The 5 major food groups of Argentina

Posted on June 8, 2010 by jen

In the US, we have a food pyramid with recommendations on what we should eat; it looks something like this:

5 basic food groups (US version)

In Argentina, they have a similar system, though it looks a little bit different. From what we can tell, this is a relatively accurate depiction:

Our best stab at the Argentine food pyramid

People rave about the food in Argentina, especially the beef, and we agree. We absolutely loved the food when we first got here, but after 3 months, it’s gotten a little repetitive. Pretty much every day when we’re trying to decide what to eat, it comes down to a few options, which we have categorized into the 5 major food groups of Argentina:

Carne. This one’s obvious (not to mention one of the reasons we came here). The steaks are spectacular, and we go out for a steak dinner at least once a week. More to come on some of our favorite spots to practice carnivourism, but we’ve already told you about our neighborhood gem El Estrebe.
Pizza. As close to 60% of Argentina’s population is of Italian descent, pizza is big here. You can find a pizza place on nearly any block in the city. Our favorite pizza right now is either pepperoni or ham, covered with lots of cheese, fresh tomato slices and roasted red peppers. It looks something like this . . .
Puts Domino's to shame

And tastes amazing. One odd thing that we’ve noticed here is that they almost always finish your pizza off with a couple of olives (usually green, but we got some black ones last time). It’s not necessarily listed as an ingredient in the pizza, but there it is nonetheless. Go figure.
Pasta. Again, due to the Italian heritage, pasta is big here, especially fresh, stuffed pastas (e.g., ravioli, cannoli) – seems that they look down on dried pastas a bit, and actually list them separately on the menu. Our experience has been a bit hit-or-miss but generally good overall. If anything, the pastas can be a bit softer (think squishy, overcooked) that we’re used to back home. And there’s something going on with the olive oil here. Not sure exactly what, but it tastes (and smells) slightly chemical-y. We always just cross our fingers that the pasta we ordered is light on the oil.
Fresh homemade sorrentinos stuffed with ham and cheese and covered in fresh bolognese
Empanadas. Best invention ever. Although the term isn’t the most appetizing, I think “meat pie” is actually the most accurate description. It’s a stuffed bread in a half-circle shape stuffed with a filling – beef or chicken are most common, but there are lots of varieties. As mentioned in other posts, this has become a staple meal for us, eaten at least once or twice a week. And they’re cheap – 40 pesos (~$10) buys a dozen that lasts for two meals. Not bad.
Different shapes for different flavors
Dulces. Dessert is its own food group in Argentina. We read somewhere early on in our time here that Argentines lead the world in their consumption of meat (obviously) and sweets. Sweets are available everywhere, and at all times of day – sweetened mini-crossaints for breakfast, dessert is included in most set lunches, more bakeries per capita than we’ve ever seen. They even have a special meal that’s basically just an opportunity to eat more dessert: merienda is the meal in Argentine eaten between lunch and dinner, most like an afternoon snack in the US. Understandable, since dinner is so late (10pm is common). The most popular things to eat for merienda are a coffee and a torta (cake) or other dulce. We’ll be writing more soon on our favorite dulces, but for now the most important thing to mention is dulce de leche. Made basically just from milk and sugar, it’s a thick caramel that’s eaten in every way you can imagine – stuffed between two cookies and covered in chocolate (alfahores), on top of flan or ice cream (helado), or on its own by the spoonful.
Homemade flan served with a side of dulce de leche - perfect finish to a light afternoon lunch!

Basically, just about anything you could eat in Argentina will fall into one of the above categories. And the interesting thing is that almost every restaurant you visit will offer all 5 food groups! Even though you’re at what seems to be a pizza place, they probably still have steak on the menu. And the empanada place may offer pasta. But, that doesn’t mean you should order it. The key is learning what to order in each type of restaurant, which we’ve learned through several strategic ordering errors. Just because it’s on the menu doesn’t mean that they do it well, and it’s critical to learn quickly what to order (and what not to order).

Another thing we learned right away: Argentines don’t like spice (to the extent that you have to specifically ask for black pepper in most restaurants), which can lead to a lot of pretty bland food. But all in all, we think we’re pretty lucky with the food options here. We’ll continue our diligence and provide additional detail on each of the 5 food groups defined above, as well as our favorite restaurant picks in each category. But now, we’re off to dinner!

Quick poll about our favorite street sign in Buenos Aires

Posted on June 3, 2010 by ryan

This is a street sign that you will see all over Buenos Aires:

hmmm...

Literally, these signs are all over, there is also another version where the person is wearing a skirt. While we now know what this sign actually means, we thought it would be more fun to ask you what you think it means (or should mean!). Write in votes are accepted:

[polldaddy poll=3296989]

Our trip to the Northwest of Argentina (the NOA) in summary

Posted on June 3, 2010 by ryan

In case you haven’t caught every post over the last couple of weeks, I wanted to put a quick summary of all of the posts related to our one-week trip to the Northwest of Argentina. As a reminder, we went to Salta, Cafayate, (through the the valle de Calchaquies) and then up north to the province of Jujuy, including the city of Jujuy, Purmamarca, Tilcara, Los Salinas Grandes (the salt flats) and the Quebrada de Humahuaca.

