Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 2: Drink)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Last week we covered the food category and while Santiago had a strong showing and was far and away the winner on diversity of food options, we declared Buenos Aires the winner for the Food category overall – they may have limited menu options, but damn do they do them well.  Check out the full review of Buenos Aires vs. Santiago food.

We’re ready to move on.  Today’s category is…

2. Drink

This category is almost as important as food and despite bottles and bottles of intensive research, it is very difficult to declare a winner.  Let’s start with wine.

Category 1)  Wine:  Winner – Buenos Aires/Argentina  (though these are 2 of the best countries in the world to drink wine)

This is not really a Santiago vs. Buenos Aires thing, but rather a Chile vs. Argentina thing.  Both Argentina and Chile are deservedly proud of their wine traditions and more and more, they are gaining attention internationally for the quality of the wines they produce.  Both are pretty damn good and we had a rather fantastic (though for some reason, difficult to remember) time researching this category 🙂  By the way, if you are in Buenos Aires and like wine, you should do a wine tasting with Anuva – check out our original review on them for details:  Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Argentine wine tasting research with Anuva image

We like research

In both countries, most wine is grown right along the Andes with the largest regions being almost directly across the mountains from one another (Mendoza, Argentina and the many regions surrounding Santiago).  After visiting wineries in both of these regions and doing some additional research (Jen had to write a report for Spanish class on something…), we learned that while the regions are quite close geographically, being east vs. west of the mountains actually leads to some pretty significant differences in grape growing conditions – one of the largest differences being that on the Argentina side, the climate is quite a bit drier.  This and other differences lead to different types of grapes being better suited to one side vs. the other.  It’s why Argentina dominates global Malbec productions and is one of the only regions in the world to produces Torrontes and why Chile tends to export a broader array of both red and white varietals including the Carmenere which is largely exclusive to Chile.  Before we get into our sub-sub-category ratings, let’s start with some context on both regions.

Context

Argentine Wine Industry:

Argentina is currently the world’s 5th largest wine producer.  The vast majority of the wine produced in Argentina stays in Argentina – currently only somewhere between 20% and 30% is exported.  Up until the 1970s, Argentina produced more wine than pretty much any other country in the world.  They were apparently producing 22 tons per acre whereas most quality wine regions in France and California at the time were only producing ~2-5 tons per acre.  How did they do it?  Three words:

1)  Super

2)  low

3)  quality

Everyone used to have a big jug that they would go fill up every couple of days in the middle of town at a big wine keg type thing.  It was called “vino de mesa,” or “table wine.”  Back then, Argentines were drinking more wine per capita than any other country in the world (seriously, they were drinking something like 24 gallons/year/person on average vs. less than 1 gallon/person in countries like the US and UK), but virtually none of it was exported because, you know, it sucked.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that international wine experts started taking a closer look at Argentina.  After seeing the soil conditions, the lack of humidity, the lack of pests and the altitude, there began to be a lot of talk about the incredible potential Argentina had to produce top quality premium wines.  Slowly over the last couple of decades more and more of the industry has changed their practices away from mass produced low quality table wine to export-ready premium wine.  This has been largely driven by foreign investment.  When we were in Mendoza, we were told that back in 2002-2003 after the most recent Argentine economic collapse, there was an average of something like 3 new wineries opening every day as foreigners took advantage of low prices and saw an opportunity to make great wine.  This process still has a long way to go as they still only export a small fraction of the wine produced, but I think we can expect to see more and more Argentine wines in the international market in the years to come.  It is also worth noting, that the days of jug-wine are for the most part gone in Argentina and now even most of the wine produced for domestic consumption is quite high quality.

Bad Argentine jug wine

That said, we did experience some pretty bad jug wine up in Salta

Chilean Wine Industry:

Chile produces only a little more than half of the total wine that Argentina does and drinks only a small fraction of the wine that they produce; they export the rest.  In fact, they export 70+% of the wine that they produce which, despite the relatively small size and population of the country, makes them the 5th largest wine exporting country in the world (under France, Italy and Australia – Argentina is #8 at about 63% of the export volume of Chile).  It wasn’t always this way.  Similar to Argentina, the wine industry in Chile largely produced low quality wines for domestic consumption up until the 1980s.   Once they solved some political and economic issues, they recognized that they had the potential to turn wine into a big business, and they did.  Starting back in the 80s, they began using modern wine techniques from around the world and geared up their wineries to start producing great quality wines designed primarily for export.  They rapidly climbed the export rankings and continue to be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

You may have seen our earlier post on our visit to the Concha y Toro winery in Santiago – it’s the largest winery in Latin America and the 8th largest in the world.

Concha y toro wines image

You may recognize these labels... they are sold all over the world

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’m not sure really.  The important thing to remember is this… Chile is big in the business of exporting wine and Argentina is big on the tradition of making and drinking wine.  They both make great wine, but this context leads to some different outcomes.

Enough information, onto our totally subjective opinions…

Sub-category 1)  White wine – Winner: Chile (by a lot)

Argentina: Our experience was that Argentina focuses far more on red wine, and while we did find one Chardonnay that we liked, the vast majority of the whites that we tried there we thought were terrible.  Obviously this is subjective, but I’ve yet to hear anyone rave about a white Argentine wine nor have I ever seen one for sale in the US – if you have a different opinion, please let us know.  There is an exception to this… Northwestern Argentina is quite proud of their own unique white varietal known as Torrontes.  Many people talk it up as being a fantastic alternative to the more traditional varietals and the Argentines from the region (Salta) beam with pride whenever it is discussed.  We wanted to like Torrontes.  We really did.  Sadly, we could not.  After tasting several versions of it at a few of the wineries in Cafayate, the best way we can describe it is that it smells like very sweet dessert wine, yet somehow tastes like water.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not good.

Chile: Chile has fantastic white wines.  Virtually every white that we tried there we thought was excellent and if you are ever staring at the 100s of bottles of wine in a liquor store wondering what Chardonnay to buy, your odds of picking a good one are pretty good if you grab pretty much anything from Chile.

Sub-category 2)  Red wine – Winner: Too close to call

This is too close to call.  They both have fantastic red wines.  Some of the Malbecs from Argentina are absolutely amazing (others taste like kool-aid) and Chile has some fantastic big Cabs, Syrahs and others.  We are going to take a pass on this one.  Suffice to say, you can acquire fantastic red wine in either country.

Argentine Wine tasting picture image

This is just a random yet classy picture of wine glasses that I thought fit well here

The difference is in how much you have to pay for it, which leads us to the next category…

Sub-category 3)  Value for $ – Winner: Argentina

Value for the money is a pretty important dimension in determining what wine you’ll actually be able to try wherever you go and a big part of the reason why I provided so much context on the histories of the wine industries in each country up front.

