Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

Posted on July 30, 2010 by ryan

Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…

Cafe con piernas: The background

So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless. After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening). I was wrong.

What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years. It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost. It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown). At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day. So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing. Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.

In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops. Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences. As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…

Cafe con piernas: The news report/video

I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….

…

(sorry, just had a flashback)

Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):

Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)

Ok, can’t put it off any longer. On to our personal experiences…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning

As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’ We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!” As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…

Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)

Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe. These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.

Cafe con piernas -- Cafe Caribe storefront image

Looks perfectly normal from the outside

Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view. Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).

Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand. After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying it was “a cultural experience”. If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them. Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.

I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that. Here is a direct quote from her: “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.” Seriously, that’s what she said. There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual. I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 2: First attempt

There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one. Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there). It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female. Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated. We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go. If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.

That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas. Understandably, he laughed. Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries. He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen. Makes sense. The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!

The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over. Again, I was wrong. We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???” I said, “Really? Still?”

Her: “Yes! He said I could go!!”

Me: “Ok…”

We decided to attempt the same plan. We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:

We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy

We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking. About a block away we encountered this place:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio image

We have a winner

We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative. Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.

Oh boy.

Seriously, this is challenging to write. Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)

The room was about the size of a bedroom. The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back. There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space. There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember). Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.

We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all. She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like. She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing. We ordered 2 coffees. She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee). Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her. Jen gave her another 2,000.

She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle. This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us. It probably always will be. Whether we want it to be or not.

At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff. We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right. We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers. In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.

Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2

In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors. The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance. Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl. And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service. Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.

Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left. I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me. Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her. We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother. She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit. She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol). It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly. We were out within 10 minutes. Jen was no longer excited. We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop. Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio 2 image

2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day

It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back. Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.

After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe

Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research. It was a world of difference. There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Cafe con piernas, santiago - Cafe Caribe image

I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below

This was basically just a normal coffee shop. In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing. This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Epilogue

It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us. Writing this has been cathartic. Let us never speak of it again.

Cafe con piernas: Our advice

If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti. If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio. Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.

Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links

A female expat’s experience and perspective on cafe con piernas: http://eatwineblog.com/2010/03/26/coffee-with-legs-santiago-style/
Another blog with some interesting thoughts on the sexism of it as well as some conversations with an owner and a bit on the economics: http://www.chipsites.com/chile-travel/fun-activities-cafe-con-piernas.html
A food blog’s perspective: http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/snapshots-from-chile-cafe-con-piernas.html
Additional perspective from the Travel Tart: http://www.thetraveltart.com/starbucks-coffee/

Where to eat in Buenos Aires: A few of our favorite BA restaurants

Posted on July 28, 2010 by jen

Now that we’re settled into Santiago, it’s time for some reflection on our favorite places to eat in Buenos Aires. While we may have mentioned from time to time that the food choices in Buenos Aires can be a bit repetitive (cycling through the 5 major food groups), there are definitely some amazing places to eat in the city. In addition to the things listed in Time Out and on Trip Advisor, we’ve been lucky enough to find a few lesser known restaurants that we think are awesome, and you just happen to be lucky enough that we’re willing to share them with you!

Note: We’ve indicated the price we usually pay for the two of us, typically including wine (we like wine) and either an appetizer or dessert; we’ve noted exceptions. Take these as rough estimates, not absolutes.