All in all, we really enjoyed the trip and it provided a great change of pace from the buzz of daily life in Buenos Aires. That said, we definitely encountered our share of issues on this trip, but that’s just how travelling works sometimes and you can’t let it ruin your trip. Anyway, here are the relevant posts:

1) Pre-trip planning: Some thoughts on trip planning for our second vacation-from-vacation before we left

2) The FlechaBus trip to Salta in Cama-suite: A humorous review of our very entertaining and rather uncomfortable 20 hour bus-ride to Salta on FlechaBus in their Cama-suite class of service.

3) A day in Cafayate: Photos and descriptions of a great day we had in Cafayate. If by any chance, you’re working long hours in a job you don’t love, please consider that days like this are a very viable, affordable and easy to setup alternative 🙂

4) Bad Experience with Local Guide in Salta: A copy of the review we wrote on Trip Advisor of our very unpleasant and money-wasting experience with a highly recommended private guide in Salta named Angie.

5) Trip Report on Salta and Northwest Argetina: A thorough and step by step review with photos of everything we saw and did while we were there along with our thoughts. If you only read one of these, read this one.

6) Review: Patios de Cafayate hotel: Our review of our (almost) great Starwood hotel in Cafayate

7) Photo gallery from the province of Salta: Including Salta city, Cafayate, Valle de Cachaquis, some wineries in Cafayate and a Goat Farm!

8 ) Photo gallery from the province of Jujuy: Including Purmarmarca, Los Salinas Grandes, Tilcara, Quebrada de Humahuaca and more

Our quick summary: Fantastic place to visit to see a different and very beautiful part of Argentina. That said, it didn’t blow us away–while we’d definitely recommend it if you’re in the area, it wouldn’t be the first place we’d recommend. We haven’t been to Bariloche or Mendoza yet, but we’d definitely say that Iguazu Falls is far more spectacular on an international scale (though a very, very different kind of experience).

Enjoy!

This vineyard surrounded our hotel, not bad...

Trip report on Salta and northwest Argentina

Posted on May 25, 2010 by jen

We just got back from a weeklong trip to Salta and northwest Argentina, and let’s just say that we’re very appreciative of all that Buenos Aires has to offer. We’ve heard that the rest of the country thinks porteños are snobby and that, in reverse, porteños think people from the provinces are unsophisticated and that Buenos Aires is far superior. Got to say, we’re starting to feel more like porteños every day . . . .

Our itinerary took us to see the top sights in northwest Argentina: Valle de Calchaquí, the wine-producing town of Cafayate, the salt flats of Salinas Grandes and the small village of Purmamarca (as well as the two biggest cities in the region, Salta and Jujuy). As you know from Ryan’s previous post, we made the mistake of using a local guide for the first two sights, then covered the rest on our own.

Salta

After our epic 20-hour journey on FlechaBus, we were very eager to arrive in Salta and check in to our hotel. We had heard that Salta is a beautiful and charming city, so we were excited to see it for ourselves. It has a wonderful central plaza surrounded by colonial buildings that are artfully lit at night. But we were somewhat surprised to find that the city is dirty, noisy and really polluted – Buenos Aires is a far bigger city, but the pollution was much worse in Salta.

Salta's main plaza is surrounded by lovely colonial buildings. They've got the lighting thing down for sure.

The Salta region is famous for its empanadas, and we ate them at least once (sometimes twice) every single day that we were there (to be fair, partly because they were good, and partly because there weren’t many other appetizing options). The best we had by far were at the Doña Salta restaurant just down the street from our hotel in Salta – yum!!

We love to eat empanadas as much as we love to play with them!

Valle de Calchaquí

The scenery on the drive to Cafayate through the Valle de Calchaquí is truly amazing – a beautiful landscape as far as the eye can see. Some parts were red, others dusty brown and even green. The colors kept changing around every turn.

These hills had just about every color you could imagine

The drive takes somewhere around 3 hours, depending on how often you stop. We stopped to explore the Garganta del Diablo (interestingly, we’ve identified at least 3 other places in Argentina with the same name, including the crazy 3-sided waterfall we saw at Iguazu) – a huge canyon in the red rocks right off the highway. Ryan climbed up a ways, and I graciously offered to stay below and take pictures (had nothing to do at all with my fear of heights).

Um, this is really high . . . not sure how I'm going to get down

Wine country of Cafayate

Once we arrived in Cafayate, we checked in to our hotel – the Patios de Cafayate (a Starwood luxury property) that used to be the estate of a winemaker’s family – the winery is still operating and is attached to the hotel. The property is absolutely beautiful, but they’re definitely missing the mark on some of the basics to make this hotel truly as spectacular as it could be (review of Patios coming soon).

We like pretty hotels

Cafayate is one of Argentina’s wine-producing regions, known for having fuller-bodied wines than those produced in Mendoza – one of our favorite everyday wines is from Cafayate (Quara malbec, 14 pesos/bottle – that’s around US$4). We tasted at two wineries in Cafayate chosen by our guide and were underwhelmed by both. Domingo Hermanos is located right in town and had a very basic tasting room pouring very mediocre wines (and only 2 of them!).

