Sounds Good on Paper

Category: Argentina

  • Staying in Salta

    I’m relieved and happy to report that we really love the city of Salta and plan to stay for awhile. After dragging all our suitcases onto the wrong bus to Salta, I really don’t want to go anywhere else for awhile.

    Here is my top ten list of what I love about Salta:

    1. Beautiful City – there are colonial buildings, parks with palm trees and mountains in the distance.

    2. Amazing apartment – I’m sure hardcore travelers/expats can live anywhere, but we’re not hardcore.  We need a nice place with the internet, a couch, and big bed.   We got so lucky with the apartment we’re renting. It has all those things and an amazing deck with a jacuzzi.

    view from our apartment

    3. Nice people – the people here are super friendly and patient with my lack of Spanish.   The cheek kiss is popular. I find myself cheek kissing 2-3 people a day. (not including Jeff).

    4. Small city feel. There are 500,000 people here, but horse drawn carts still go down our street. This one unfortunately had a megaphone.

    5. Empanadas (and other delicious foods)

    Humita – tamale-like corn dish

    6. Good cycling for Jeff -Jeff’s found a great group of guys to ride with.

    7. Yerba Mate – we see the gourds everywhere and bags of it sold at the grocery stores. I bought some in tea bags to start.  Tastes good but leaves a nasty green ring in the cup.

    8. Interesting cultural stuff – honestly, we haven’t done anything cultural yet.  But here’s a guy just hanging out in a full gaucho outfit talking to someone on a bike.  I’m sure he’s dressed up for a tourist activity, but you have to love the pants.

    9. Wine – The town of Salta is in the province of Salta which is known for high altitude wine.  So far all the wine we’ve tried from this area has been good.  We’re hoping to do some trips out to the vineyards soon.

    10. Three alfajores for a peso –  How can you not love a town where the bakery down the street sells 3 alfajores (two shortbread cookies with dulce de leche in between) for a peso, the equivalent of a quarter.  And, the nice older couple that own the store talk to me in Spanish every time I go in.

    What I don’t like about Salta:

    1. Rain – turns out January and February are the rainy season.  Seems like we left Seattle’s rainy winter to go to Salta’s rainy summer.  Ironic isn’t it?

    2. Lack of Veggie Variety – this idea of eating what’s local is great until you actually are in a place where you can only get local vegetables.  I dream of  a produce aisle filled with vegetables shipped in from all over the world, carbon footprint be damned.

    3. Lack of good coffee – there are lots of places to go out and get good coffee, very hard to buy good beans in the grocery stores.  Instant and robusto beans yes, Arabica not so much.

    Luckily, the dislike list is short, and who knows, dislike #3 might just get us to switch to yerba mate full time.

  • Cycling in Salta!

    The Journey

    Coming to Argentina with my bike was a gamble. Were there going to be roads that would be well paved? Could I get out of the city on the bike safely? Would the bike make it to our (semi) final destination?

    Turns out the answer to those three questions was yes! I packed my bike in a specially design bike carrying case (plastic shell with small luggage-style-wheels for rolling it) and checked it on the plane. Got it onto the plane, off the plane, into a taxi, to Buenos Aires, back into a taxi, back onto a plane and into another taxi (actually it took two taxis that time!) to Córdoba and onto a bus to Salta, a city up North. That’s about 7600 miles in total.

    Jeff's Iron Case travel bag

    I searched “ciclismo Salta” on Google and got a contact email address and from there was able to arrange a ride with some local cyclists. I rode out to the meeting point, thinking I would likely see only a few riders, but was surprised to see about thirty cyclists with modern race bikes, riders varying in age from 15 to about 60.

    I could tell this would be a fun group to ride with in that there was a lot of excited chatter, joking, and thankfully, interest in what I was doing there, where I was from, and–as will happen with any group of cyclist–questions about my bike.

    Taking a Coke break

    Turns out they ride just about daily and are a rather experienced, fit bunch of riders.  Some have been riding for over twenty years. I chatted with most of them during our 50 mile ride, one of them put his hand on my shoulder as we rode handlebar-to-handlebar up a long climb.

    At the end of the ride someone asked if I wanted to stop for a Coke with them. The American equivalent of this would be either all stopping at Starbucks for a coffee or perhaps at a gas station where everyone would buy a can of pop etc. Here in Salta it meant sitting down in a shaded area in town where two riders could run to buy several 2 liter Cokes to fill everyone’s cycling water bottles. Being the day after New Year’s we toasted with our Coke filled bottles making sure to “clink” every single bottle in the group. Again lots of chatter and smiles, and also more interest in me and my journey.