El Estrebe: If you’ve followed our blog, you know that we LOVE El Estrebe. We found it around the corner from our apt. in Recoleta and noticed that it was always packed (after 9pm anyway – don’t dare try to go to dinner before then in Argentina). They also have a couple of fabulous wines for around AR35-40 (that’s US$10) by bodega Viñas de Narvaez, on the first page of the wine menu (our faves are the malbec and the syrah). Read our review here and our photo essay here, but suffice to say that this is probably the one restaurant we’ll miss the most when (or if) we go back to the US.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR 200 – we usually share a steak since they’re massive (see below) but have 2 appetizers, dessert and a bottle of wine
- Best for: Dinner
  Incredible bife de lomo from El Estrebe
Don Julio: Another great parrilla, this one located in Palermo. It’s a classic, and classy, kind of place – great service, great wine list, fabulous meats. Another parrilla in the neighborhood is really popular with tourists (La Cabrera) but we think this is much better. Try the Flecha de los Andes malbec – awesome.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR250-300 (the above-mentioned wine is ~AR100, bumping our total up a bit)
- Best for: Dinner
  Us with our favorite bottle of wine at Don Julio (yes, we know we look like we've had too much)- sometimes they'll let you sign it and they'll put it up on the wall
Dada: This one is a bistro located in centro, near Florida street. The space is a little funky and casual with only about 10 tables, plus a bar. They have amazing beef dishes (the ojo de bife is our favorite – amazingly flavorful – they actually appear to use seasoning it which doesn’t happen much in Buenos Aires and may be considered cheating…) but also a bunch of other good stuff, including a langostine risotto. Smaller menu than most places, which we’ve found to mean that they do all of it well, rather than much of it poorly. Call ahead for reservation, especially if you’re going on the weekend.
- Neighborhood: Microcentro
- Cuisine: French bistro
- Price: AR250
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Funky, low-key place with amazing food!
Pizza Piola: Trendy environment, often playing techno or other clubbish music, and really good thin crust pizza – not only the typical Buenos Aires pizzas, but more creative modern cuisine style as well (think California Pizza Kitchen, but better). Two of our favorites are the Carbonara and the Avandaro. Best to get a reservation Thurs/Fri/Sat.
- Neighborhood: Barrio Norte
- Cuisine: Pizza
- Price: ~AR120 (~AR50 for a large pizza, AR20-30 for a small)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Thin crust, proscutto, brie and arugula - yes!!!
Pizza y Espuma: If you want a good set lunch with pasta or a simple pizza, this is a good bet. We stumbled across this place on our walk home from Spanish school – they have a couple of locations, including Palermo Viejo and Recoleta. They also have pretty much the only white wine in all of Argentina that we really like, and it’s their house wine – San Felipe. It comes in a funny short, fat bottle, and you can sometimes find it in the grocery store too.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta, Palermo Viejo, others
- Cuisine: Pizza and pasta
- Price: AR80-100 (lunch price; variance based on whether we order wine or not – we highly recommend a bottle of wine for lunch)
- Best for: Lunch (good fixed menu options)
  Location in Palermo Viejo - 2 levels, with plenty of TVs for football (and we think a rooftop deck too)
Cumana: This is a Buenos Aires institution that draws tons of locals and tourists alike. They’re famous for their empanadas and cazuelas (stews/soups), and also happens to be the site of my unfortunate run-in with mondongo. As such, we love their empanadas and some of their stews, but just be careful what you order. There’s often a line out the door for this place during the lunch rush or dinnertime, but we’ve had better luck with a late lunch, around 2ish.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Traditional Argentine
- Price: AR100 or less
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in
La Morada: Not exactly the greatest ambiance, but this is our go-to empanada delivery place. They have carne suave as well as carne picante (thank god for a little spice, finally!!), as well as some awesome caprese empanadas (we think of these as appetizer empanadas).
- Neighborhood: Recoleta
- Cuisine: Empanadas
- Price: ~AR50 for a dozen (empanadas only, no drinks–usually covers us for 2 dinners)
- Best for: Delivery (dinner)
  After much searching, our favorite empanada place in our neighborhood
Miranda: We tried this place for lunch soon after arriving in Buenos Aires on the recommendation of a friend (see our full review here) – good decision! Every time we’ve gone, this place has been packed with businessmen and trendy Palermo Hollywood-goers (you know, the ones who leave their sunglasses on indoors). The set lunch options here include an appetizer (try the chorizo or polenta), a main dish (we especially like the lomo sandwich and chicken kebab with tower of grilled vegetables) and drinks (includes house wine- yay!!). That’s a LOT of really good food for not that much. We’re guessing dinner’s pretty good too, but we’ve never been since the lunch option is such a good deal.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Hollywood
- Cuisine: Parrilla
- Price: ~AR90 (lunch with wine)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Only go here if you're hungry and you like meat
La Fabrica del Taco: Having come from California, we’re used to Mexican food being plentiful and cheap, and thus ate it around once a week before we came to South America. Turns out, Mexican is hard to come by here, but this place makes some awesome (and pretty authentic) tacos, as well as good guac and pico de gallo (try saying that with a Buenos Aires accent and not laughing). Margaritas are expensive (like most mixed drinks in Argentina), so we usually stick with beer or sodas here. When we get that craving for good Mexican and food with a little heat, this is where we go. Just be prepared for the kind of creepy collection of Mexican wrestling masks covering the walls . . .
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Mexican
- Price: ~AR120 (AR12-15/taco, 1-2 should fill you up)
- Best for: Lunch, dinner
  Just wait until you get inside . . .
Cluny: This is our fancy place where we go when we want to pretend like we can still afford the dinners we used to buy when we had paychecks. It’s a beautiful, elegant space with fabulous service – we’ve been lucky enough to have the same server, Marcelo (and ironically, the same table) every time we’ve been. It’s been described as “modern Argentine” as well as French, but we just call it delicious. After trying a number of different things on the menu, our absolute favorite is the mushroom risotto topped with a incredibly flavorful hunk of lamb – best we’ve had anywhere, not just in Argentina. Extensive (and somewhat expensive) wine list. Great for a special evening out.
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: French/Argentine
- Price: ~AR300 (includes ~AR100 bottle of wine)
- Best for: Dinner
  You can sit on the couches, or they have regular tables and a loft upstairs
La Salamandra: This is one of our favorite cafes, located in Palermo Soho. The company is actually a producer of high-end dulce de leche that they sell in their cafe as well as in grocery stores throughout the country – it’s good. They also make their own fresh mozzarella and use it in lots of their dishes – stuff like grilled vegetable salad, foccacia sandwiches and fresh quiches, definitely not your standard Argentine fare. And if you order a coffee, they serve it with a ceramic spoon full of their dulce de leche!!
- Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
- Cuisine: Cafe, sandwiches, salads
- Price: AR80 (no alcohol)
- Best for: Brunch, lunch
  Be sure to order a coffee after lunch so you can try their fabulous dulce de leche
Lo de Mateo: This is another neighborhood parrilla that we stumbled across one afternoon while wandering around Recoleta. We’ve been for both lunch and dinner, pasta and carne, and our favorite is the pasta lunch menu. They have an awesome scarparo sauce – a red sauce with various types of onions, a touch of cream and then a bit of pesto in the middle – great with their stuffed pastas. And the lunch menu includes dessert – their flan is my favorite.
- Neighborhood: Recoleta/Palermo Viejo (it’s right on the line)
- Cuisine: Pasta and parrilla
- Price: AR80 (lunch, no alcohol)
Best for: Lunch, dinner
Nothing too fancy, just really good pastas and flan!!

Any other favorites out there??

We’re settled in Santiago; it’s still awesome (and getting awesomer)

Posted on July 28, 2010 by ryan

We arrived in Santiago from Buenos Aires on Friday, just in time for a cold and somewhat rainy weekend (yay winter in the southern hemisphere!). We were a little nervous to finally see the apartment that we had committed to sight-unseen for the next month (especially after seeing a different one last week that did not quite live up to the pictures); when we saw it, we were quite surprised–in a good way.

We’ll write more about how to rent an apartment in Santiago in the future–it seems to be quite a bit easier than Buenos Aires. There are less places for rent, but laws are more enforced here and people tend to obey them so there are significantly fewer ways that things can go badly for you. We found this place through Craigslist from a company called CerroUrbano run by a very nice Argentine couple who has been living in Chile for 5+ years.

Santiago rental apartment living room image

This is our living room. There is a tiny patio at the end<--remember this, it will come in handy in a few paragraphs

The place is only 36 square meters (~390 square feet), so it’s tiny, but it’s very well designed and furnished to make it comfortable and livable.