Wine by the gallon - got to be good

Finca de las Nubes is located just outside of town at the base of the hills. Their property is charming and has a great view, but their wines leave something to be desired. Impressively though, the entire winery is operated by just 5 employees – we saw them applying labels by hand while we were there.

Not a bad view from the winery, even though their wine sucks

Despite our disappointing tastings, we did discover a few great new malbecs while we were there – we haven’t seen these wines in Buenos Aires (though we didn’t know to look for them) so bought a few bottles to bring back with us just in case. Interestingly, we learned that the wines that are available in Buenos Aires are actually significantly more expensive in Cafayate (we saw our aforementioned-standby Quara priced at 25-30 pesos in the wine shops vs. 13 pesos in the big city). Wouldn’t you think they might be cheaper closer to the source, before all the shipping and logistics expenses? Clearly not.

Cafayate itself is a small town – the central plaza is quaint, surrounded by restaurants and shops. We ate at Colorado (owned by 2 Americans who relocated to Cafayate) and Terruno (located on the plaza, relatively good food). There are a handful of wineries/tasting rooms in town and a shop selling homemade alfahores – you can’t miss the massive sign from the main plaza. We bought an assortment to take back to our Spanish teachers in Buenos Aires for our ongoing debate over the best alfahores and conitos.

Alfahores and conitos from Cafayate image

Ok, so we bought more than a few, but it's for research!!

One other unique activity in Cafayate is to visit the goat cheese farm on the outskirts of town, where we met some of the producers. Our tour of the farm in Spanish was ok, but turns out our goat-farm vocabulary isn’t that great. Go figure.

Hello - I'm a goat and these are my friends

Renting a car

After heading back to Salta for one more night, ditching our guide and reserving a rental car, we were ready to hit the road and explore the region north of Salta. Neither of us had driven in foreign countries before (Canada and Mexico don’t count) and were a little nervous about renting a car and driving to the middle of nowhere. We were lucky to quickly find a car available through Alamo, who we’d read good reviews about. The employees we dealt with were all great – excellent English and very good customer service. It was a bit scary driving in Salta and trying not to get run over by buses, but once we made it out of the city we were good to go.

We hit Jujuy on our drive up to Purmamarca, our base for the next two nights. While some friends rave about the city of Jujuy, to us it just seemed like a biggish, mediocre city in the mountains. We stopped and had pizza for lunch at Chung-King (yep, that’s actually a pizza place, and no, they don’t serve Chinese food at all) and that was enough of Jujuy for us.

Purmamarca

Purmamarca is this cute little village up in the mountains. It’s one of the most popular places to overnight if you’re visiting the region north of Salta, partly because it’s developed a bunch of restaurants and hotels, and partly because it’s situated right at the base of this really pretty hill.

See, I told you it was a pretty hill

And our room on the top floor had a view of the hills (and a broken shower . . .)

Salinas Grandes

We’d read that the massive salt flats were not to be missed and also that they were best viewed toward the end of the day, after all the tour buses have left. So we cut short an intense game of chess in a café in Purmamarca and hit the road. And not just any road. It’s a 1-hour series of switchbacks straight up the side of the mountain to 12,000-ish feet. With tour buses and big trucks barreling down at us. Fun.

So after this lovely drive, we made it to the salt flats just as the sun was going down. Here’s our take on the famous Salinas Grandes: big, wide open space that’s white and crackly-looking. Kind of cool? Yes. Worth 2 hours of driving on scary mountain roads, the last bit in the dark? Maybe not. But we did take a few of the obligatory pics while we were there.

Hello from the really tall shadow people

Probably the most fun part was sneaking in to use the fee-for-use porta-potty after it was closed, then being confronted by a grumpy saltminer wanting her 1 peso on the way out. We were happy to pay, but it’s not our fault she didn’t have change for a 5!

You know this is going to be a classy bathroom with a sign like that

Humahuaca and Tilcara

These are two of the town that are regularly mentioned as destinations on any tour of the northwest. The drive to visit them was interesting, but if you’ve spent time in Northern California, Washington state or anywhere with mountains, I don’t think you’d be blown away. Maybe people get excited by the drive there? To us, it was ok, but not exactly a must-see.

It's a nice change from the city, but it's not exactly the most amazing landscape we've ever seen . . .

Maybe it was the towns themselves? We didn’t even stop in Humahuaca – just drove through and were ready to head back. It was interesting to see an Argentine pueblo, but there are plently of those that aren’t hours from anywhere. Tilcara was a little better. After walking for 10 minutes or so, we had pretty much seen the town so found a place to have lunch (empanadas – what else?) and a café, then headed back to our base in Purmamarca.

Heading home

On Sunday, it was time to make the trek from the small pueblo of Purmamarca in the hills all the way back to the big city of Buenos Aires. Our drive to the Salta airport took ~3 hours, leaving us with plenty of time before our flight. After our previously-posted experiences with FlechaBus and Aerolineas Argentinas, we were done taking chances on our transportation and booked a flight back with LAN. And what a good decision that was!!!!!