Chile: Prices in general are a bit higher in Chile than Argentina for pretty much everything at the moment (though, with ~30% inflation per year, Argentina is rapidly catching up – until the next economic crisis).  The difference in wine prices is remarkable.  The reason for this is that Chilean wine is for the most part produced for export and priced at export pricing levels – we often saw the same bottles of Chilean wine that we’d bought here in the US for sale in Chile at the same or higher prices.  It’s not that it’s super expensive, it’s just that it’s internationally priced.  Argentina is different.

Argentina: Argentina exports only a small fraction of their wine and that wine is often labels that aren’t even sold domestically, so when you go to buy wine in Argentina, you are confronted with prices that were designed entirely for the local, relatively low-income, wine-loving market.  The vast majority of the wines in any store are priced at AR$15-30 which is US$3-7.  The staple wine that we drank all the time in Buenos Aires literally cost ~US$4/bottle.  That wine was awesome, and a bottle of that quality would easily cost $15-20 in the US (or Chile for that matter).  The value got even better if you were willing to spend a little bit more… we took back with us a few extremely expensive (on Argentine standards) bottles of wine that are easily some of the best wine we’ve ever had (and when we were consultants, people used to give us some pretty fancy wine from time to time!) – these super expensive bottles cost ~US$20, I’d put them in the ~US$100 range for something of similar quality here in the US.  Another great thing is that it’s easy to experiment with different high-end bottles in restaurants as the mark-up tended to be only 10-20% over store prices vs. the 2-3x mark-up that is common in the US (Chile also had a high restaurant mark-up).

Awesome Argentine Wine image

So good AND so cheap! Just look how happy we are.

On value for $, Argentina is impossible to beat.

Sub-category 4)  Variety of new wines to try in-country: Argentina

There is no question that Chile has great wines, but because they export so much of their wine, the wines that you’ll see in Santiago are pretty much the exact same wines that you’ll see in the Chilean section of a wine store in the US.  I’m sure that there are wines that you have to be in the country to experience, but in general, you can sample most of the Chilean wines from pretty much anywhere in the world.

On the flip-side, the vast majority of Argentine wines are currently impossible to purchase outside of the country.  You can be certain that a trip to Buenos Aires will expose you to an awesome variety of wines that you’ve never seen before.

Category 2)  National drink:  Winner – Santiago (by miles and miles)

Chile: Chile’s national drink (other than Nescafe) is the Pisco Sour.  It’s made from Pisco which is a grape based liquor and varying forms of sour mix.  Often there is egg white put on top, but the Chilean version usually skips that part.  It’s important to note that Pisco Sours are also very popular in other parts of Latin America (most notably Peru), but the Chilean version is their own.  The Pisco sour has the remarkable quality of tasting almost non-alcoholic – kind of like lemonade – yet having the ability to absolutely knock you on your ass in a very short period of time.  They vary in alcohol content depending on the type of Pisco used, but at one venue we had one drink each at around 5pm and were not able to walk straight again for about 4 hours.  The girl we were with threw up upon walking out of the bar.  After one drink.  Three hours later, we still wished that we had thrown up wih her.  They are dangerous, but we love Pisco Sours.

Pisco Sours in Santiago image

Pisco Sours make us happy

Argentina: Buenos Aires has an obsession with a very special kind of liquor called Fernet.  It’s made out of grapes and a variety of spices.  It’s often mixed with Coca Cola.  We tried a Fernet and Coke one time while in Buenos Aires.  Despite the fact that it was mixed with a fair amount of Coca Cola we could not drink more than a few sips.  It was without question the worst tasting thing we have ever put in our mouths.  This is of course subjective; there are many, many people that claim to love this drink – we suspect this is merely a form of hazing.

Fernet image

Fernet makes us sad

Category 3)  Coffee:  Winner – Buenos Aires (unless you are looking for a little something extra with your coffee..)

It may seem odd to have a category devoted to coffee, but the coffee/cafe cultures in these two cities are so remarkably different, we thought it was worth mentioning.  For us, we preferred the leisurely cafe experiences in Buenos Aires, but to each their own as these are very, very different.   Here’s the deal…

Buenos Aires: Cafes are a big deal in Buenos Aires.  The strong Italian roots of the city are likely the reason behind the strength of the cafe culture.  There are usually several cafes on every block and for the most part, they all serve fresh ground, strong and quite tasty coffee.  The standard ‘cafe’ is actually what we would call an espresso shot in the US, but there are several variations involving more or less amounts of milk (e.g., cafe con leche, cortado, lagrima).  It’s all good.  Pretty much any cafe you go to will serve some cookies and a glass of water with every coffee you order.  The locals spend lots of time hanging out in cafes sipping their espresso and reading the news.  There is no such thing as a to-go cup… when you’re going to have coffee in Buenos Aires, you are going to sit down and drink it for as long as it takes.  That’s just how it’s done.   Coffee is a big part of the culture here and a good deal of pride is taken not only in producing top quality drinks, but also in providing a great cafe experience.  If you’re in a hurry, it can be pretty difficult to get a quick cup of caffeine in this city, but then again we found that we were rarely in a hurry in BsAs.

Buenos Aires Cafe image

Coffee, cookies and water

Santiago: The cafe culture is very different in Santiago.  There are 3 main differences:  Experience, quality and legs.

1)  Experience:  There are still many cafes, but for the most part they are designed for getting a quick cup of coffee rather than as places to leisurely hang out for a couple of hours.  In fact, a large percentage of the cafes downtown don’t even have seating… everyone just quickly drinks their coffee while standing at a bar.  We found that getting coffee was typically a 10 minute experience.  This is not really better or worse than the BsAs style, just different.  On top of that though, we also found that many of the cafes were favorite destinations of smokers and sometimes there was so much smoke billowing out of them that we couldn’t breathe.  Starbucks is actually doing quite well in Santiago and many of the people we talked to suggested that a big part of their success might be that they are one of the few non-smoking cafes.

Stand-up coffee bars in Santiago image

Stand-up coffee bar

2)  Quality of coffee:  For various historical reasons which we never quite fully understood, Chile has a national obsession with Nescafe instant coffee.  Upon ordering coffee, the default offering you will get even in a fancy hotel or restaurant will be an empty cup and a plastic single-serve container of Nescafe.  After which, they will offer to fill your cup with either hot water or hot milk.  While instant coffee can be convenient when you need some coffee and don’t have any alternatives, it seems odd to order coffee in a coffee shop and get it.  To be clear, you can definitely order an espresso drink if you’re in the right kind of place, it’s just not the standard-Nescafe is everywhere.

3)  Legs:  We covered the Coffee with Legs/Cafe con piernas phenomenon at length in a previous post (see it here:  Cafe con piernas = coffee with legs).  Coffee shops that are part strip club or even brothel are not representative of the coffee culture in Santiago, but are certainly a significant part of it.  If you are into this, then the incredible number and variety of cafe con piernas establishments in downtown Santiago may well trump all of the other drink categories and make Santiago the city for you.

coffee with legs cafe rio santiago image

Ah the memories...

