El Chalten

For my 31st birthday, I decided to treat myself to a vacation, one which I had thought about for years as some nebulous life-list sort of thing, but for which I now live close enough to turn into a reality.  I am currently enjoying the hell out of the first full day of my Patagonia vacation and yes, it is ALL THAT and a bag of chips!

First things first:  I have another "only in Argentina" story for you.

Petra and I arrived in El Calafate last night.  We had just found out some incredibly good news about her next job assignment (she got her number one choice and was accepted into one of the war colleges for their masters program on Campaigning - as in, how to wage war and kick people´s behinds!) so we decided we were going to go out for dinner and celebrate.

We landed in one of the restaurants along Libertador, the main street in town.  Whilst munching through dinner and sipping our Malbec, the conversation turned to our taste in men and we were commenting on how different our choices of mates/lovers are from the physical speciman that we generally find attractive.  (Please feel free to imagine just how loudly and vulgarly we might have been discussing this - after all, we love to live up to the Obnoxious American stereotype.)

The talk moves to other, more refined topics - I swear! - and, in mid-conversation, this lovely blond woman, who had been sitting at the table to the side of us walks up, and...

Lovely blond: "Excuse me, I don´t mean to put my nose in your conversation (note that she is not a native English speaker, which I find AWESOME), but I couldn´t hellp but eavesdrop and I just had to tell you something."
Petra and I: (exchanging mildly terrified looks with clearly false smiles pasted on our faces, wondering exactly which completely inappropriate conversation she´s about to inject her opinion on...)
Lovely blond: "When looking for a man, you need to go with tall, blue-eyed and Dutch.  Can´t be beat."
Petra and I: (Looking over at her tall, blue-eyed and apparently Dutch male companion) "Dude, I think she likes you!" (insane, slightly relieved laughter inserted here - oh, don´t you wish you were a fly on the wall so you could know what else we were talking about!  Sorry folks, hate to disappoint, but that´s between me, Petra and the two Dutch people...)

Ah, Argentina...how I love thee, let me count the ways...

So today was our first full day in El Calafate, er, mejor, in Patagonia.  We actually caught a bus and drove out to El Chalten, about 3 hours away so we could hike and see the glory that is Fitz Roy (3,400 meters), one of the tallest, if not the tallest, peaks in the Patagonia region.  I can´t even begin to tell you how amazing it was.  I just absolutely LOVE being here.  I have spent the last year or so completely stressing myself out, moving four times between four different countries, pushing myself to excel at my job, forcing myself to be more social to help me cope with ending my 5 1/2 year relationship with Anthony, and just generally draining my energy reserves...that it feels really fantastic to get away from it all, to be out in the wild, windy, isolated awesomeness that is Patagonia. 

While I wouldn´t take away a single experience of the past year, I am finally able to breathe.  In an out, in and out...the sound of the wind rushing past my ears as I stand on a hiking path, or the moments of silence that follow when the wind abruptly stops - such a balm for my soul.  I love, love LOVE IT.

Petra and I have now seen a small part of El Chalten, the tiny little pueblo of approximately 700 inhabitants - the only town allowed to crop up in the middle of the Glacier Reserve, to cater to the tourism industry.  El Chalten is only 25 years old and still far from being connected to today´s world - their one ATM isn´t quite a year old, no cell phone gets a signal there, and many of the buildings are still constructed out of tin or whatever other scraps they could somehow get delivered to this isolated corner of Argentina.  The town is clearly a hiker´s paradise, with most of the people you see clearly not having seen a shower in too long a time (or a haircut either) and all of them decked out in North Face gear and hiking packs.  It is a very harsh, rough terrain, good for nothing other than tourism.  So hotels, restaurants, and panaderias are cropping up all up and down the sometimes paved, and sometimes rocky, roads of this hiking outcrop.

When we arrived, we had a half hour before we were to join our guide, so Petra and I decided to walk around a bit.  It started raining a bit, then a little bit harder so, to save our cameras, we ducked into the next shop that looked interesting: La Waffleria.  Although we didn´t have time for their waffles, we did have time for mint and cinnamon hot cocoa.  I have never tasted a hot chocolate so viscous in my life, at such a perfect "hot but not too hot" temperature.  The thickness, the flavor, the warmth...just spread through me.  LOVE.

When we left, we spotted our purple van just outside - our driver had been driving around town, desperately searching for us, thinking we had got lost (as if we could!  All of El Chalten can fit in two city blocks).  He even admitted to thinking we might have been eaten by a puma.  A puma!!!