In comparison with our experience on Aerolineas Argentinas: LAN promptly checked us in (no waiting in line for 45 minutes because the computers were down and they were trying to come up with a back-up plan on the spot – see AA post). They made announcements in Spanish and English, didn’t combine our flight with another flight going to a different city, didn’t cancel all seat assignments, didn’t even land in another city that wasn’t on the itinerary (in case you’re wondering, yes, every one of these things happened when we flew with Aerolineas Argentinas to Iguazu). Instead, we boarded our flight on time and in an orderly fashion and actually pulled back from the gate 3 minutes EARLY. We landed in Buenos Aires, promptly received all of our checked luggage and were on our way home.

All in all, it was a fun trip and nice to experience a different part of the country. At the same time, it didn’t quite measure up to all the hype that we’d read and heard. It’s a great place to see if you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t call it a must-see international destination. Some of the landscapes are beautiful (valley on the way to Cafayate) and it was wonderful to visit a few villages that are on the other end of the spectrum from life in BA.

Buenos Aires, we missed you.

Review: Flecha Bus to Salta in Cama-Suite

Posted on May 18, 2010 by ryan

Ok, ok, ok. So everyone here in Argentina pretty much says that when you travel domestically you should take a bus even if it’s 20+ hours each way. While they do mention that it is cheaper as one of the reasons, by and large they say things like:

“Argentina has really figured out how to do bus travel”

and

“It’s SO much nicer than flying”

and

“You’ll get amazing views of the countryside and first class service”

and

“With a cama-suite ticket, you’ll get a seat that fully reclines into a comfortable bed, so when you’re not being fawned over by the stewardess bringing you champagne and a wonderful multi-course meal, you can either sleep or watch movies on your personal entertainment system”

Sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People have said things like that to us time and again. If I had been exaggerating I would have instead said something like “There’s a back section of the bus with water slides and a stadium seating movie theater; Oh yeah, and lots of pole dancers”

So–while it took us a while to get past our suspicion that no matter how nice a bus is, 20 hours on it would still suck–given all of the enthusiasm people have we decided to give it a shot and purchased our tickets for the 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Salta. We figured worst case scenario we’d get a lot of studying done en route. We dutifully asked around about which bus companies would be best and eventually settled on using Flecha Bus since they were the only ones that offered Cama-Suite which is the highest class of service. It cost ~US$95 each for a one-way ticket (we were willing to try this, but not ready to commit to a roundtrip). Now, while $95 is cheaper than the $200 plane ticket, it’s certainly not free, so you’d really hope that you were getting some value above the ~$100 dollars you saved by trading out a 2 hour flight for a 20 hour bus ride. Wouldn’t you?

We didn’t know what to expect, but given all of the hype we were fairly excited when we left for the Retiro omnibus station. The station is kind of like an airport with multiple levels and lots of different gates (called puentes).

Retiro Omnibus Station in Buenos Aires Image

Retiro: More impressive than your average bus terminal

We nervously awaited our bus’ puente to be announced and soon caught our first glimpse of what would be our home for the next 20 hours. From the outside, it looked fairly impressive.

20 hours... I could do 40 hours in a bus that fine!

It’s fair to say that seeing the outside of the bus and getting our luggage loaded was the peak of the trip. It was pretty much all downhill once we got inside. Perhaps the best way to continue is to address how the actual experience compared to some of the great things we had heard…

Jen at the peak of her excitement (before the journey began)

How the experience stood up to the hype

Great views of the countryside: False.

The vast majority of the ride it was night time, so nothing exciting to see out the window. While the last 4 hours or so were daylight and it was somewhat interesting to see what was outside, it’s likely the same thing we would have seen on approach to landing if we had flown–because yes, it takes the bus about 4 hours to go the same distance a plane goes while on its 10 minute approach.

Personal entertainment systems: False.

There were a few TVs mounted to the ceiling and strategically positioned such as to be difficult to see. And they played 4 movies with the volume on for the whole bus to hear whether you wanted to or not; the first one was “Over Her Dead Body”; the second was something with an alligator; the third was something about a deaf swing dance champion and the final movie was about the life of Mother Theresa<—seriously, if only we could have somehow made it louder.

After you find the TV (hint: top right) see if you can find Waldo

Champagne: True!

We were given champagne, and in very classy, brand new champagne flutes

You might think this looks old and broken... Instead, try to think of it like premium stone washed jeans--classy right?

Meals are impressive: False.

sigh… We received 3 “meals” throughout the trip; one was a pre-dinner snack, followed by dinner, followed by breakfast. Breakfast and the pre-dinner snack consisted of the exact same shrinkwrapped styrofoam package with some cookies, a cereal bar and some unsalted crackers.

This looks so good I with I could have it twice...

Nice!!! I do get to have it twice!

Dinner was an entirely different shrinkwrapped styrofoam pack with an unidentifiable sandwich, a dessert thing and some breadsticks. Also, we got a heated up tin foil thing full of potatoes and what we think was chicken gizzard.