Overall winner for best Drink:  Buenos Aires (barely)

There is plenty of good drinking to be done in both cities.  If you’re all about trying new red wines that are really cheap and good you should prioritize Buenos Aires.  If you prefer white wine, go Chile.  If you like drinking gasoline, go to Buenos Aires and try some Fernet.  It really depends on you.  We happen to love red wine and were blown away by the incredible value we got in BsAs on awesome wine, so despite how much we miss Pisco Sours, we’re going to award this category to Buenos Aires by a slim margin.  We can’t declare a strong overall winner in this category, but hopefully we’ve at least given you some good context to draw your own conclusions.

Quick recap on the cage match thus far…

Round 1)  Food – Buenos Aires came out strong and won round 1 with best overall food despite Santiago’s superior variety

Round 2)  Drink – Buenos Aires barely edged out Santiago driven by the incredible value for your money on unique red wines

So far Buenos Aires has Santiago on the ropes, but the first two categories have definitely played to Buenos Aires strengths, so we expect big things from Santiago in the coming rounds. Next week, we’ll get into round 3 and tackle the issue of which of these two cities would be more attractive to live in as an expat.

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Disclaimer:  Keep in mind these are just our opinions based on our personal experiences and we’re very happy to have people disagree as this is quite subjective – if you do disagree, please speak up and tell us why!

Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 1: Food)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Research wasn’t easy.  We worked relentlessly day in and day out to try as many restaurants, go on as many day trips and explore as many on and off-the-beaten-path attractions as possible.  We’ve also done an extensive wine comparison.  I don’t know how we stayed motivated.

There are five high-level categories to this competition, each of which will be thoroughly analyzed in it’s own post with a winner declared:

  1. Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
  2. Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
  3. Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
  4. Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
  5. People/Culture – What are the people and culture like and how open are they to foreigners

Obviously, much of this is very subjective and our opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.  You may agree or disagree with our conclusions; our hope is to provide enough context such that you can draw your own conclusions based on your own preferences and priorities.  Our other hope is that this series of posts becomes a useful reference so that next time someone asks us the question of which city to spend more time in we can just tell them to read this rather than rambling about it for an hour–sadly, the rambling will likely continue.

Let’s do this.

Today’s category is…

1. Food

We like food.  We like food a lot.  Trying authentic foreign cuisines is one of our very favorite things about travelling, so this category is a pretty important one in our minds.  Let’s break it down:

Most crave-worthy:  Winner – Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires: We’ve been back in the US for a few months now and we haven’t bothered eating steak.  We know that it could never measure up to the Buenos Aires version that you can get at places like El Estrebe, Dada and a number of other stellar places (see our where to eat in BA post for recommendations).  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Beyond just the steak, we can’t forget the empanadas…. oh, the empanadas.  The empanadas were unbelievable.  Also, Provoleta is missed.  We crave these things often and if/when we go back to visit BA, food will be one of the biggest reasons.

Argentine steak image

Want

Santiago: It’s not that the food was bad in Santiago, it was actually pretty good.  That said, we certainly don’t crave anything we had there.  Food is not as core to the culture of Santiago as it is to Buenos Aires.  It’s fine, but it’s unlikely to blow you away.  However, if you are a fan of giant hot dogs, Santiago is the place for you.

Chilean hot dog completo image

Yep

Best food diversity:  Winner – Santiago (by a landslide)

Buenos Aires: Virtually every restaurant in Buenos Aires has an identical menu.  As we’ve written about previously, there are really only 5 types of food in Buenos Aires (steak, pizza, pasta, empanadas and Dulce de Leche).  They do those 5 things quite well, but that’s pretty much all they do.  If you head into some of the more touristy areas you can find a handful of foreign cuisine options, but not many.  Despite the high quality, after a couple of weeks the monotony of eating the same thing every day does get to you.

Buenos Aires food pyramid image

Sometimes it's possible to combine all 5 food groups in one meal

Santiago: Santiago, on the other hand, is full of all kinds of different cuisines.  Peruvian and Japanese are probably the two most common (and quite good), but we also had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, there are lots of Chinese restaurants (which the locals strongly suggest avoiding), Seafood, Italian, American, French, you name it.  From a dining perspective, Santiago offers far more international options than Buenos Aires.

Peruvian ceviche image

We do kind of miss the Peruvian ceviche

Best dining experience:  Winner – Buenos Aires (if you have a few hours)

Buenos Aires: In BA, dining is definitely an experience–whether you want it to be or not.  For dinner it is usually a 3+ hour experience.  This is not (usually) the result of bad service, but rather is intentional.  In BA, dining isn’t really about eating, it’s about being with your friends and family.  Service is usually quite efficient and impressively formal up until they finish bringing your food; after that, you will have a very hard time tracking down your server to get your bill.  This is by design.  They would never want to give the impression that they were rushing you out and fully assume that you will spend another hour or 2 sitting around the table after you finish eating.  That’s simply how it’s done.  At first, this can be a bit unsettling for those of us from countries that tend to be in more of a rush.  After you get used to it though (and assuming you are not in a hurry), it’s pretty awesome to allow yourself to fully experience a meal with your fellow diners.

Santiago: In Santiago, the dining experience was far more similar to what you would find in the US.  Servers are interested in turning tables fairly quickly and in some cases may even clear your dishes and bring your check while you’re still chewing your last bite (update:  we have it on good authority from someone who has spent much more time here than us that this is usually not the case and perhaps we were going to the wrong places.  Either way though, they definitely value efficiency more in Santiago and meals were much quicker relative to BA) Great if you’re in a hurry, but otherwise nothing special.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but even/especially the fancier places we tried were not that memorable.

Overall winner in the food category:  Buenos Aires

Santiago is no slouch, but dining is core to the entire culture in Buenos Aires and as long as you eat meat and can handle the lack of diversity, they do it extremely well.  So, if your single top priority in choosing between these two cities is food (and you like meat), you should definitely prioritize Buenos Aires.

As important as it is though, food is unlikely to be the only factor in your decision making process, so stay tuned for future posts to see which city wins in the remaining categories!

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

CPTJMIY: Kevin Friedman on OfertaSimple and living life as a pirate

It’s been awhile since our last installment of Crazy People That Just Might Inspire You, but if there’s one thing you can count on in life it’s that there are always more crazy people out there.  We think you’ll agree that today’s Crazy Person, Kevin Friedman, is crazy in ways that sound pretty fun.