We miss the king sized bed we had in BA. It's a good thing we like each other...

While the kitchen is smaller than what we had in BA, it’s much better laid out and quite functional:

I bet your kitchen counter doesn't glow...

All of the above is great… modern, comfortable, nice building, etc. BUT, by far, the best part is the views…. Remember that tiny patio I mentioned earlier?

Santiago rental apartment, patio view image

We are on the 20th floor. This is what is outside the patio.

In case you are having trouble distinguishing what is out there, here are a couple of shots with the door open:

Santiago rental apartment, patio view 2 image

Yeah...

Or, if you look a little to the right:

Santiago rental apartment, patio view 3 image

It's a decent view; that hill is Cerro Santa Lucia, we climb it daily for exercise

How about a zoom in just for kicks:

Santiago rental apartment, patio view 4 image

Mother F#$**r

Keep in mind from our previous post on Santiago, those mountains are ~4 miles higher than the city.

The apartment is in Bellas Artes–perfectly located right in the middle of tons of cafes and restaurants (including a number of very special cafes which we’ll tell you all about out later this week…), very close to multiple subway stops, 4 blocks from Plaza de Armas and basically perfect in every way as far as we can tell. More on our impressions of Santiago later, but we like it more and more every day. We are paying ~US$800/month for this fully furnished place including all utilities; we heard that buying such a unit would cost ~US$50k, intriguing…

So yeah, things look like they are going to work out just fine here in Santiago 🙂

Here are some more crazy mountain pictures for your enjoyment from our rooftop pool deck and the hill near our apartment: (click on them to enlarge)

: Crazy mountains

: More crazy mountains

: Jen with crazy mountains

: Seriously

: They are everywhere

: more

We got interviewed by Quitter to Winner!

Posted on July 26, 2010 by ryan

And you should read it! : Consulting Rehab interview on Quitter to Winner

Quitter to Winner is a relatively new interview-based blog dedicated to “providing a resource for those quitting their job for a career break, sabbatical, entrepreneurial venture or new gig.” There are some very interesting interviews on there providing inspiration for exploring some less conventional paths in life and I have no doubt the site will only grow.

Thanks to Michael at Quitter to Winner for including us!

Trip report: Wine tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

Posted on July 25, 2010 by jen

We decided to use Ashley’s visit as an excuse to go wine tasting in Mendoza (the top wine-producing region in Argentina, especially known for its malbecs). We only had 2 1/2 days there before heading to Santiago, but we really enjoyed it – here’s a quick trip report:

Wine tasting: Choices, choices, choices!

There are several different wine valleys within an hour or so of Mendoza, the closest of which is Lujan de Cuyo. Wineries aren’t the same as in California, where you can just show up and do a tasting – here you have to make an appt. in order for the guard at the gate to let you in, and you usually have to go on a tour of the winery before you get to the tasting. As for how to get there, there are a couple of options:

Bike to the wineries: Basically rent a bike and cycle around to various wineries. This is the cheapest option, but not the safest: people have been mugged, and we’ve also heard of traffic accidents since bikers share the road with everybody else.
Private driver: Hire somebody to drive you around for the day, but you make all the appointments, so you have to know where you want to go–this is harder than it sounds, there are ~1300 wineries in the area!!
Private guide: Same as the above, but the driver makes the appointments and supposedly knows a lot about wine and has contacts at the wineries. There are a dozen of these on Trip Advisor, all highly recommended (usually by people making their first post), and at least 4 of them are named Javier.
Small group tour: Tours arranged by a private company, usually with a max of 6 people per tour.
Large group tour: Think tour bus.

We ended up going with the small group tour – we’d heard great things from several friends who had gone, as well as numerous positive reviews on Trip Advisor. We chose Trout and Wine, one of two main companies running such tours from Mendoza, and it was awesome (the other is Ampora which we also heard good things about)! Our guide was Michelle, an American who studied abroad in Mendoza during college. She was great – very friendly, knew a lot about the area and the wineries and great to spend the day with. It was very cold the day we went, which made the vineyard tours a little less comfortable, but it was still awesome. We visited 4 wineries, including lunch at one:

Kaiken: Just started giving tours and tastings about 4 months ago. This was our first stop of the day and was freezing cold when we started the tour out in the vineyards – seriously, we could see ice on the ground.
Cold but beautiful - how often do you get to visit wineries with the snow-capped Andes looming in the background?

After a tour of the vineyards and facilities, we went to the tasting room to try their two high-end reds. Unfortunately, the tasting room wasn’t much warmer than outside – the wines were too cold to really taste them, so our host suggested we warm them up with our hands . . . not that our hands were any warmer than the wine after half an hour out in the freezing cold! We think the wine was good, but again, it was hard to tell.
Sottano: This was our favorite of the day, due at least part in to our awesome host, Diego. He greeted us all with a glass of rose sparkling wine then gave us a quick (~10 min) tour/history of the winery before moving us into the (heated!!!!) tasting room. The tasting room has a glass floor that looks into the barrel room below – very cool. We tasted 4 different wines here, which were all very good, and had a great time chatting with Diego throughout the tasting – very casual, very fun.

Ryan and Ashley in the tasting room at Sottano - note the barrel room below

Club Tapiz: We did a 5-course lunch at Club Tapiz in the second floor of the restaurant, overlooking the vineyards. Wines were paired with each course (and poured generously) – this was a bit less of a tasting (without a lot of description of each wine as it was served) and more just drinking. Food was not out of this world but definitely good and went well with the wines – we like having steak for lunch.
Beautiful dining room at Club Tapiz overlooking the surrounding vineyards

After lunch, we headed downstairs to do an olive oil tasting (they also have olive trees at the winery), but the olive oil was frozen solid in the tasting room . . . upon discovering it was frozen, they told us that this is the sign of a high-quality olive oil which is either an interesting fun fact, or an impressive bit of improvisational olive oil salesmanship–we are equally appreciative either way.
They eventually found us some olive oil that wasn't frozen to taste
Alta Vista: Our last stop of the day, this is a classic winery for tasting in Mendoza. We did a quick tour of the winery, including seeing the old concrete tanks (something they use just in Mendoza) and the owners’ personal stash.
Hmmm, wonder how we could get a key to that? There were bottles over 50 years old in there!