Side note: I don´t know what our driver´s real name was, but our tour guide said it was, "Harry...as in Harry Potter!  Doesn´t he look like Harry Potter???"  So, for the rest of the day, he was our Harry Potter.  End side note.

So we met up with our hike guide and the two Argentines of clearly German descent who would be joining us for our hike.  The shortest possible way to tell this story is as follows:  We climbed up and up and up.  It was raining very little, with a bright sun.  We took pictures and climbed up some more.  Somewhere along the way it started getting windier, the sky grew gray, it rained harder.  We didn´t get a clear view of Fitz Roy because of the cloud cover, but we saw beautiful trees, hardy flowers, lots of crazy plants, a glacier, and a lake.  At the lake, we stopped to eat lunch.  And that is when it STARTED HAILING.  It was freakin´unbelievable.  I could barely feel my hands to unpack my lunch, and I´m getting pelted with hail, and I´m drinking this all in, thinking, "I couldn´t be happier to be here."

We looped back and hit the trail we started on and descended.  I was the last in our group for nearly the whole hike, since I was stopping to admire some part of the nature we were passing, taking pictures, or just pausing on the trail to stand there, with my eyes closed, breathing in the clean, brisk air.  There was even a moment on the descent, when I halted on the trail because I could hear the wind in the trees behind me.  I looked back and the trees in the distance were tossing about violently, in the throes of a particularly strong wind.  I knew it was coming our way.  And it hit with startling ferocity, forcing me to take a few steps forward to steady myself on the trail and a huge laugh erupted out me, entirely unbidden, that felt like it came from my toes.  It was such a strange, delightful moment for me.

After the hike, our whole group - Petra, myself, our tour guide, Harry Potter, our hike guide, and the two Germans - went into town for ice cream.  We sat on colored cubes, and ate enough calafate ice cream to turn our tongues purple.  (Calafate is the name of a berry here, which looks remarkably like a blueberry and tastes like a cross between a blueberry and a boysenberry.)  Then we loaded up the purple van again and turned our eyes South, back to El Calafate.

I can´t even begin to describe how happy I am to be here in this place, right now, in this particular space of time.  I wish you were here.

Halloween

Wednesday Addams as you've never seen her before, the world's dirtiest martini school girl, and an Argentine kitty, replete with pleather.



Before the madness and the fog machine.



Jason and Pablito

If you ever see this when you're out drinking, RUN, don't walk, in the opposite direction.

Just a few more of the friendly faces you'll find at Embassy Buenos Aires.

Hands down my favorite picture of the evening.  It just doesn't get any cuter than this!

Yours truly, with one of the few men not telling her she looked like a giant pink condom at that point in the night.

Another weekend, another series of brunches

Yeah, I can't help myself.  The Jacob family is under strict instructions to notify me whenever they have the slightest inkling to go to Oui Oui.  This was my Saturday:

 

And then, of course, Sunday was the inaugural Lades Brunch Club brunch, a branching out from my Ladies Lunch Club that used to meet once a month in Lima to try new restaurants and practice our Spanish.  This time around I am significantly better at speaking Spanish, but for the first brunch, we had no Argentines so everything was in English - sweet, sweet English. 

Of course, we didn't leave the Argentines out on purpose, but I did manage to pick Argentina's Mother's Day for the date of our first brunch, so... we celebrated as only we women can: with lots of laughter, lots of dirty jokes, and lots of food.  (pictures to come - my internet is acting persnickety at the moment)

I can't wait until the next time...

10-10-10 Pah-tay

Although I spend the majority of my time here in Buenos Aires either in the office or out at a restaurant eating (have I mentioned lately how much I adore food?), I probably enjoy my time the most when we're doing something as simple as gathering around the table and playing some traditional board games.  Or nontraditional ones like Hoopla and Apples to Apples.  Regardless, it was a long, lovely night.

 



Rocks, paper, scissors to decide who did not get their card down fast enough...

Oooh! Tiger Woods!

And yes, I was there...

Monica, very happy with her cards.

Good night!

Oui Oui, Monsieur!

I don't know if you know this about me, but I like to eat.  More than anything else, though, I adore eating out for breakfast.  Not only is it my favorite meal of the day, but I LOVE having someone else prepare it for me. 