We originally met Kevin through some mutual friends in San Francisco awhile back.  He’s got an MBA from one of the best business schools and some might even say a somewhat conservative early career in banking, but somewhere along the way he chose a more unconventional path.  When we met him he had  already left the corporate world behind and was engaged in at least a few unconventional and interesting businesses (more to come on these); now, somehow he’s heading up a business in Buenos Aires and other parts of LATAM called OfertaSimple while still living in San Francisco – obviously we had to find out more.  Let’s do this.

Kevin Friedman, the interview

Kevin, before we get started, tell us where in the world you are answering these questions?

At the back table in Jovino on Union Street in San Francisco.

When people ask you what you do for a living, how do you respond?

I usually lie through my teeth and make up the job du jour.  I guess I’m a little bit sensitive that I fill ATMs with twenties for a living.

Fair enough.  Other than filling ATMS, what are your primary motivations/inspirations in life?

I had a list of 30+ inspirational people from a few years ago… except Tiger Woods was on the top of that list.  So I’ve learned to admire specific characteristics of some notable people, but I look to my parents, my fiancée and a few close friends for real inspiration.

Before we get into your current project at OfertaSimple, tell us a little more about your background…

We understand that you are “The man behind the man” at MisterArcher.com…   What does this mean?  What is MisterArcher and what do you do there?

Mister Archer is my nom de plume for a bon vivant gallivanting around San Francisco exposing the unique and under-appreciated.  The motto is “Inspirations for your Explorations” and we share the ideas that are worthy through a members-only newsletter (sign up at MisterArcher.com).

That is a lot of fancy words in a row!  How/why did you get involved with MisterArcher?

I started Mister Archer to fight off my inner-couch potato.

We also understand that you started TValacarte.org in a campaign to take down Comcast… what’s that all about?

Does anyone believe that paying $150/month to watch a dozen or so channels is a good deal?  My frustration boiled over about a year and a half ago when I realized that Comcast’s strangehold on cable choked off the competition.  I believe if we can aggregate our demand and coordinate a movement away from Big Cable, we will ultimately be rewarded with cost-effective, high-quality programming.  Of course, if you prefer channel surfing through 300 channels in order to develop the strongest thumb muscles on the block, then you’re probably better off with the status quo.

Nice Time write-up about it by the way, how did you manage to get them to pick it up?

The Time write-up happened organically.  The author, Brad Tuttle, saw one of my comments on another related story about the cable industry, then he followed up directly with me.

Ok, let’s hear about this OfertaSimple thing…

Give us the pitch, what are you doing down in South America?

I’m running away from the United States economy (half-kidding).  America is flat-lining… while much needed reforms (patent, immigration, tax) are stuck in a rubber room due to partisanship.  On the other hand, emerging markets are implementing thoughtful policies and programs improving their GDP.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to try and launch an international business.

What is OfertaSimple?

OfertaSimple.com.ar is an online service that connects consumers with local businesses. The OfertaSimple business is based on the “collective buying power” concept that has now proved successful throughout the world. Every day, OfertaSimple features an exclusive deal with one local business in each city where we operate. Local businesses benefit from customer acquisition without having to pay an upfront cost. Consumers love the huge discounts and the sensation of discovering local businesses.

Who should be interested in this site?

Some would think that our core customer is the bargain shopper.  In fact, our most loyal customers are working professionals short on time, but excited to experience new spots in the City.  Time is their most important resource.  In the time it takes to cream and sugar their morning coffee, we provide them with a recommendation of a new spot to check out.  And we require that the business provide a 40% – 90% off discount as a reward for our customers for trying out something new.

Can you give us some examples of recent deals?

Sure.  We’ve offered a great range of deals like over 60% off sushi libre at Aires de Geisha in Palermo Soho to 75% off a parapente flight.  Although we are getting some cool spots approaching us to run deals for them, we’re still finding the best deals through our sales team and member recommendations.

How’s business going?

Overall, the business is going swimmingly.  We’ve been fortunate to have hired some tremendous employees for roles ranging from sales to marketing and customer service.  Our country manager, Eugenia, is the glue to the team.  She rocks!

There are a few other competitors who have also recently entered the marketplace, including Groupon.  But I believe there will still be room for them since someone who buys a deal on our site, might also find a few other deals attractive on their site.  Ultimately, these purchases are not mutually exclusive.

How did you get involved?

I got involved with OfertaSimple by buying the website domain.  The rest of the founding team has been living in LatAm for the past 7 years.  We drew straws to determine our responsibilities and I ended up with the CTO short-straw.

Anything else we should know about OfertaSimple?

We are looking to build an OfertaSimple mobile app for Blackberries and iPhone.  Interested app developers, please drop me a line at kevin@ofertasimple.com.

Back to you for a minute…

Were you always off doing crazy things?  When was the last time you had what most people would consider to be a ‘real’ job?

It’s been a while.  I’ve actually been trying to get a part-time job as a sports consultant.  For example, I’d love to share some zany brainstorms with the SF Giants… like bottom of the 9th, Giants are tied with one out and a runner on third base.  The other team hits a deep fly ball… definitely deep enough for the runner to tag.  Typically, the left fielder catches the ball then throws home late while the winning run scores.  Instead, the left fielder should intentionally bobble the ball, as if they are a volleyball setter while moving towards home plate.  They wouldn’t control the ball until they were within range to throw the runner out at home.  It might be tough to execute, but even if there’s a 1% chance of success better than 100% certainty of losing.  These ideas are not available to the L.A. Trolley Dodgers.

What was your last ‘real’ job and why did you leave it?

My last real job was working in Corporate Strategy for Roost.com.  I enjoyed working there and we had a strong executive team, but I decided to leave right after we raised an $8mm series B round.  My passion was to launch our rentals product, but with the real estate market upside-down, we decided to focus on the core search technology.

Would you ever go back to that kind of work environment?

Certainly.  Although I’ve opted for the pirate’s life, I do miss the security of a steady salary.  But what I miss most is the office cooler conversations.  I haven’t heard a good joke in months because it simply isn’t the same chatting with the team through a skype window or on IM.

I can definitely relate to that!  Maybe we should create an online virtual water cooler…  Sorry, back to the interview: Was it scary when you first started off on your own?   Anything you would do differently in retrospect?

Not only was it scary… it still is scary.  I still have doubts enter my mind during some weak moments in the wee hours of the morning.  A little stress might help to motivate, but a lot of stress is counter-productive.  But I’ve been lucky to have a strong support network with my founding team, my close friends and my fiancée.  (Yup, I know how to type accents over vowels.)  I am also heartened by the inspirational Marianne Williamson quote about “playing small does not serve the world.”  Touché.

I am impressed by your vowel accenting – a key skill for the success any international business.  Any advice for people who are reading this from a cubicle at a job they don’t love wishing they could get out there and pursue their passions?

I don’t think I’ve earned the right to share unsolicited advice to others yet.  But, I will share a quote from Charles Swindoll that stays top of mind.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Thanks Kevin, good luck with OfertaSimple.com.ar!