Mmm mmm good. Just like Mom used to make (sorry mom)

In case you were wondering what Jen thought of dinner (hint: that face means she didn't like it--it's subtle, but if you look closely you can tell)

Dinner also came with wine. Which reminds me–drinks in general were tons of fun given that the cup holder on the very bumpy bus ride was about double the size of the cups that they gave us. That worked well.

Now imagine filling that with coffee and then guess how many bumps on the road it would take before it was in your lap.... Correct answer: 2

Service is truly first class: False.

Service was comical. The stewardess (or whatever the appropriate name for a bus server is) literally tossed our meals to/at us from a few feet away each time. I guess that in retrospect we are glad that all of our meals were tightly shrinkwrapped, otherwise it would have gotten messy. When not throwing “food” at us, she was nowhere to be found.

The seats are great and really comfy to sleep in: False.

It was clear that this was an old bus when we got on. When we first sat down though, we actually thought the seats were old school, but reasonably comfortable to sit in. Attempting to sleep in them was a hole (misspelling intended) different matter though. They do in fact lay back into beds, BUT, there is a massive bump right where your pelvis is (imagine sleeping on a speed bump), which regardless of what position you try is extremely uncomfortable and you sort of get the feeling that if you were to somehow fall asleep despite all of the bumping and the noise from the weird alligator movie playing on the TVs you can’t see, you would wake up having lost the ability to stand up straight ever again–lucky you, odds of falling asleep are not high (besides, if you did fall asleep, you might be awakened by a styrofoam food container smacking you in the face compliments of the friendly serving staff from the other end of the bus).

Amazingly, even less comfortable than it looks

At least we can get a lot of studying done: False.

This one was really a suprise… we had a fancy overhead panel with lights and stuff, but we were surprised to discover that, when turned on, the lights were only just bright enough to be able to see what time it was on your glow in the dark watch if you squinted. Seriously, the overhead lights were not even close to being bright enough to be able to read–given that 12-14 hours of this trip took place in the dark, that kind of sucked (at least there were movies…)

Yeah, these were useless

Well, at least we won’t freeze to death: False.

To be fair, no one had actually told us that we wouldn’t freeze to death; I guess we just kind of assumed it and we all know what happens when we ASSUME… but really, even with 2 blankets each and our heavy coats on, we were still freezing for most of the ride. Yay hypothermia!

In case you were wondering--the bathroom sucked too (by the way, never follow a bus... pretty sure this opens directly to the road... classy)

In Summary

I really hope that this is an aberation and we somehow ended up with a bad bus, because if this experience is in fact representative of high-end bus travel in Argentina, then I have no choice but to never again trust any of the people that recommended it–or alternatively assume that this is a standard hazing/prank that they play on new people (if so, well played)

And for anyone out there that may think this sounds picky or elitist or whatever, here is my thought–If I walked into this expecting a really crappy bus ride (similar to Greyhound in the US), then I would indeed be blown away by how nice it is, BUT… people here consistently say that despite the 10x longer travel time, this is a much more comfortable way to travel and that seems crazy to me. I can accept the idea that if you’re looking to save some money and willing to put up with 20 hours of discomfort this is a lower budget way to travel (though the margin isn’t that wide–I’d say this should cost more like $30), but to really make a quality/comfort comparison vs. flying is a little bit ridiculous (unless of course there are much better buses out there… if so, let us know!)

Very good odds we’ll be flying home.

Update: We have since heard from our guide here that everyone agrees that Flecha Bus sucks and that everyone seems to really like a different company called Andesmaar which apparently does have good food, comfortable seats, wifi, personal entertainment systems and maybe even pole dancers. Oh well, we’re still flying home (and not on Aerolineas Argentina)

Update: We have now heard that Andesmaar can be very bad as well. Apparently it varies by route.

A little over 2 months in BsAs; some observations…

Posted on May 15, 2010 by ryan

So, we left our jobs on Feb 26th, got married on 3/4 and arrived here in Buenos Aires on 3/12. All in all we’ve been on this adventure for a little over 2 months now, so I thought it would be a good time to take a step back and make some observations…

…On Consulting

While at first it was weird to not be on-call all the time and we often woke up instinctively reaching for our Blackberries, we have now gone 2 full months without even carrying cell phones with us. It’s pretty awesome. You should try it.
Trying to explain what it was we used to do for work to locals down here gives a whole new sense of perspective on just how atypical our daily lives used to be–No one here can even imagine why anyone, anywhere would work the kind of hours we worked. From the outside of an MBA-type/consulting peer group, it seems at least 100x crazier than it did while we were doing it.
We witnessed some of our Spanish teachers get into a debate about which was the proper verb to use in a particular situation and comically remembered how we use to hang out with our friends and talk about work type stuff all the time–the exciting thing is that it took awhile to remember what kind of stuff we talked about (something about market sizes or profit modelling I think)
Down arrow: It is fair to say that we do not miss consulting at the moment.