    Cycling in Salta

    I’ve ridden with these guys several times since, and am looking forward to many more rides and routes.

    For anyone coming to Salta you can see two of my rides on the website “Map My Ride”

    http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/26782092

    http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/26781386

  • Cordoba to Salta bus ride – my neurotic personality fails me

    If we were on the show Amazing Race we would have been eliminated for sure.  We were taking an overnight bus from the town of Cordoba to Salta.  Usually my complete neurotic personality, while annoying, keeps us on track. This time it completely failed us.

    We had flown from Buenos Aires to Cordoba.  After a few days in Cordoba we were headed for the town of Salta.

    I’m the first to admit we have way too much luggage.

    But, when we bought tour first class overnight bus ticket we were assured there was more than enough room for all our luggage.  I even insisted we bring the above photos to show them when we bought the tickets.  The ticket seller said it was fine.

    Our bus left at 8:15pm.  I insisted we leave our apt at 6:30.   No way were we missing this bus. Jeff protested, but after some serious marriage negotiation we got to the bus station at 7:00p.m.   We stood at the bus terminal and watched as buses headed to all parts of Argentina came and went. I strode up and down the terminal monitoring each bus. There was no way a bus could come into the station without my knowledge.  Jeff thought I was overdoing it, if the bus pulled in surely we’d see it.  I  agreed, but nervous energy kept me pacing up and down.

    At 7:45 a bus with the words Salta plastered to the front of it rolled into the terminal. Jeff and I wrangled all 5 pieces of luggage to the bus.   The driver didn’t want to take Jeff’s bike suitcase.  He had to pay “a little extra” to get the driver to accept it.    Finally, the bike and our huge suitcases got loaded in. It was a relief to see them safely on the bus and the luggage compartment door shut.

    Then we handed our boarding ticket to the driver who informed us we had the wrong bus. This was the 8:30 bus. Oh, and what do you know, our 8:15 bus had already left.  It seemed impossible. I had memorized ever bus and where it was gong. There was no way  a bus for Salta had pulled in without my knowledge.  What’s the point of being neurotic, nervous and checking and double checking if you still miss the correct bus?

    Our luggage was on the 8:30 bus, but we were not.  We waved goodbye as everything we currently owned drove off to Salta without us.

    The next bus we could get on was at 10:30. It cost extra to change the ticket for a lower class of service. As we sat in the station the same thought went through both of our heads, “I just want to go home. I’m too old for this sh*t.”

    But then we got on the bus, got served a tray of different kinds of ham sandwiches: rolled ham sandwich, thin ham sandwich, regular ham sandwich. We watched a Jennifer Anniston movie, reclined our chairs and went to sleep.

    The next morning we arrived in Salta and our luggage was waiting, untouched at the bus office. It only cost a “little extra” to get it.

    So what seemed like a potential disaster worked out fine in the end. The travel gods were watching over us yet again.

  • Eating an Entire Cow (not in one sitting) part 5

    We spent our last night in Buenos Aires at the same restaurant we went to the first night.   Here’s what we’ve learned in a month in Buenos Aires.

    • 10:30 is a good time to go out for dinner.  Midnight is not.  They were done for the night, but still seated us.

    • Our Spanish still needs work.  We ordered 3 different steaks. When they came one turned out to be chicken.

    • Steaks taste a lot better than organs (at least the one organ I’ve tried so far).  We got a flank and skirt steak. Both were really good.
    • They don’t call it skirt steak here. Jeff tried to buy a “lomo de falda” at a butcher the next day which made the butcher laugh.
    • Pictures of gauchos holding giant knives should not scare you.

    • You need to use caution when salting.  Salt shakers run really fast here.
    • Dulce de leche ice cream rocks

  • Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year!  We wish everyone a wonderful, healthy 2011.

    Our New Year’s Eve didn’t go as planned.  Going out to dinner was a disaster.   We walked home in a torrential downpour. The clock struck midnight while we were in an elevator. But then we were surprised by a huge fireworks display that we could see from our balcony.

    That’s what I love about traveling, even when things are going poorly, they can turn around when you least expect it.

    Wishing everyone lots of wonderful surprises in 2011.