THANK YOU, Ryan and Jen!  It’s been a pleasure to meet you both and I sincerely hope your journey inspires others to explore the world and pursue their ventures.

Interview post-mortem

This is craziness at it’s best.  I always have tremendous respect for anyone who risks failure to pursue their passions and Kevin is a great example of someone who is doing just that.  On more of a side note, I also think the idea of starting a business that focuses on international markets without necessarily having to relocate yourself is pretty novel.  I continue to be surprised by just how many different possibilities there are out there… rather than the 3-5 life/career options that most people think they have (e.g., stick with current job, look for other job in same industry, go get an advanced degree, etc.), in reality there are an infinite number of options – often they require risk, but if you know you aren’t ever going to be truly happy doing what you’re doing today and there is some possibility that you will be if you take the leap, the odds seem pretty good.  I heard a story recently of a guy that left his 10+ year successful business career to become a professional golf caddy… it’s been a few years now and he absolutely LOVES it.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

Thanks again for the inspiration Kevin.  If anyone out there knows other crazy people we should be talking to, please let us know!

Warning: Buenos Aires apartment scam

UPDATE 1/9/2013:  To avoid any confusion, this article/warning is NOT about the rental company DiscoverBA.com.  We were recently contacted by the owner there who told us that this post has a high Google rank for “DiscoverBA review” due to a few similar keywords.  While we don’t have any experience with DiscoverBA, they seem like a legit company and the scam below is definitely not referring to them.

—————————-

A reader recently emailed us asking if we could help publicize the story of how he got scammed out of getting his deposit back when renting an apartment in Buenos Aires in an attempt to shut-down the scammer (which has been remarkably successful thus far–read on…) and to help other people avoid becoming victims.  We hate scams (and in Argentina, there are MANY),  so we were happy to oblige.

Everything is done in cash in Buenos Aires (because no one wants to pay taxes), the police are corrupt and crime is high so you have to be extremely, extremely careful no matter what you are doing–being taken for your deposit on a rental apartment is, unfortunately, incredibly common unless you go with one of the reputable companies (which may cost a bit more, but you are guaranteed a great place and you will get your deposit back, so in my opinion, well worth it).  Check out our guide on how to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires for some tips/tricks to minimize your risk and some mini-reviews of several agencies that we worked with.

The scam

Below is a reprint of the story that was just sent to us:

My six-month stay in Buenos Aires ended on a bad note this past Tuesday when I was scammed out of the deposit for the apartment I had been renting for three months starting in August. The apartment owner’s name is Valeria de Santos and the unit in question is located in Recoleta, at Larrea 1393 at the corner of French, apartment #PB2. I found it on Craiglist and jumped at the chance to live in a nice area for a relative bargain, though in hindsight renting through an agency or through a referral may have been the smarter way to go.

I had told Valeria that I needed to check out at noon because a cab would be waiting to take me to the airport. She arrived late with her mother and inspected the apartment to make sure it was in good order (it was). Valeria said that my deposit was waiting for me at her mother’s office, which was supposedly just a few blocks away, off of Pueyrredon and Santa Fe. She asked if her mother could get in the cab with me and get dropped off by her office where she would retrieve the deposit and return it to me.

I had dealt directly with the mother before when I first occupied the apartment so I didn’t find her suggestion odd. But I now realize that I made a number of mistakes. First, I returned the keys to Valeria before getting my deposit back. Secondly, I let my guard down and didn’t think to accompany her mother to the “office” after we dropped her off at the corner, opting instead to wait for her in the cab with my luggage.

The mother disappeared down the street and never returned. I waited 45 minutes and called Valeria a dozen times before telling the driver that we needed to leave because I couldn’t miss my flight. I called her numerous times at the airport and e-mailed her with no response. I was finally able to reach her Wednesday, when she assured me that she would wire the funds to me via PayPal that same day. Well, it didn’t come through, and I’ve been calling and e-mailing her since with no luck. My messages to her have gotten angrier and angrier to the point where I threatened to hop on a plane the next day and come looking for her — which I would be crazy enough to do if I was confident I could track her down.

The strange thing is that Valeria and her mother were a pleasure to deal with during my three-month stay in the apartment, responding to my calls and e-mails and showing up to address any problems promptly. It’s bizarre that they would pull something like this off at the very end.

I’ll continue to call and e-mail and harass Valeria and her mother in any way I can until I get my money back, and perhaps I’ll find myself in Buenos Aires sooner than I think. But for now, I’d just like to defame her on every relevant forum I can find and bring awareness to what I went through. Hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes.

It’s really too bad that this happened, but I will say that to get out of Buenos Aires after 6 months and only be scammed out of $200 is actually pretty darn good.  In our 6 months, we encountered taxi scams (fast meter), counterfeit money scams, tour guide pricing scams, and were almost taken for $400 on the deposit for our first 2 week apartment.  Good times.

The entertaining part

The above story was actually posted on the local Buenos Aires expat forum.  Within about 5 hours, there were 100+ responses by the expat community.  Many of them decided to use some clever online detective skills to determine that this woman and her mother had been running scams on tourists in BA for years – not only via apartments, but also through a fake Spanish school, a fake tour guide business and many others.  They also found her real name, address, phone number and other personal details (including where she has claimed to be an Oxford trained lawyer on Wikipedia among other places).

As the expats diligently uncovered more and more information about this woman, strangely enough all of the websites and references to her many ‘businesses’ started disappearing from the internet.  Clearly many of the expats are software developers though and they were able to backup pretty much everything and rehost on alternate off-shore servers.  The thread on the forum showing this whole thing unraveling is long, but extremely entertaining and worth taking a look at:   http://baexpats.org/expat-life/11930-stay-away-apartment-rental.html

A summary of what was uncovered

One of the members on the expat forum put together a nice summary of many of the facts uncovered which I’ve reposted below.  Note:  this isn’t interesting reading, I’m just reposting it so that there is yet another website that has all of these keywords in hopes that any future potential victims do some googling before doing business with her.

So, in summary this thread is a warning about Florencia Marina Daud (aka Florencia Daud Othacehe). It is strongly advised that you avoid any kind of business dealings or financial transactions with her. If you do enter into financial dealings with her it is recommended that you proceed with extreme caution. She has disappeared with the deposits of several visitors to the city who entered into temporary rental agreements with her.

Florencia Daud
DNI: 26260151
CUIT: 272626015115 (click on the green arrow to see a picture from the website http://www.nic.ar/entidades.html)

She has gone under the names Valeria de Santos and Veronica and often uses the username flormarina on the internet.

