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My name is Jen Ransom and I am a recovering consultant. Now I study Spanish and Argentine wine. It's better.

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Posted on September 7, 2010 by jen

Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro. (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.) If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float. A lot. This sounded cool, so we signed up. What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold. Really, really cold. We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna. Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset. This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum! Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long. One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour. Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English. With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish. We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away. We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?). This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon. They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude. They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car. And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van. Not exactly adventure travel.

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat). Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around. And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit. The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature. After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all. Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it. Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust. He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING. Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago. It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music. The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak. There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon. Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks). Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome. By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!). This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka. They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours. We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!! We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant. This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag. It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done. We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert. We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude. Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had. He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered. The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy. We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table. It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day. The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good. We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added. Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter. We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town. We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation. It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95). The room was pretty, done in adobe. But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors. The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have. For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value! Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!! All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast. The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun. The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here. It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible. We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again). Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

Posted on September 6, 2010 by jen

We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat. San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world. We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen. Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below). This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went. We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome. This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon! (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions. We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor. Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up). Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro. It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one. We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this. Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed. We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding. We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing. Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria. Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over. We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset. Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town. First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am. The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark. The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there. We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing. And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing. I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own. The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air. But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning. The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up. But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs. Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there. It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places). It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill. It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later). The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary. And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year. What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro. A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky. We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away. We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars. Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible. He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard. Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars. He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries. He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them. We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!! And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly. And lots of other cool things. We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les. He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip. It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done. I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!! Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro? Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update: Part 2 is posted: Trip Report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Wine tasting at Concha y Toro

Posted on August 22, 2010 by jen

Ryan and I had a day free of networking meetings this past week, so we decided to get out of the city and visit Concha y Toro winery for the afternoon. We were psyched to find out we could get almost all the way there using public transit: hop the subway one block from our apartment in Bellas Artes, make one change, ride it to the end, then a 10 minute cab ride out to the winery.

Even if it doesn’t ring a bell, you’re probably familiar with Concha y Toro – recognize any of these labels?

We've seen Casillero del Diablo in the grocery stores and Como Sur in Trader Joe's in CA

Concha y Toro is the largest winery in Latin America (and the 8th largest in the world) and exports ~80% of their wines – lots of them end up in the US. They also seem to be the biggest winery tour attraction (at least that we’ve ever seen). We learned from our guide that during the low season (like now, middle of winter), they give tours to ~300 visitors per day. In the high season (December/January), they have up to 900 guests per day. To us, it seemed crazy busy – can’t imagine what it’s like during high season.

We had called ahead and made reservations for the English tour. We arrived a bit early and wandered through the store, trying to avoid the group of 40 Venezuelans (who clearly were not at their first stop of the day). Our tour ended up being just us and 6 retired Australians, and it went a little something like this:

Watch cheezy corporate video about the history of the winery in a fancy theater room
Walk across the winery grounds to see the original house that the owner built – beautiful yellow and white mansion with lots of cool statues and fountains and a view over the vineyards and their own private pond
The house and the grounds surrounding it are gorgeous, even on a grey winter day
Look at some dormant vines (we’ve taken to visiting wineries in the dead of winter; not recommended) and wait for Australian tourmates to finish asking the guide question about her year mopping floors in an Australian mine
Taste a splash of something white in our fancy dancy branded glasses (that we got to take home!)
Wait for the group of 40 tipsy Venezuelans to leave the cellar (the Casillero del Diablo) so we can go down and check it out. The story goes that long ago, the original owner noticed that bottles of his private stash of wines had gone missing from the cellar, so he spread a rumor that the devil dwelled in his cellar . . . and never lost another bottle again. As we were leaving the cellar, the lights went out (it was really dark) and a recorded voice began telling the story of the devil in the cellar
Pop back above-ground and taste a splash of something red before being shuttled into the restaurant and store

While this wasn’t exactly the best wine tour we’ve been on, it was interesting to see Chile’s largest wine tourist attraction. And the free glasses were a bonus (especially since we broke one in our short-term apartment and had to replace it – shhh, don’t tell our landlord). The Concha y Toro wine tour was something different and easy to do from the city of Santiago for an afternoon, but very different that the high-end wine tasting tour we did in Mendoza. We learned that large corporate wineries aren’t really our gig, but we still like their wines!

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??

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.

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!!!

How to learn Spanish (Part 1)

Posted on July 10, 2010 by jen

When we arrived in Buenos Aires, Ryan knew a fair amount of Spanish from studying in high school and college but hadn’t spoken in ages, and I didn’t know more than what’s on a Mexican restaurant menu. Now, after ~3 months of class, we both speak decently and can get around just fine. Our conversations about politics and current news are a bit choppy sometimes, but we’re pretty excited to be able to have those conversations at all!

Through our quest to learn Spanish, we’ve tried a number of different resources, including:

Group/private classes
Fluenz (a computer program somewhat similar to Rosetta Stone)
Traditional and electronic dictionaries
Workbooks
Computerized flashcards
Lots of other stuff

In this post, we’ve covered our thoughts on classes and other interactive learning methods (stuff that’s most useful while you’re living in a Spanish-speaking country). In our next post on this topic, we’ll tell you what we think of a bunch of self-study resources that we’ve used.

GROUP CLASS

What it is: We’re not sure about other places, but in Buenos Aires, this generally means attending ~20 hours of class a week in a group of 4-7 students. Prices generally range $150-200 per week.