…On Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is an unbelievably beautiful city and very easy to live in; we like it very much…
…though it’s not perfect: e.g., it would be nice if it was safer to walk around at night; it would be nice if the police were trustworthy; it would be nice if there were more diversified food options…
…but, all that said, for a large foreign city it is amazingly easy to feel integrated–it helps that we largely look similar to the locals–and has a fantastic energy and general friendly vibe to it. Also, it’s remarkably inexpensive all-in-all (especially for food, wine and rent)
In general, the people here seem very friendly and welcoming–though we were a bit naive in our hope to immediately have local friends; given our limited Spanish speaking abilities and the uncertainty in how long we’ll be here, I certainly wouldn’t want to be my friend.
As I said, we like it here. Some days we love it here, some days we’re less enthusiastic and eager to try out other Latin American cities for awhile, but we’ve consistently heard from folks that are more widely traveled down here that BsAs is THE place to be, so we’ll see.

…On Learning Spanish

Learning Spanish is hard.
Sometimes it is hard but fun and sometimes it is hard and very frustrating. Always, it is hard.
Every time you think you are getting a handle on it, there is some new concept/tense/structure/etc. that throws you for a loop and makes you lose confidence in everything you thought you knew
It’s much easier to understand than to speak
We’ve both made tremendous progress, but there is still a long road and lots of time/effort to achieve anything close to fluency
Or, maybe one day we’ll wake up and be able to speak perfectly. We’re hoping this happens.
One way or another, our goal is still to be able to make local friends and not be annoying to hang out with. Seems reasonable right?

…On the Spanish Language itself

I don’t understand why words need genders
I especially don’t understand why the words for Dresses and Bras are both masculine
I find it entertaining that the spanish word for wife is “esposa” and the word for handcuffs is “esposas”

…On what we’ll do next

A very difficult thing to figure out; we are going to explore Argentina a bit more (headed to Salta tomorrow on a 20 hour bus ride!) and in the very near future we need to decide whether or not to extend our lease here.
Also, need to figure out roughly how long this rehab is going to last. Should we go back in August? December? Should we get jobs down here and stay for awhile? Don’t know. Suggestions?

…Overall

It’s awesome to be here; if any of you reading this are even mildly contemplating doing something like this, stop contemplating and just do it–it’s hard to imagine a more rewarding experience.

A Brief intermission…

Posted on May 11, 2010 by ryan

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.. My mother has been visiting for the last 10 days. It’s been busy.

We’ll get posting again soon. In the meantime, click the read link to watch a hilarious video

Dear Aerolineas Argentina…

Posted on April 28, 2010 by ryan

Dear Aerolineas Argentina,

You let us down.

I’m writing to express my extreme disappointment that our ticket purchasing experience was so anticlimactic. You may think that we had unreasonably high expectations, but I think you’d have to admit that it was you that raised our expectations by leading us on so tantalizingly in the early stages of the process.

We began shopping for a ticket on your website with a few mild concerns based on having read poor reviews from other travellers, but we were willing to look past those reviews and give you a chance–especially since you were ~$200 cheaper than LAN for our flights to Iguazu. We found a schedule that worked for us and proceeded to make the reservation through your website. Up until then, we thought of you as just another airline and assumed that buying tickets from you would be just like so many other online tickets we’ve purchased before. That was when you first began to tease us…

It seemed strange that we received a confirmation page including seat assignments without ever having been asked to pay for the tickets. We did notice the small print near the bottom that said that we were required to pay within 24 hours and would receive instructions for how to do so in an email. This seemed odd, but we were willing to go with it. However, the email you sent us said this:

Aerolineas_Argentina_Payment_Email_Confirmation Image

Don't you want us to pay??

We weren’t so excited about calling you to ask how to pay, so instead we did some searching around your website and encountered several sets of instructions clearly indicating that we could and should pay online; however, there was nowhere on your website that actually allowed us to do so.

Aerolineas_Argentina_Payment_Instructions Image

These instructions are really thorough and helpful... though, if one were being picky, one could argue that if you are going to write detailed instructions, it may be better if the feature actually existed. Sorry if this is culturally insensitive.

Google, TripAdvisor and the local expat blog also seemed to be at a loss for how to proceed. This is when our expectations started to go up–it seemed clear that this was going to be far more exciting than just another ticket purchasing experience. We decided to wait until the next day and ask around at our school to see if any of the locals had encountered this before and were told that despite what your website says, foreigners are in fact required to pay by telephone. We were told that that this has something to do with security to minimize potential for chargebacks (see handy diagram below); but since that clearly doesn’t make any sense at all, my guess is that you just want to have the opportunity to speak live to those of us that are lucky enough to pay at least double your normal prices to thank us (for those of you keeping score at home, it is true that there is massively different price for locals vs. Foriegners)…

I bolded the differences for anyone with the mistaken impression that these processes are similar

Before we called, we only expected to be on hold for awhile and then go through the annoying hassle of giving you all of our credit card info over the phone with a language barrier and nothing more (which obviously we were pretty excited about), but we had no idea what you had in store for us… I can’t convey to you in words how flattered and excited we were when you told us that because the flights were within 48 hours, we would not be able to pay for them over the phone either, but would instead need to go to one of your local offices and pay in person. It was a nice touch that you offered us the alternative of paying at the airport the day of the flights as long as we got there by 3pm (for a 7:45pm flight)–clearly an attractive option.