Her mother has used a name similar to Maria Eugenia

She has had various businesses registered to her addresses:
Discover BA
Florencia Marina Daud (discoverba@hotmail.com)
+1.5411480527
Fax:
Av Pueyrredon 2261
Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1119
AR

D&A Daud & Asociados
Av. Pueyrredon 2261 2nd floor
BUENOS AIRES – ARGENTINA
tel/fax +54-11-4805-2742

Recoleta Spanish School
Pueyrredon 2261, 2nd floor
Entidad Registrante: Florencia Daud
País: Argentina
Actividad: Otra
Domicilio: Chenaut 1967 4 A
Ciudad/Localidad: Buenos Aires
Provincia: Buenos Aires
Código Postal: 1426
Teléfono: 4776 3188
Fax: 4776 3188

D&A Daud & Asociados Buenos Aires, Argentina
Address : Av. Chenaut 1967 4 A, Buenos Aires 1426, Argentina
Phone No. : +5411-4776-3188

According to the Colegio Público de Abogados de la Capital Federal, she’s licensed to practice law here in Capital. Click the green arrow for a picture from the website.

Other phone numbers she has used:
15-5346-4957
15-5259-1319

And email addresses:
sweetmarina2007@hotmail.com
valeriadesantos@hotmail.com

She has advertised her apartments on craigslist
She appears in wikipedia
She has an account on EchangeVacances.com (click for pictures)

and has had various personal and business web pages of her own most of which have been taken down since these accusations have appeared:
http://www.buenosairesguest.com/
http://florenciamarina.blogspot.com/
http://daudlegal.com/

If you have been a victim of a scam as a visitor you can contact the following authorities:

Defensoría de Turista, 4302 7816. Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1835 (Museo de Bellas Artes “Benito Quinquela Martín”) La Boca.
Mail: turista@defensoria.org.ar

Comisaría del turista
Av. Corrientes 436
0800 999 5000 / 4346 5748
mail: turista@policiafederal.gov.ar

If you have returned to your country and are unable to retrieve funds owed to you by identifiable persons as a last resort you can tell them you are going to contact AFIP (the revenue authorities) to have their tax records reviewed:
http://www.afip.gov.ar/contacto/
Centro de denuncias : 0800-999-2347

There is also another thread about the activities of Florencia Daud on TripAdvisor

In Summary

Be careful in Buenos Aires (and/or wherever you are traveling) and if something like this happens to you, let the online communities know about it – they may or may not be able to help you directly, but they can certainly help get the word out so that it’s harder for scammers like this to be successful.

Thanks again for the tip!

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

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

      Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

      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

      Don Julio image

      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

      Dada Buenos Aires image

      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

      Pizza Piola image

      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)

      Pizza y Espuma Palermo Viejo image

      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 restaurant image

      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)

      La Morada Buenos Aires image

      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

      Miranda parrilla Buenos Aires entrance image

      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

      La Fabrica del Taco Buenos Aires Palermo image

      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

      Cluny restaurant Buenos Aires image

      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

      La Salamandra Buenos Aires image

      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
    Lo de Mateo image

    Nothing too fancy, just really good pastas and flan!!

    Any other favorites out there??

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

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?

Anuva wine tasting, Buenos Aires image

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.

Anuva wine tasting Buenos Aires 2 image

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.

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is full of surprises

Either they have been doing some extreme experiments in genetic engineering down here, or South American animals are just very different.  To be fair, the zoo did not seem all that well maintained, so it’s very possible that the animals are escaping frequently and doing some of their own ‘genetic engineering’ if you know what I mean.

In reality, there are at least 2 reasons why this zoo is worth checking out:

1)  The crazy, crazy animals

2)  The fact that many of the crazy, crazy animals roam free throughout the grounds rather than being confined to a cage

Let’s start with a few of the crazy animals (which also happen to be roaming free):

Exhibit A:  Duck + Turkey = Durkey?

Buenos Aires Zoo Turkey/Duck Image

Duck? Turkey? Durkey?? And no, this is not a one-off weird looking duck, there are tons of these running around and they all look the same

Exhibit B:  Beaver/Gopher/Hedgehog = BeapherHog?

Giant Hedgehog thing image

This is kind of like a giant hedgehog...

Buenos Aires City Zoo Gopher thing image

...except that it has webbed feet in the back, bright orange teeth and an attitude.

Exhibit C:  Our personal favorite, the Rabbit/Deer = Dabbit?

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Rabbit/Deer Image

What are you???

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Rabbit/Deer 2 image

They are decently big and they run free all over the zoo. They seem a little skittish, but friendly. And very, very weird.

The above three animals (Durkeys, BeapherHogs and Dabbits) are all over the zoo, just kind of hanging out.   Other animal hybrid creations apparently are less friendly and need to be kept in cages.  For instance…

Exhibit D:  The Tapir

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Tapir Image

Tapir = cross between anteater and wild boar? He looks sad--it might be because he's so weird looking.

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Tapir 2 Image

Seriously, what are you???

Exhibit E:  These guys

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Weird guys Image

No idea... kind of like the rabbit/deer things crossed with the giant hedgehog things. You may recognize the guy in the front as the actor that played Mr. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia movie

Exhibit F:  Anteater thing

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Anteater thing Image

I think you are an anteater, but I have no idea. What I do know is that you could very easily wear a traffic cone as a helmet.

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Anteater thing 2 Image

Nice piece of tail

Exhibit G:  Satan goat

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Satan goat image

Do not mess with this goat, it will haunt your dreams

Exhibit H:  These guys

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Baboon things Image

And on the seventh day, god had some extra spray paint to get rid of...

In addition to having animals that you’re unlikely to have ever seen before, there are some animals that would be normal-ish except that they seem to have gone a bit crazy.  For example:

Exhibit I:  Smiling Llama

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Smiling Llama Image

He has lots of personality...

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Smiling Llama 2 Image

...or possibly is just unable to close his mouth due his abnormally large lower teeth

Exhibit J:  Flaccid Camel

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Flaccid Camel Image

I swear, this has never happened before...

Exhibit K:  Acro Elephant

Buenos Aires City Zoo:  Elephant Image

Hard to capture in a photo, but this elephant attempted to perform a head stand for a good 3 minutes. He almost fell down a few times. Then he started running around his pen erratically (often backwards). Could have had to do with the roaring lion that was next door, or he is just crazy.

There were lots of other more normal animals as well of course like lions and tigers and birds and stuff.  You can check out the rest of our photos in our photo gallery:  Buenos Aires City Zoo Photos

Just because the lemurs and the baby hippo were particularly entertaining we took a couple of videos:
Lemur fight:

Hippo teeth:

Logistics

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is located in Palermo right next to the Botanical Garden–The main entrance is right next to Plaza Italia and it costs AR$15/ticket for a general entrance or a little more if you want to go into the special attractions (which didn’t seem to be worth it).  It’s fully outdoors, so probably not fun in the rain.