A class at Vamos Spanish in Buenos Aires

Pros: Lots of exposure to Spanish, relatively low cost per hour, opportunity to meet other students. Great way to learn grammatical structures and new vocab (particularly at more beginner/intermediate levels).

Cons: Can be lots of volatility in other students in the class (compatibility of learning style and level, weekly turnover of students), less time to practice speaking, not customized to your needs.

The verdict: We chose Vamos Spanish in Palermo as our school. We found that group classes were most effective at the beginner level, and it became more difficult to get as much out of classes at the more advanced levels. First, there are just a lot more beginners than advanced students, so you’re more likely to be in a class with compatible classmates who are learning the same things as you and have more or less the same speaking ability. At the more advanced levels, it’s more difficult to find compatible classmates, as the students have often studied different things and have different strengths – for example, one might be a very fluid speaker but mess up their subjunctive verb usage, while another speaks more or less correctly but lacks the fluidity and vocabulary of the other student. May not sound like a big deal, but this can be really frustrating for both students. Also, at the more advanced levels, typically what you need to work on is speaking, which is not what a group class is optimizing for (see notes on private lessons below).

A few words on class size: At first, the typical class max of 6-7 students sounded really small, but we soon realized that there’s a big difference between a class with 3-4 students and one with 6 or 7. We were lucky enough during our first few weeks of studying to be in very small classes (1-3 students). When our school unexpectedly tripled in size one week, we also got to experience classes with 6 students, and they felt completely different. In a larger class, the teacher is teaching the materials but can’t necessarily give individualized attention to make sure everybody understands. The larger classes focused more on doing exercises in small groups and less on talking – simple math: more people in the same amount of time means everybody gets to talk less. Friends at other schools have experienced the same – any more than ~5 students and it starts to feel more like a lecture and less like an interactive class.

PRIVATE LESSONS

What it is: One-on-one lessons with a private tutor. These can be arranged through Spanish school with one of the regular teachers (we’ve seen prices of ~$US25/hour) or through someone who only does private tutoring ($US10-15/hour generally). Private tutors may have training or not, while teachers at the Spanish schools generally have to have some sort of training to teach.

Pros: Customized, one-on-one attention, lots of practice speaking, don’t have to worry about whether other students are compatible with your skill level and learning style.

Cons: Generally fewer hours of exposure to Spanish for the same price (since privates are more expensive), no space-out time since you’re the only one in the class.

The verdict: We started supplementing our group classes with private tutoring after about a month and a half and found that this was a great way to (1) get practice speaking (which was our primary goal in studying Spanish) and (2) get focused help/practice on the specific things we were messing up. We felt that we needed more practice using the things we were learning in our group classes in order to be able to more quickly incorporate them into our speaking – something you can’t really do in a group class, since you’re sharing that time block with multiple other students who also want their chance to speak. And at the more advanced levels for the reasons mentioned above, a group class can become less effective. We both saw our speaking ability improve significantly by working one-on-one with a tutor and think we would shift the mix of our study time toward this method (and away from group classes) in the future.

LANGUAGE EXCHANGE

What it is: Meeting with native Spanish speakers who want to practice English (or your native language) and spending half the time talking in each language. These can be group events (our Spanish school hosted one each week; most groups charge small fee) or one-on-one (generally free).

Group language exchange, or intercambio

Pros: Opportunity to practice speaking and meet native speakers.

Cons: Language partners aren’t trained teachers so may not correct you or teach you “correct” Spanish. More notably with group exchanges, you can tend to have the same conversation over and over (where you’re from and why you wanted to learn Spanish, etc.).

The verdict: We had high hopes for this one but didn’t end up using it much. The group exchanges we tried had an imbalance of English vs. Spanish speakers, and we found that group chats were dominated by the most advanced speakers, so beginners/intermediates didn’t get to do much more than listen in. We didn’t try one-on-ones, partly because finding a language buddy seemed hard and we are lazy.

PART 1 SUMMARY

Overall, these are all useful methods to learn Spanish and the best way to take advantage of living in or visiting a Spanish-speaking country for an extended period of time. For us, the mix shifted over time – heavier on group classes in the beginning and more private lessons as we have become more advanced.

We’ll post again soon about the different tools we used for self-study – hope this is useful!

World Cup game 1 – gano Argentina!!

Posted on June 14, 2010 by jen

The month-long World Cup in South Africa started last week, and so begins the madness. The country is legendary for its passion for football (sorry, we’re training ourselves not to say “soccer” while we’re here), and it’s easily spotted in the swarms of people walking around in their team jerseys and the talk about the football games overheard in every shop and restaurant (yes, we can actually understand!!).

For the big kickoff game Saturday morning, we called ahead and booked a table at Buller Brewery in Recoleta, which has a huge screen covering the back wall of the restaurant. And we’re thankful we did – when we arrived just as the game started, the place was packed, and our reservation meant we didn’t have to stand out in the rain and wait. Everybody in the bar was decked out in team regalia, and we vowed to have our own jerseys in time for the next game. The restaurant had a minimum purchase we had to meet, so this is what we had for breakfast:

Pints and onion rings - breakfast of champions!

We cheered with friends as Argentina won their first game (1-0 vs. Nigeria), and we’re psyched to be part of the excitement over the coming month. Apparently the US played England on Saturday too. Nobody cared.

Next game is Thursday morning at 8:30 – think we’ll skip the brewery this time around . . . especially if we hope to make it to school after the game!!

We were just about the only table in the bar not wearing blue and white - won't make that mistake again

Definitely NOT one of the 5 major food groups

Posted on June 9, 2010 by jen

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 (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.

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 . . .

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