Our tasting upstairs was great fun – the host was super friendly and poured great wines (we brought one to Santiago with us, will make sure it’s still good when we haven’t been drinking for 6 hours). We also tried the Alto wine, their top wine – great way to end the day!

This wine was phenomenal! 95 points means it's important

At most Mendoza wineries, you’re typically expected to go on a tour before the tasting. We’ve done a number of winery tours (especially while living near Napa and Sonoma) and weren’t really excited about going on a tour at every winery and hearing the exact same thing, but we were pleasantly surprised by our experience in Mendoza. The tours were very informative and we definitely learned new things – for example, at Kaiken we learned that you can graft branches for one type of grape onto the rootstalk of another in order to shorten the time from planting to production – we saw malbec vines grown from a chardonnay root base (didn’t know you could do that!).

Old chardonnay rootstock grafted to malbec branches - produces malbec grapes faster than planting new vines and waiting for them to mature

The wineries also did a nice job of not all telling us the exact same thing (we suspect this was thanks to Trout & Wine), and we only did a full vineyard tour at one winery, while the others focused on different parts of the production process or showing us what was unique about their wines/facilities. We definitely came away with new knowledge about the winemaking process.

Overall, we were impressed with our experience with Trout and Wine. It’s expensive relative to other options (we paid US$125/person during low season; high season rate is $150), but it was worth it. High-quality transportation (mini-bus), great guide, tastes of reserve/high-end wines and a very customized experience – we were the only people there at every winery we visited. Also, when you consider the base costs for wine tasting on your own, this wasn’t much more. Average tasting fees are around US$10 (just for the basic wines, not the higher end ones we tasted with Trout & Wine), and the winery lunches are typically ~US$45, so that’s US$85 for 4 wineries, even before transportation. And they sent a bottle of wine to our hotel before the tour as well – nice touch!

On day 2, we took a taxi to Clos de Chacras winery which was about 20 minutes away and did a tour/tasting there. The tour was pretty good, but the tasting was somewhat mediocre (though possibly we had destroyed our palates and livers the previous day). While it was relatively easy to do a tasting here (just had the hotel call and make a reservation and then hailed a cab), the seemingly lower quality tasting and more generic tour made us appreciate our experience with Trout and Wine all the more.

Where there’s wine, there’s food!

The Mendoza food scene isn’t exactly Buenos Aires, but we did find a few great places to eat. Dinner the first night was at Azafran – we’d read online that you go into the cellar with the sommelier to choose your wine. In reality, it wasn’t quite as cool as it sounded, but they do have a wine room in the front of the restaurant (with a window out to the street – wonder how that works for preserving the wine?). We also went to Francesco, a fancy-ish Italian/pasta place off of Plaza Independencia – really good pasta but expensive for Argentina. And check out what we walked past on our way to the restaurant:

At first we thought this was a massive leftover Christmas decoration hanging over Plaza Independencia, but apparently not. Definitely . . . weird.

We also visited the much-acclaimed Vines of Mendoza wine bar. Lesson 1: not open on Monday (when we tried to go, of course). When we went back on Wed., we were impressed with the wine selection and the knowledge of the bar staff, but annoyed that we couldn’t buy a bottle to share amongst the 3 of us. Apparently, they only sell by the glass and wouldn’t sell us a bottle . . . The place was freezing, and people kept coming in and out of the tasting room every minute or two the whole time we were there, usually leaving the door wide open behind them. Might be better in summer, but we don’t really get all the hype about this place after visiting. They’ve got a good website with info about stuff to do in Mendoza though . . . and they have a good cheese plate.

Where to stay? No easy answer

We learned through planning this trip that Mendoza doesn’t exactly have a plethora of great places to stay that are affordable. The market is roughly divided into super-expensive top end hotels, guesthouses/B&Bs with mediocre reviews, business hotels and hostels. We had originally wanted to stay in a cute B&B, but even the top rated ones on Trip Advisor had some pretty bad (and consistent) reviews.

We decided to stay in the Hotel Aconcagua, a business hotel located about 3 blocks from Plaza Independencia, which was super convenient. We booked a triple room online and they ended up giving us two adjoining rooms, which was great. The rooms were clean and quiet, breakfast was included and the staff was very friendly and helpful.

Nothing fancy but perfectly nice - clean, quiet room and great location ~2 blocks from Plaza Independencia

The only problem we had were the obnoxious children running (yes, literally running) through the lobby while we were downstairs using the wireless. For example, these 6 children ran to and fro through the lobby for a good 2 hours, at one point playing on the luggage dolly and slamming it into a glass dividing wall, at other times jumping over the reception counter to take pens out of the hands of the front desk staff – seriously, we saw this happen. Keep in mind the parents were sitting chatting in a corner of the lobby and made no effort to control or discipline their children at any point over the 2 hours nor were they at all concerned by our very explicit gestures of displeasure. We’ve noticed similar, ahem, behavior, throughout our time in Argentina – have we just had bad luck, or have others noticed this phenomenon? Anybody have an explanation for what’s going on?

En fin

We definitely recommend Mendoza for wine if it’s in your budget – from what we know thus far, the wine’s better there than in Chile. We had been considering skipping Mendoza during our time in Argentina since we weren’t impressed with the wine tasting experience in Cafayate, but we’re very glad we did it – the experience is completely different and really worth the trip (and we found it to be unique and worthwhile even compared to our frequent trips to Napa/Sonoma). There are a bunch of outdoors things to do as well, but we unfortunately weren’t there at the right time of year. Overall, great trip – we just wish it had been warmer!!