Also, they have a pretty crazy website with more info, lots of pics/videos and annoying music:  http://www.zoobuenosaires.com.ar/index.php

Verdict

It’s cheap, it’s centrally located and it has most of the craziest animals we’ve ever seen.  It’s always a bit depressing to see caged animals and some of these animals looked pretty unhappy, but overall we enjoyed the zoo far more than we thought we would.  It shouldn’t be on the top of your list of things to do on a short vacation here, but it’s a fun way to spend a few hours and we’d highly recommend it.

Anyone out there have any idea what some of those animals are?

Game 3: Argentina 2, Greece 0

We’re relatively new to this, but as far as we can tell, Argentina always wins.  This is probably a good thing as it’s usually much better to hang out in crowded places with very passionate drunk people that are happy rather than angry.  We watched this game (which was thankfully at 3:30pm rather than early in the morning) at a bar called Sugar in Palermo with a few friends.  Sugar was a decent venue with a couple of big screens, but it was more of an international crowd which is a little less fun than hanging out with just the locals.  If it’s nice out during the next game we’ll likely head over to San Martin Square where they have big screens setup outside and tons of people turnout to watch.

Anyway, Argentina vs. Greece…

I have to believe that there is some good comedy to be had regarding each of these countries’ ability to have massive economic crises… Greece thinks they’re all that for almost taking down the EU this year, but Argentina does that sort of thing more or less every decade whether they need it or not (hey, I tried).  Not only is Argentina better at screwing up its economy, it turns out they are also much better at futbol.

Argentina_Greece_Worldcup_2010_stats image

I'm no expert, but seriously Greece... only 3 shots on goal?

It wasn’t a very exciting game until the last 20 minutes or so.  Argentina appeared to only be half trying–likely because they had already qualified to advance to the next round and didn’t want anyone to get hurt in this game.  Also, the 2 guys that have been scoring all of Argentina’s goals so far weren’t even in the lineup for this one.  Presumably, they were just sitting this one out to conserve energy for the next round–that said, it’s become more and more apparent that the basic strategy is to get the ball to Messi who then runs through 6 or 7 defenders by himself and ricochets the ball into the net off one of his own players; so basically, the other guys just need to stand near the goal and he will score via them.  With so many players on the field it seems like favoring one player so much is a suspect strategy, but it clearly seems to be working.

messi_shrug image

In spanish, this expression translates roughly to: "You guys... always trying to take the ball from me... so cute"

A theory…

Other than Messi being unstoppable, I think I know why Argentina was able to beat Greece so easily…

Exhibit A:  Greek flag

greece-flag image

Notice the shade of blue--much darker than the Argentina flag blue right?

Exhibit B:  Argentina’s Away uniforms which they wore for this game vs. Greece

argentina-away-2010 Image

Look familiar?

Clearly, Argentina was able to fool the Greek team by wearing jerseys that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Argentina colors, but rather very closely resembled Greek colors.  The Greek players likely had no idea why they had so many teammates on the field or where their opponents were–you can imagine their surprise when their teammates started scoring on them (this is why Argentina had to wait until near the end of the game to start scoring).  This is similar to the kind of clever strategy that earned Maradona his nickname “the hand of god.” (<–for those unaware, this nickname is based on him using his hand to knock in a game winning 1986 World Cup quarter-final goal vs. England and then proudly telling the press how he managed to trick the referee into thinking it was his head by putting his hand really close to his face when he did it–the goal is one thing, bragging about it later is a whole new level)

Hand_of_God_goal image

What hand??

Highlights

If you missed the game, here is the highlight reel.  Be sure to watch how Messi plows through the entire Greek team and then basically makes it impossible for Palermo not to score in the second goal (this sort of thing happens often)

Good luck Mexico, we’ll see you Sunday 🙂

p.s. for some perspective on just how seriously this sport is taken here in Argentina, check out this great blog post:  http://www.vamospanish.com/blog/2010/06/22/when-game-is-on-buenos-aires-is/

Definitely NOT one of the 5 major food groups

Ever had tripe stew? No? Oh, how I wish I could say the same. Suffering from a cold last week, a hot bowl of stew sounded good for lunch, so after class we headed to Cumana, a legendary Buenos Aires restaurant known for its empanadas and stews.

Cumana restaurant image

Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

Their menu lists ~10 different homemade stews. We had tried 2 before and asked our server which others she recommended, and her top suggestion was the mondongo. Now, my Spanish is not great, but I’m pretty sure she said it contained tomatoes, onion, and a part of the cow (while gesturing toward her back). We had been to Cumana before and told our waitress that we didn’t like “organs” (seemed like the easiest word to use to get our point across), and she assured us that none of their dishes contained organs, quickly putting us at ease. So this time I didn’t think twice and went for the mondongo suggested by our server.  Bad idea.

My stew showed up after our fabulous empanada appetizers, and I quickly noticed a substance floating on top with texture not often found in food. It was smooth on one side, and wrinkled and lumpy on the other – think cauliflower. I dodged this and instead tested the waters with a bite of broth and vegetables. It wasn’t terrible, but it seemed to have a funny taste that I didn’t particularly like, so after a few more cautious bites, I left it relatively untouched.

Guiso de mondongo image

Looked like a relatively innocent stew . . . with certain unidentifiable ingredients

When we got home, I decided to google “mondongo” to see what it was – turns out it’s a traditional Argentine tripe stew. Mm, mm, cow stomach – just what I was hoping for to help get rid of my cold.  Apparently that’s not considered an organ here?  Thought we’d been relatively clear when we said we didn’t like organs in our food – guess next time we’ll have to say “mondongo” as well, along with all the other non-meat parts that us Americans shy away from. Lesson learned.  Now if only I could find Campbell’s chicken noodle soup here . . .

Campbell's chicken noodle soup image

Sometimes you really need some "mm, mm, good"... But if you're in Argentina, there is NO SOUP FOR YOU! Only tripe!

Kayaking in Tigre on the Parana Delta with El Dorado Kayak

This post is WAY overdue. Thank you for the reminders!

Almost 2 months ago we went on a day trip to the Tigre Delta to go Kayaking. Our spanish school (Vamos!) recommended a tour company to us called El Dorado Kayak. A day of kayaking outside of the city sounded great, so we signed up for a Sunday. We’ve been here in Argentina for just about 3 months in total now and I would have to say that the day we spent in Tigre with these guys probably ranks as one of the best days we’ve had, and El Dorado Kayak is by far the best tour company we’ve worked with.   I wrote a review about them on Trip Advisor here awhile ago, but figured it was about time I wrote something a little bit more thorough. So, here goes…

What is Tigre (some context)?

Tigre is a town just outside of Buenos Aires that is situated right on the edge of the Parana Delta. The Parana Delta is a massive delta (5400+ sq. miles) with tons of islands, many of which have vacation homes or B&Bs/hotels which are very popular place to spend a nice day outside of the city, and many others as you get further out which are pure wilderness.