In fact, we were so excited that we called one of our local friends and asked if he would be willing to call you back with us on a conference call just to make sure that you weren’t giving us any unnecessary “special” treatment; after reconfirming with our friends help, we spent a few minutes basking in the joy of having the opportunity to meet you in person and then got ready to go. At this point, we had given up predicting what new twists and turns the story would take, but we had no doubts that you would have several more surprises in store for us, so we brought multiple forms of identification, a few different credit cards and a decent amount of cash just in case.

After having read about how frequently people get pick-pocketed in the subway, we were particularly excited to have our passports and other valuables with us for the lengthy ride to the end of the D line smack in the middle of rush hour. Being pressed up against the glass for the majority of the ride while trying to keep our belongings with us served to build the suspense higher and higher.

If Argentines were Asian, it might have looked like this

We were at a fever pitch when we arrived at your office and completely ready to experience Crazy Town, AR. BUT, this is where you let us down on several dimensions:

1) There was not even a line, we walked in and were waved directly over to an agent.

2) The agent immediately understood why we were there and was able to process the transaction in under 2 minutes. She then gave us a receipt that we were supposed to bring over to the cashier for payment, so our hopes went up again…

3) Only to be dashed by a <30 second conversation to make the payment with the cashier.

So, in less than 3 minutes we had paid for our tickets and were all set. There was no chaos, there was no demanding of 4+ forms of ID (or any ID at all ironically), there were no language barriers, no 2 hour waits, nothing. You built up these huge expectations for us and then just ruined it all by suddenly being efficient.

You can imagine our disappointment. If for some reason you can not imagine our disappointment, please refer to the diagram below:

Please contact me with any questions

Hopefully you can provide us with a more consistent experience next time.

Regretfully yours,

Ryan and Jen

P.S. After thinking through all of our experiences with you thus far, I think I may have figured out how you operate. While many businesses strive to meet or exceed customer expectations, from the 5 examples below, it seems that your customer strategy is simply to do the opposite of what customers expect in every situation. As a former strategy consultant, I for one applaud this boldly differentiated approach to making sure your customers never get bored with you.

Example 1: Trying to purchase ticket online

Our expectation: Just put in credit card info and make purchase

Aerolineas Argentina: State frequently on your site that it is possible to pay online, but instead make it impossible to pay online.

Example 2: Calling to purchase ticket

Our expectation: A mild hassle, but at least we can finalize the purchase

Aerolineas Argentina: Tell us that we have to go to the office to make the purchase

Example 3: Going to office to finalize purchase

Our expectation: A major hassle with low probability of success

Aerolineas Argentina: Super smooth and efficient process

Example 4: Rationale for making us go to the office in person within 48 hours of flight

Our expectation: Something to do with a higher degree of security?

Aerolineas Argentina: Did not check our ID or even look to see if our signature matched the credit card we used

Example: Onboard flight to Iguazu

Our expectation: We may be late, but we’ll get to Iguazu

Aerolineas Argentina: Instead, land in a different city (Posadas) and don’t tell us until we land

P.P.S After reviewing the schedule change email you sent us the day after our flight left, I am further convinced of the above

Aerolineas_Argentina_Schedule_Change_Notification Image

You can't make this up

Dear purse snatchers,

Posted on April 14, 2010 by ryan

Us: the couple sitting on the bench in the botanical garden reading our books and enjoying the beautiful day for a couple of hours.

You: the band of 2 women and one guy that welcomed us to Buenos Aires by teaching us to be a little bit more careful with our belongings when in public spaces.

We were a bit confused, but also flattered when you asked us for directions to Plaza Seranno in english despite obviously being locals. Of course, we were more than happy to share our map with you while your friend snuck up behind our bench and grabbed Jen’s purse in order to show us how important it is to keep a close watch on our valuables.

I’m writing to thank you for providing this valuable public service on behalf of the city of Buenos Aires–it was tremendously helpful to us and we have been much more careful since. Some people might mistakenly think that you were actually trying to steal Jen’s purse for real (and to be honest, we wondered about it as well for awhile), but upon further inspection, there are several indicators which make it clear that you had no intention of actually making off with her purse:

The park itself: Given that the Botanical Garden is surrounded by a tall fence, has few hiding spots and has only 2 exits which are staffed by guards, it would obviously be almost impossible to steal something from someone and make a get away unless you were EXTREMELY fast or very sneaky.
Timing/location within park: Clearly, if you had actually wanted to succeed you would have targeted your victims at night in the dark, or at least in a secluded part of the park, or at least somewhere where there weren’t other people nearby. The fact that you went out of your way to choose us at our bench in broad daylight with multiple other benches full of people not only nearby (~10 feet), but also directly facing us is a pretty clear indicator of your intentions.
Resource deployment: Your band of pretend-thieves/BsAs-tourist-safety-officers consisted of 2 young and athletic looking folks (a guy and a girl) and one very overweight woman (for the purpose of the story, we’ll call her Helga). The fact that the 2 of you that looked as though you could run quite fast (we’ll call you Speedy and Smarty) were the two that tried to distract us from the purse by asking us directions while appointing Helga to grab it and take off “running” is probably the strongest indicator of your intentions.