Here’s the full album of pics from our trip if you want to see more: Our Mendoza pictures

Resources

We used several different resources for planning our trip. If you’re doing the same, these might be useful:

Trip Advisor: Particularly the forum (for info on different wine tasting options) and the hotel reviews
A Gringo in Buenos Aires: Good post on Argentine wine
Globetrotters travel blog: Detailed Mendoza trip report
Other travel blog: Detailed Mendoza trip report

Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Posted on July 22, 2010 by jen

You don’t have to go all the way to Mendoza to taste great Argentine wines!!!

We’d heard good reviews from friends who’d done tastings of Argentine wines here in Buenos Aires with Anuva Wines and had been meaning to do it for months. When Ryan’s sister came to visit and we thought we wouldn’t have time to visit Mendoza, we decided to book a tasting with them ($40 per person when we did it). Due to Ryan’s sister’s obsession with Argentine malbecs, we requested to do a malbec-only tasting, and Sarah from Anuva ordered in a few special wines for us from Mendoza.

Logistics:

Anuva’s tastings used to be held in owner’s home in Las Canitas, but they recently moved them to a trendy new hotel in Palermo Hollywood (the Rendez-voux Hotel) because the neighbors were starting to wonder at all the random people coming to the building every evening and leaving drunk and happy. We were a little disappointed when we first found out that they’d moved, because we’d planned to go to dinner in one of the many great restaurants in the Las Canitas neighborhood afterwards, but we ended up loving the location in Palermo (and Palermo’s not exactly short on great places to eat). The hotel looks brand new and is decorated in a cool modern design. The tasting was held in the the hotel’s lounge/cafe area, with bright orange upholstery – sounds weird, but it worked – see?

So many glasses, so little time

It might have been strange if hotel guests were using the lounge area, but for our tasting it was just us so worked great. We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by Sarah, who I’d emailed with beforehand and who was hosting our private tasting. Sarah had the table beautifully laid with an assortment of Anuva-branded tasting glasses at every seat (we like seeing lots of wine glasses waiting for us . . . means lots of wine).

The wine tasting experience:

We started with a tasting of a sparkling wine (the only non-malbec of the night), paired with a green apple/Roquefort cheese bruschetta (may sound weird, but it was really good!!). Our next wine was a malbec rose, followed by 4 traditional red malbecs. It was a great selection of wines – all with their own distinct personalities, all from different boutique Argentine wineries that we had never come across. The wines were paired with quite a plate of munchies – as I recall, a massive carne empanada, several different cheeses, a cheese and quince-paste spread, several sausages and 2 different types of chocolate – yum. I didn’t exactly realize they were each meant to be paired with a specific wine so started digging in when Sarah brought them to us . . . oops. It was really cool when Sarah led us through each wine with its paired food–despite many, many trips to wineries in California (we are lushes) we had never really had a great food pairing experience like this–it really does make a difference.

Our favorite wine of the night was the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec – despite the name, it’s actually located in Mendoza. It’s possible that Sarah skewed our opinions by telling us this was her favorite before we’d even tasted it . . . Who cares, it was awesome.

This isn't our picture because we were too tipsy to remember to take one, so we got this one from Anuva. That's the wine we loved on the right!

The company (Anuva wines):

Through the tasting, we peppered Sarah with questions, especially as we had since decided to add in a trip to Mendoza and wanted to know all the right wineries to visit, her favorite restaurants and any other pointers she had. She was very knowledgeable and at the same time just fun to spend the evening with – we really enjoyed our time with her. At the end of the ~2 hour tasting, we decided to take 2 bottles home with us – Anuva has a cellar there at the hotel, so we walked out the door with our bottles that night. And – this is awesome – we didn’t have to worry about bringing the right amount of cash as Anuva accepts both Paypal and credit cards – Sarah just billed us for the balance of our tasting and the bottles we took home. If you haven’t spent much time in Argentina, I can’t tell you how (1) uncommon and (2) appreciated this is! Anuva also has a business shipping wine to the US, so we bought enough to last us through the rest of our time here, knowing we could get more once we got back to the US (and decent prices too – lots of stuff under US$20).

Anuva wine tasting in Buenos Aires 3 image

The aftermath - a very happy Jen and Ashley with our host, Sarah (right)

The Verdict:

Overall, we’re big fans of the Anuva wine tasting. We tasted wines from really special, unique wineries (that we didn’t come across during our time in Mendoza – definitely not on the standard tasting tour route). Their willingness to do a custom malbec-only tasting as well as Sarah’s wine knowledge and personality made this a great evening and money well spent. We don’t normally post ads for places we’ve reviewed (in fact, we have never done it before), but we really liked this, so if you’re going to do the tasting with Anuva, book it through us and help us fund our South American wine research – thanks!!

Bottom Line: Argentina makes some of the best wines in the world, so if you’re coming to Buenos Aires and you like wine even a little bit, it would be crazy not to do a tasting with Anuva! And when you do, please remember to click through from this ad–that way, we can avoid getting jobs just a little longer 🙂 Enjoy!!

Avuna private wine tasting Buenos Aires booking image

Click here to book with Anuva!

p.s. Anyone that does a tasting with them, please let us know what you think!

p.p.s For those of you not planning to be in Buenos Aires any time soon; Anuva distributes wine in the US as well. Click on the link above and you can see what they have on offer–everything they have is hand picked, great Argentine wine and for the most part quite affordable. Some of you have asked what Argentine wines to try at home–buy a few through Anuva or join their wine club and we’re sure you’ll be quite pleased; maybe start with the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec, it’s awesome) We will definitely be buying wine from them after we go back to the US.

Santiago, Chile is awesome; let’s live there!

Posted on July 21, 2010 by ryan

We like Chile a lot!!

So much so, in fact, that we have added a new “Chilean Adventure” category to the blog and are going to go live there for a month starting on Friday (2 days from now).

I was there for a few days in ~2002 and remember absolutely loving Santiago. Back then, I was shocked at how modern and sophisticated it was and just loved the energy. Jen and I had always planned to get over there and check it out while down here in South America, but over the last 4 months of living in Buenos Aires and constantly hearing from everyone here how dull and boring Santiago is, we almost didn’t go (seriously, people in BA tend to really talk smack about Santiago–we are beginning to develop an understanding of why and will explore further in future posts). We are so glad that my sister coming to visit provided us with a compelling reason to make the trip!