Aerial_view_of_the_Lower_Paraná_Delta Image

An Aerial view of part of the delta

You can get to the town by train from Retiro station in just under an hour–and it’s a local train that stops frequently, so it’s really not very far away. The train costs ~$AR2 per person, which is about US 50 cents. Not bad.

Tigre_delta_map image

Not that far...

Our adventure

We were told to meet one of the guides in the Tigre station at 9:30am as they are based in Tigre, which meant that we had to be on the 8:30am train from Retiro, which meant that we had to get up at like 7:30am. Did I mention it was Sunday?? This was a rough start, but we made it. Then, we met Juan in the Tigre station next to the big map of the delta on the wall, which is pretty hard to miss.

Tigre_Delta_Map_In_Train_Station Image

See, pretty hard to miss

It also helped that Juan was the only guy walking around carrying a kayaking paddle. We weren’t really sure what to expect from him as you never really know what you’re getting into with local guides here, but we were immediately very impressed. His english is basically fluent and he’s quite a dynamic guy–aside from running kayaking trips, he is also in the middle of finishing an advanced degree in anthropology with a focus on Andean pan-pipe music (if I remember correctly) and teaches English.  Additionally, he is widely traveled outside of Argentina and even lived in Europe for a couple of years which gives him a much broader perspective than most.

As we followed him out of the train station, he told us that he had invited along one of his english students for the day so that he could be more exposed to english. Sounded great to us! Ignacio was ~13 years old and a nice addition to the trip. We followed Juan to the ferry station where he bought us tickets and then we got onto a ferry.

Tigre_Delta_Argentina_Ferry image

Lots of ferries leave from here all day--no roads, only boats

He explained to us how big the Delta is and showed us on a map how far out we were going. I don’t think we believed him about how far we were going until we had been on the ferry for an hour and still weren’t at our destination–and the ferry goes pretty fast 🙂 Really cool scenery along the way though–lots of beautiful houses and people having big BBQs and enjoying the day. Very cool “this is where the locals go on weekends” sort of vibe.

Tigre house image

Lots like this, all with their own docks

It was a little over an hour on the ferry before we were dropped off at a fairly non-descript dock and walked a bit futher to the base camp of El Dorado Kayak:

El Dorado Kayak house Tigre Image

Home base with plenty of kayaks

Their house was literally the last one on the very edge of civilization. This was great, because it meant that we’d get to kayak away from all of the ferrys and other big boats that leave big wakes and get to see some real nature.

When we arrived at the house, we met Juan’s business partner Chapa. Chapa also spoke great english and was incredibly welcoming. He had kayaked out earlier so that he could have lunch ready for us when we arrived. The 5 of us sat down and had some delicious cheese sandwiches and Mate for a bit, then got ready to hit the river–very easy to leave stuff in their house while you’re on the river, so don’t worry about bringing stuff with you, it will be safe and you won’t have to take it in the kayak with you and get it wet.

El dorado kayak dock tigre image

This was their dock, and that dog is one of the only dogs that has been willing to play with Jen in all of Argentina

We got our brief onshore paddling lesson and then off we went. Chapa stayed behind to begin preparations for the massive Asado (aka huge BBQ with several courses of meat) that we would have when we returned. We took 2 tandem Kayaks, me and Jen in one and Juan and Ignacio in the other and followed a route that took us way, way out there–there were points where the water was almost too shallow even just for our kayaks, so definitely no other boats; other parts were more populated so we got to see lots of beautiful houses as well. It was beautiful, and it didn’t hurt that the weather was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny all day.

Tigre el Dorado Kayak trip image

Ah, pure nature

Tigre delta el Dorado Kayak trip image

...And some civilization as well

Juan set a great tone for the trip. It didn’t feel like we were tourists on a guided trip. He clearly knew an enormous amount about the area and shared a lot with us, but it felt more like we were just out kayaking with a friend and sort of hanging out, chatting about whatever came up. We kayaked for about 3.5 hours, which to be honest was probably an hour more than we needed… we were very tired when we finally got back to the house (and quite sore for the next several days). Along the way, Juan mentioned that his fiance and a friend of hers were going to join us for the Asado; we were excited to meet them (and have meat with them).

Tigre kayak trip image

In case you were wondering, this is harder than it looks--especially after 3 hours

We got back probably around 3:30ish and Chapa had outdone himself on the grill. We met Juan’s fiance and her friend, who were also finishing their theses in Anthropology and spoke near perfect english, and sat down to wine, soft drinks, home made chimichurri and criolla sauce, bread, salad and potatoes as we eagerly awaited each meat course that Chapa brought over to us. It started with Choripan which is one of our very favorite things–think of a spanish type Chorizo cut in half and put in bread. It’s awesome. That was the appetizer, then it was followed by 3 courses of different cuts of steak all of which were fantastic. We clapped for the chef more than once.

El Dorado kayak grill Tigre image

This was the grill!

We sat, talked and ate for almost 3 hours and had a wonderful time. Again, the coolest part was that it didn’t feel at all like a tourist thing, it felt like we had been lucky enough to be invited out with some locals to hang out at their house in Tigre for a Sunday. We talked about Argentine customs and food rituals, which the anthropologists knew quite a bit about–e.g., the traditions around drinking Mate and the traditions around Asados–discussed local politics, compared to the US and where ever else the conversation took us. As anthropologists (and just genuinely cool people), they had some fascinating things to say.

We caught the last ferry back to Tigre at 6pm which got us back to the town at ~7:15pm or so. Then we fought our way through the massive crowd (it was a beautiful day, so the place was PACKED) to buy return train tickets and finally made it back to Retiro at ~9pm followed by home at ~9:15pm where we promptly collapsed. At 12+ hours, including 3.5 hours of paddling, this was a full day indeed.

Costs/logistics

What did we pay for such a full day? Not much. To be honest, we don’t remember exactly… it was either AR$250 or AR$300 per person including everything (US$65-75 each). Quite a deal for a 12 hour day like that, especially when you factor in all of the food.  To set it up, you just need to email them and make a reservation (just check their website for contact info)–also, you should double check pricing, as it likely varies by season.  Logistically, all you have to do is get yourself to the Tigre train station which is very easy.  Trains leave Retiro station every 30 minutes or so 7 days a week.

Summary

As I said in the beginning, this is one of the best days we’ve had down here. Tigre is a great place to see (especially on a nice day) and I can’t recommend these guys enough. A lot of people go out to Tigre for the day and just ride around on the ferry; I think that’s an ok trip, but you see so much more if you do something like this. And, by the way, they’re quite happy to customize the kayaking portion if you want something that won’t leave you sore for several days 🙂

Highly, highly recommended.

A few more photos (and some repeats) in our image gallery here:  Tigre Image gallery