That being said, I have previously mentioned that there are (at least) 2 quality establishments for breakfast here.  One is Tea Connection (which I will save for a later date).  The other is Oui Oui, which is this tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that has maybe a baker's dozen of tables inside and, when the weather is fine, they set up a handful of tables out on the sidewalk.  (I am almost always on the sidewalk - either because it's easier to find seating there or because I have Maggie with me.)

The waitstaff leaves much to be desired, as is pretty common here in Argentina.  They do not care about efficiency or profit, so there is no such thing as a 45-minute table turnover here.  In fact, they are also very good at not meeting people's eyes, so they pretty much can walk past you 15 times without ever once acknowledging your existence.  I've almost gotten used to the treatment, as it means that I can sit at my table for a leisurely brunch and never feel like I'm being rushed out the door.

So, regardless of the table service, I LOVE this place.  It's very pinch-you-cheeks adorable and they bake their own breads, muffins, and pastries.  The lemonade is made from real lemons and is uber refreshing, I consumed my first submarino here, and all the plates, cups, saucers, and bowls are just perfectly chipped as to make everything seem so homey.  I highly recommend the pate, huevos completos (scrambled eggs, bacon, their version of homefries which are to DIE FOR, a salad and your choice of tea, coffee or a submarino), the pumpkin soup, and anything else you have the mind for.

I am at Oui Oui pretty much once every weekend - I LOVE THIS PLACE!  (And yes, if you come visit me, I'll be taking you here...)

Why sometimes I don't write

It's not that I don't love you, but occassionally I like to get out and enjoy this life that I'm living.  I work so many hours every week and often when I'm home, I'm still trying to get everything settled (although all my household effects are now here, I still have arranging, organizing, filing, etc. to do).  Which is why I sometimes choose making new friends over writing to the internets...

The Friday night dinner crew at M Restaurant, a Peruvian Japanese fusion joint.

The not-quite-awesome-but-decent-nonetheless ceviche clasico.  And remember, my standard is the Peru standard, which, being the birthplace of ceviche, is hard - nay, impossible - to beat.

My shrimp and scallop stirfry.  Mmmm, I'm hungry...

Petra, Monica, and yours truly, doing some late night, post-dinner hanging out at Bullers Brewpub.

Not quite dancing ON the bar, but there was plenty of dancing IN FRONT OF the bar...

Boys will be boys.

Marc almost looks like a normal guy.  Almost.

On Argentine men

This past week I related one of my favorite stories about Argentine men that I've experienced thus far, completely inappropriately to a female contact of mine during a work lunch.  It was after we had talked business and we were comparing notes on what we've heard about dating Argentines.  So I tell her the following story:

At the pirate party (see previous post), I met Juan Pablo pretty early on (i.e. before he could use the excuse of overconsumption of alcohol) and we were having a totally normal conversation, when...

Juan Pablo: ...You look pretty fit.  What do you do?
Ryan: (sound of car tires squealing in brain as her thoughts put on the brakes...wha?  Hmmm, let's treat this as totally normal...) Well, I run.  And I also recently started doing yoga again for flexibility.  You know, because when you run, you're shortening your muscles and I was never very flexible in the first place.  That, and it's good for my back.
Juan Pablo: You know, instead of yoga you should try sex (insert strange, uncomfortable pause here)...with Latin men.
Ryan: (gut-wrenching laughter...um, excuse me???)
Juan Pablo: (before Ryan can totally recover her senses) I shouldn't say these things.  After all, I sort of have a girlfriend...
Ryan: (hell yes you shouldn't say these things!  And a "sort of" girlfriend?  What the f*$% is that?)

So I tell my contact that this change in the conversation at least gave me room to totally ignore the sex comment and move on to other things - like this "sort of" girlfriend of his.  And then, at the end of the night, the selfsame Juan Pablo warned me against Argentine men.  Well, dating them, at least.  He still advocated "having fun" with them - LOTS of them, even - but nothing serious.

Which is a pretty common refrain I hear from Argentine men, says I to my contact.  Argentine men are always warning me against other Argentine men.  I'm not sure that they're helping their case any.

Meanwhile, in the corner of the restaurant, this approximately 70-year-old Argentine man gets up to leave and walks by our table.  He stops directly next to me and addresses me, in perfect English:

Old man: So, what did you choose?
Ryan: (total blank stare)
Old man: Yoga or sex?
Ryan: (double take, pause, and then...) Yoga, absolutely.
Old man: Well then I guess I'll go.