As you may know, we had been trying to figure out what to do with ourselves for the next month and been tentatively planning to fly up and check out Ecuador and Columbia, but the pricing is crazy–the last straw was when we realized it would actually be cheaper to fly back to San Francisco first and then buy flights to Quito/Bogota/Cartagena from there than it would be to buy them from Buenos Aires (by the way… did you know that you can often get tickets from Miami to Columbia for under $100??) So, we were left unsure what to do next that would be feasible with our budget (like a fine wine, unemployment becomes more complex over time), but lucky for us, Chile is awesome! Santiago seems extremely live-able, refreshingly different than Buenos Aires, affordable, a good base for some travel and exciting–sign us up!

So what makes Santiago so awesome?

Thing 1: The insanely ridiculous mountains

Seriously, if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand how crazy this is. The photos don’t even come close to doing it justice, but I’ll try…

Andes mountains around Santiago, Chile image

We literally didn't see the mountains for our first few hours in town because we weren't looking high enough. You have to crane your neck back. Seriously.

The city itself is at an altitude of only ~1,600 feet above sea level, the mountains that surround it on ~3 sides and are extremely close get up to 21,555 feet – that is a difference of ~20,000 feet in altitude (~4 miles straight up) that takes place just outside the city. For comparison, if you have been to Denver and thought that the Rockies looked impressive from there, know this: The city of Denver is already at an altitude of ~5,200 feet and the very highest peaks in the Rockies (not really visible from the city) are around 14,000 feet – only a difference in altitude of ~9,000 feet.

So basically, imagine the view of the mountains from Denver and then move the mountains closer and add ~2 vertical MILES to them and you’ll have something similar to the view of the Andes from Santiago. Crazy? Yes.

That is a pretty tall building. Looks pretty small compared to the 4 miles of vertical mountain behind it...

Seriously, look higher--those aren't clouds

Thing 2: The culture and people

The culture of Santiago is very different from Buenos Aires in many ways. I’ll write more about this in the future after we’ve spent more time there, but there are several things that jumped out at us right away:

Safety: The first night we were there, we saw people all over the streets walking around in business clothes carrying laptop bags. This would never happen in Buenos Aires, even during the day. If the locals have a backpack in BA, they leave it unzipped so that it’s obvious they don’t have a laptop in it. This alone gave us an immediate impression that the city is significantly safer–this perception only grew over time.
Police presence (related to safety): There are Carabineros (Chilean police) everywhere and the people seem to enjoy talking with them. We asked around and were told that not only are they NOT corrupt, but they are consistently rated as the most trusted and respected institution in the country. Suffice to say that the police are generally held in a slightly different regard in Buenos Aires.
Friendliness: People were SO friendly! Virtually every person we met went out of their way to be nice to us and chat with us for awhile. They seemed genuinely curious about us and proud to share their country with us.
Cleanliness: The city is unbelievably clean! The sidewalks don’t have holes in them, the subways are super modern, the buses are quiet and don’t have huge trails of black smoke billowing out of them. It’s very impressive; and it’s not generic either… they definitely have a style all their own, they just like it clean.
Efficiency: Things just work well. They have good systems in place and clearly seem to value efficiency–this is exceptionally rare in Latin America and, while there may be pros and cons associated with valuing efficiency, it certainly was a refreshing change of pace for us.
This sign basically means something like: " For a nicer subway, please stay to the right to make it easier for everyone." In Argentina, walking is more like playing a game of chicken at all times.

All of the above and other things left us feeling that Santiago is a place where we could really enjoy living. It’s likely less of a tourist destination than Buenos Aires is (as BA is very much geared towards leisure activities), but it felt more the kind of place where you could have a real life. Obviously, nowhere is perfect though, and it will be interesting to see how our perspectives of it change over time.

Thing 3: The seafood

That's what I'm talking about

Chile has a lot of coast line. That means a lot of fish. While we’ll likely miss the Argentine beef, we are very excited to diversify our diets a bit.

Lots and lots of fish, and some other stuff...

This is Chilean King Crab. It will F you up.

Thing 4: Proximity to amazing coastline

We’ll write a separate post detailing our trip to Valparaiso on the coast and will certainly be visiting more coastal cities in the month to come. Just know that within a ~1 hour drive from Santiago, there are views like this:

This is from a patio in Valparaiso--not a bad view if you're into oceans and stuff

Off in the distance is Vina del Mar, a very popular beach vacation destination

Thing 5: The fantastic artwork

We are big fans of trying to buy local artwork when we travel–especially paintings. We have had trouble finding much that we liked over the last several months, but Chile really delivered. In Plaza de Armas (a big plaza in the middle of Santiago), every day there is a large group of local painters selling their wares (and in many cases painting new ones as well).

See, lots of painters. Why don't you ever believe me??

We splurged a bit and ended up buying 4 spectacular paintings to send home with my sister (they were ~$40 each!).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 1 image

Yeah, he painted that, we bought it 🙂 He actually wasn't finished with it yet when we bought it, so we watched him put all of the finishing touches on it. Also bought another one that goes well with it. Great paintings and really cool guy--he gave us his home phone number (I told you they were friendly!)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 2 image

We bought the one on the bottom, Ashley got the one on the top. We'll match! The guy in the middle is the artist--everything of his was gorgeous... we're lucky that one of his others wasn't dry yet otherwise we would have spent another $100. (he also gave us his home phone number)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 3 image

Got that one in the middle... Had to wait until the next day for it to dry. Very excited about it. Now that we own 4 paintings, I think we have officially become Chilean art collectors--we should get business cards...

Thing 6+: ??

