Repellency is good enough or you go for Gore-tex and then only decide if two- or three-layer... The boots need to be fitted for crampons, take ice axe and you are ready to go! You can now feel like a world class hiker!

All of this for three days hiking, when you do not even leave the valleys... Patagonia's weather is capricious but do you really need all this? Here in El Chalten many are true hikers and climbers, but still most are just professionally equipped occasional ones. I know I am one of them... It feels odd to overspend but I guess this is how our world works now and how progress is attained. You pay more and get more, but only just... We consume more than we need and all big multinationals make sure we do not stop - now we do not spend any more, we belong (!) even though it is just for three days. I hope it just does not take away the fun. But about this tomorrow...

Mercosur

Tomorrow we are going to cross the Chilean-Argentinian border for the 3rd time during last three weeks. It is really not much of the hustle, but still far from what internal Schengen area borders are like. And Mercosur, South American economic and political union, is far from being another EU - for the good some would say (not me!). And while Argentina is a full member, Chile is just an associate.
But what is really funny is that despite all the similarities to Europe, culture resemblance, common names and history, there are so many little differences that just make you smile every day. Let's take the bottles sizes... Like in Europe most people drink beer and fizzy drinks. So you would expect 'normal' 330ml, 500ml or 1 litre bottles. You can find those too, but there is many, many more... Maybe it is better for consumers or producers, but for me it is just funny:

Torres del Paine

Hiking is really a personal affair. At least for me it is all about enjoying the nature but also about getting away from the crowds. So hopping on a packed bus to Torres del Paine was not very promising... Getting squeezed in the national park ticket office did not help either, and then once at the mountain refuge it seemed more like a franco-german bingo place :-) I guess the European retirees need to spend their savings while it lasts...
But once on the trail it is all how it should be. And Torres del Paine are really unique. Even though you start almost from a sea level, once you walk up the mountain valleys it really feels like high in the Alps or the High Tatras. Only the valleys feel more like canyons with summits around reaching over 3.000m. Snow covered peaks, waterfalls, glaciers - nothing more to wish for. And hiking is great! Finally on your own losing breath, cursing too much pisco sour the day before, but gradually moving up. The valleys climb slowly and the landscape becomes bare and dry with lonely mountains all around. Another jump over a stream, last climb and you are there... Some people say it is all about the climb itself - for me it was the view made it really worthwhile. Suddenly you forget the crowds squatting at the viewpoint -  mirador. Here it is just about you and the mountains seemingly within your grasp...