When the people sitting at the bench 10 feet away suddenly yelled “THIEF!!” and pointed at our bench as we were showing Speedy and Smarty our map, we were very confused, scared and quickly becoming angry as we turned to see Helga running off with Jen’s purse. Of course, it quickly turned from fear/anger to pure confusion as we watched Helga waddle along at her top speed of 1.3 MPH away from us down the main path in the direction of several other passersby and away from any discernible exit or escape (given the tall fence and guards and all). Given Helga’s impressive land speed, we actually had quite a bit of time to consider what our next move should be…

As I turned around and saw Helga ambling off (which was almost hypnotic), my thought process was something like the following:

“Hey!!”

…

“What the…?”

…

“I should chase her…”

But then it occurred to me that this must have been a trick–I’m ashamed to admit that I briefly thought that maybe Helga was just a diversion since even in the heat of the moment it was clear that there was no possible way that she could successfully run off with anything; Speedy and Smarty, please accept my apologies for briefly thinking that you may have been deploying some sort of clever double fake-out plan–clearly that’s not something you’d be capable of (you being city safety officers and all). My thoughts continued:

“It’s got to be a trick, they want me to follow her…”

…

“Yeah, that’s it, they want me to chase her down so they can take something else…”

…

“Ha! I’m smarter than them, they won’t trick me”

…

“Wow, she’s really slow”

…

“Wait, what else could they want to take…? We don’t have anything else with us.”

…

“Wow, I’ve been standing here thinking about this for a long time now and I could still catch her in under 5 seconds…”

…

“Maybe this is some sort of hidden camera video show…”

My musings were abruptly halted as Helga–having completed her part of the plan in showing us that the purse was steal-able, and also making it obvious that she wasn’t really trying to steal it–simply put the purse on the ground a short distance away from the bench and kept on lumbering away (still at top speed). Jen retrieved the purse and we had plenty of time to look through it to make sure everything was still there while keeping an eye on Helga and having confidence that we could still catch her if need be. Speedy and Smarty were nowhere to be found at this point, but I can only assume that they had moved on to the next group of tourists they needed to welcome for the day.

Thank you again for your help. Simply reading about other people’s experience with pick-pockets and the like does not nearly have the same effect as having experienced this simulated theft that you performed for us. Best of luck with your future demonstrations, please let us know if we can put in a good word with any of your supervisors–I’m sure they would be very interested to hear how effectively you are performing your duties. I’ve included the below picture of me sitting on the bench just before the demonstration took place in case you don’t remember us:

All the best,

Ryan and Jen

(this happened a few weeks ago, but I figured it was about time I wrote it up)

Questions that need answering: Why do the buses whistle?

Posted on April 1, 2010 by ryan

Seriously, they whistle.

Not only are there literally thousands of them (we have seen 10+ on the same block at the same time); not only do they aim directly for you whenever possible; not only do they emit disgusting exhaust fumes, not only are their engines extremely loud; but on top of all that, some ass clown thought it would be a good idea to make them whistle at you. All the time. Day and Night. Loudly. Why??? I want to know WHY.

Every one is a different color, but they all whistle the same. By which I mean annoyingly.

Google turned up the following result which provides a very good overview of the bus situation:

“Concerning Argentine Buses (or: Why I love it here)”

I’m going to digress for a moment to explain how the buses work here. First, you have your “Guia T.” This is a two part booklet, the first part being a map of Buenos Aires that is divided into grids. Opposite of the grids are corresponding boxes that contain a list of every bus that passes through that

grid of the city. These maps, however, do not tell you where these buses stop in the grid, just that they do. You then use your Guia T to look for a bus that passes through the part of the city you’re currently in and through where you’re going. Then you search the physical 4 block by 4 block square that is that grid in order to find the elusive bus stop. The signs are small and the buses will really stop anywhere. For most “portenos” (Buenos Aires residents, or “people of the port”) this is do-able. (?!?!?) If you, poor soul, need more help the second part of the Guia T includes a list of each bus’s main neighborhood stops with a drawing of the bus, which is necessary because all the buses are painted different bright colors to distinguish them.
So, to recap: hidden bus stops, unclear routes, confusing maps and buses that look like they belong on carousels. And if the driver tells you “Arriba” while you’re getting on you better get the hell on because that roughly translates to “I’m shutting the door now and driving wildly into traffic whether you are standing there or not” in Castellano. (Castellano being the Buenos Aires specific brand of Spanish).

Note: These buses whistle. No, not like a train whistle. A human whistle. These buses, should you look lost at a street corner anywhere in Buenos Aires, will good ol’ fashion greasy-construction-worker-at-a pretty-lady whistle at you to let you know, “Hey, baby, I know where you could be going. With me.”

I think that sums things up fairly well. You may think I’m kidding about this, but I would never kid about whistling buses.

I can hear one outside my window now. Why.

Can anyone explain this phenomenon? If so, please do so in the comments!

Consulting Rehab

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

Tag Archives: Humor