I’m sure we’ll keep finding more exciting things over the next month as we begin our Chilean adventure, stay tuned…

Thank you!!! Also, we wanted to offer up a special thanks to our new best friends in Chile who we met through Trip Advisor and this blog (we’ll leave out their names to protect the innocent). Their suggestions for places to stay, things to do, etc. were invaluable and we loved meeting them and exploring a bit of Santiago off the beaten track together. Thanks so much, we look forward to another round of Pisco Sours and some good Chilean empanadas! 🙂

Lots more pictures in our Santiago album: Santiago photo album

How to learn Spanish (Part 2): Self-study tools

Posted on July 20, 2010 by jen

In our last post on learning Spanish, we covered the resources that are best used when studying in-country: group classes, private lessons and language exchange. This one focuses on all of the other tools that we tried – stuff like workbooks, computer programs and good ole flashcards. Here’s what we think:

COMPUTER PROGRAMS (we used Fluenz Spanish)

What it is: An interactive computer program with multiple levels to teach you the language. The two biggest that we came across are Rosetta Stone, which uses a method similar to how a child learns to speak – showing pictures and offering creative exercises to help you build a vocab and a more intuitive understanding of how to use the language (even though you may not know why as it doesn’t explain anything) and Fluenz Spanish, which functions more similarly to a class that incorporates dialogues, matching and other exercises. Both cost ~US$600 for levels 1-5. After reading lots of reviews, playing with demos and talking to people who have used them both we decided to go with Fluenz Spanish for the more diverse teaching approach and our desire to understand why, not just what. We’re very pleased with our decision.

Meet Sonia, our online Spanish teacher

Pros: The content is designed around modern travel needs–e.g., you’ll learn how to ask about buying a cellphone SIM card and getting airline tickets rather than random stuff about dogs and trees–this makes it immediately useful for a traveler. They do a great job of introducing new concepts in a 5-10 minute lecture environment and then giving you a set of exercises that drill it into you in a way that makes it very difficult to forget. At times the ‘work-outs’ feel tedious, but the repetition really helps you to retain. We found the explanations to be extremely helpful rather than the Rosetta Stone approach which never explains anything (using the philosophy that it’s better to learn a new language like you learned your first language–in a state of constant confusion). We preferred to use what we’ve learned about communication and grammar overall to accelerate our Spanish learning rather than starting from scratch, though there are pros and cons to this approach and it’s likely not right for everyone.

Cons: Relatively expensive, and it’s only going to teach you what they’ve already programmed in – not customized (not a critique of Fluenz, just a limitation of software vs. a live teacher). Also, uses a neutral Spanish so won’t teach you country-specific vocab or grammatical constructs (e.g., use of “vos” instead of “tu” in Argentina). Some might call this last one a “pro” . . . Also, even if you go all the way through the end of level 5, you’ll be able to get by while traveling in a Spanish speaking country, but you definitely won’t be fluent; Even in level 5, you still won’t have encountered the subjunctive and the subjunctive is a bitch.

The verdict: We chose Fluenz because of its focus on teaching you useful, immediately applicable Spanish. The lessons are extremely thorough, and you start learning things you can use when visiting/living in Spanish-speaking countries immediately (e.g., how to order at a cafe, how to take a cab, etc.). Each lesson is based on a dialog in one of these situations, which you then review in detail (pretty much word by word) with the program host, Sonia. Then you go through various matching, listening, reading and writing exercises to practice both new words and new grammatical structures that were introduced. We found this method extremely useful for understanding structures inside and out. The explanations are thorough and detailed, and once we’d seen something used in our Fluenz lesson, we were immediately able to incorporate it into our speaking. There’s definitely some overlap between the role played by Fluenz and that of taking lessons (group or private), but we thought this was a good way to supplement and reinforce what we were learning in class. Highly recommended.

AUDIO TAPES/MP3s

What it is: Tapes or audio files that teach lessons using a methodology similar to that of computer programs. The one we used was “Learning Spanish Like Crazy“, which costs ~US$100 for the digital file version. They are comprised of different lessons that introduce new words and grammatical structures, and use a lot of repeating words and phrases to teach.

Yeah, he looks gangster, but the owl's actually a decent Spanish teacher

Pros: Great way to get exposure during downtime when you couldn’t otherwise study – walking, driving, on the bus (although your seatmates might give you strange looks if you’re following the “repeat after me” instructions).

Cons: Most tapes are limited to certain situations – better for giving you some basic functionality than really teaching you to speak fluently.

The verdict: These are good for practicing pronunciation and getting used to hearing and understanding native speakers of the language (especially if you’re in a non-Spanish speaking country) but don’t come close to interacting with people in Spanish (e.g., through group class or private lesson). Since they’re audio only, they obviously aren’t going to help you read and write, but they can be good for learning how to have basic conversations.

MOBILE DICTIONARY

What it is: A dictionary app you can download to your mobile device. We used Ultralingua ($20 in itunes app store), which included a regular dictionary as well as a verb conjugation tool that would give you the conjugation of any verb for every tense.

Yeah, you've got to memorize all 500 conjugations of every single verb eventually, but until then . . .

Pros: Very quick way to find a word – good for use in class, when talking to people, etc. The verb conjugation tool is AWESOME!!!!.

Cons: Uses neutral Spanish so won’t have some words or may give you a word they don’t use in the country you’re in. Conjugation tool doesn’t have “vos” so you’re on your own for that one.

The verdict: This was a fabulous find and a very useful tool for us – from when we first got here and needed to decipher menus at restaurants to later on reading the newspaper in cafes and trying to understand real-time what our teachers said in class when they used a new word. The verb conjugation tool was invaluable, especially when it feels like you’re learning a new tense every week and it’s hard to keep them straight. It also included common phrases using each word, which, while not as thorough as those in our paper dictionary, were still very useful.

FLASHCARDS

What it is: Old-school index cards or the new-school computer version. We used one called Anki – allows you to enter values for both sides of the card and then varies how often it shows each card to you based on the difficulty rating you give it). Anki can be downloaded free, along with whatever flashcard sets other users have shared online – we didn’t find a great set of pre-made cards online so ended up making our own.

You can choose how many cards to review in a session and it will keep showing you the ones you mess up until you get them right (or lie about it)

Pros: Helpful for memorizing new vocabulary (depending on your learning style). Paper cards allow you to practice during downtime (commuting, standing in line, etc.).

Cons: Takes a long time to make the flashcards before you can even start using them (both with Anki and with paper cards). When you’re studying intensively and being introduced to lots of new words each day, it’s hard to keep up with flashcards, even just for your short-list of most useful words.

The verdict: We used these more when we first started studying but found that the amount of time it took to make the new cards, and then to run through all of them, wasn’t worth the effort (took us longer to make Anki cards than traditional index cards). Once in a while, when we had to learn a new set of vocab for a specific subject for discussion in class, we’d make and study flashcards but generally found the time could be better spent on other study methods.

WORKBOOKS

What it is: Kinda like being back in high school – they walk you through a lesson that teaches a concept/grammatical construct/verb tense and then give you exercises (with answers in the back!) to practice using them. We used the “Practice Makes Perfect” series by Dorothy Richmond ($12-13 each) – we have “Spanish Verb Tenses”, “Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions” and “Complete Spanish Grammar” (think this last one is more or less a condensed version of the first two). Based on the examples/sentences in the book, this series seems to be targeted toward US college students – lots of exercise questions about dorms and the cafeteria.

Pros: Very useful for English explanation of Spanish grammatical constructs – most intensive Spanish classes are taught completely in Spanish, and sometimes it’s just nice to be able to have stuff explained in English . . . especially if it’s something that doesn’t exist in English (subjunctive, I’m talking about you). Useful to practice using each new construct in the exercises.

Cons: Relies a fair amount on translation, which our Spanish teachers here HATE. The idea is that if you’re always translating everything, you’re never going to speak very fluidly – apparently this method (relying on translation) is very contentious in the language-teaching world.

The verdict: We thought these were a great supplement to our classes. For Ryan, they were good for reviewing the difference between direct and indirect object pronouns (annoyingly similar) and for me, it was really helpful to have someone explain to me in English when to use the imperfect vs. the indefinite past tense.

CONSUMING SPANISH MEDIA

What it is: I know, that sounds really consultant-y. Basically, just reading stuff (the newspaper, magazines, books, whatever really) and watching TV/news/movies in Spanish. There are numerous books written for Spanish-speaking students in school to study grammar/comprehension (remember SAT prep?) that are also good for Spanish language learners.

This one's fun - it's the opposition paper so always has lots of lovely things to say about Cristina (la presidenta)

Pros: Great for getting more exposure to the language in a non-controlled environment (e.g., class). Good for learning new vocab. Can be a confidence boost (if you understand).

Cons: On the other hand, can be a real downer if you don’t understand what you’re reading/hearing.

The verdict: We found mixing some reading in was great for us – one of my favorites is reading the local paper in a cafe. When I first started, I felt like I had to look up every 5th word, but after a while I was able to understand much more and had learned a lot of new vocab. I also gained a better understanding of more complex sentence structures that they weren’t teaching in class. On the other hand, we don’t feel like we get a lot out of watching TV and movies. We’d get bits and pieces but generally struggled to understand. This would have been a lot more useful if we’d had Spanish subtitles in addition to the speaking . . . but couldn’t get the closed-captioning to work on our TV.

POST-IT NOTE LABELS

What it is: Sticking a Post-It note on everything in your house marked with the Spanish word for the object.

Pros: Good for learning vocab of stuff in your house.

Cons: Only good for learning vocab of stuff in your house . . . and you have yellow notes everywhere you look.

The verdict: Fine for a week or so, but then (1) hopefully you’ve memorized the vocab and (2) the Post-Its get really irritating.

WRITING STUFF IN SPANISH

What it is: Pretty self-explanatory – some examples are keeping a daily journal, writing a story, noting down the random sentences that run through your head.

Pros: Good for incorporating new vocab, practicing using various grammatical constructs. Also really helpful for clarifying questions about how something works – I often found it was easiest to communicate my question by illustrating it and highlighting the area I was uncertain about – e.g., writing down a sentence three different ways (desde, desde hace, hace).

Cons: Need a teacher/tutor to correct them for you and explain what’s correct and why. Can feel tedious and requires a fair amount of self-discipline to do regularly.

The verdict: This was great for getting the most out of class and making sure we were understanding things clearly. It was also good practice to use the stuff we were learning in class and incorporate into our vocab.

So, that’s the scoop on what we used. Of all the different resources that we tried, our top 5 are:

Group classes (beginner stage)
Private tutor (intermediate to advanced)
Ultralingua
Fluenz
Workbooks

Any other good tips/tools out there? Let us know, and enjoy your adventure of learning Spanish!!!

So many posts to catch up on! (but still no time…)

Posted on July 17, 2010 by ryan

We’ve been too busy traveling, exploring and trying not to freeze to death (it’s VERY cold in Chile) over the last week to be able to post at all. I only have a few minutes now, but there are SO many things for us to catch up on, por ejemplo:

Wine tasting in Buenos Aires with Anuva — Awesome!
Wine tour with Trout and Wine in Mendoza — Awesome!
Mendoza overall
Santiago, Chile — Aside from it being extremely cold, we really like it here and think we might come back and spend a few weeks
Walking tour in Valparaiso, Chile with Michael the German pirate (that’s what he goes by)
Argentine wine vs. Chilean
Argentine food vs. Chilean
Special thanks to those of you that have sent us so many fantastic suggestions for these cities!
And probably other stuff too.

No time now, but should be able to start pulling this stuff together over the next week and we have tons of great pictures.

Aight, gotta run, just didn’t want anyone to think we had disappeared.

16 wines

Posted on July 14, 2010 by ryan

We tasted 16 wines today. Everything is a little blurry… but I’m pretty sure we liked it.

More details to come after lots of sleep and water.

Consulting Rehab

The first step is admitting you have a problem… (then take a break and travel!)

Monthly Archives: July 2010