Happy Easter weekend to our readers!
If you’re like the Argentines, this whole week of “la semana santa” (the holy week) has been a great excuse to take off work and head a few hours south to the beach before the cooler weather rolls in. We took the week off school to practice our Spanish, catch-up on sleep, and do some more exploring.
In our week off, we’ve been busy:
Travel planning master Oli has booked our flights for our May trip around South America, for a steal of a price. Our itinerary will be:
- May 3 we fly out of neighbouring Montevideo, Uruguay (the key to lowering the flight prices) and we’ll land in Lima, Peru followed by Arequipa, then into higher elevation to Cusco, the capital of the Incas. Then we’ll hike the Inca trail to Macchu Pichu, then travel over land to Lake Titicaca, over to Bolivia through La Paz and then into the protected rain forest of Parque Nacional Madidi where we can stay in an ecolodge and go on guided forest walks to discover the extremely vast amounts of flora and fauna.
- We’ve decided to visit the rain forest instead of the salt deserts of Salar de Uyuni, a big decision since both are considered “must-dos” in Bolivia. However, with only a month to do everything on our list, we decided we’d rather check-out the mysterious rain forest that has intrigued us both, instead of driving around the empty expanses of beautiful, but potentially boring, stretches of salt desert for 3-4 days in a Jeep.
- After the rainforest, we’ll fly out of La Paz down to Santiago, Chile for a few days, and then cross over the Andes into Argentina’s wine region of Mendoza for some winery tours. Finally, we’ll end our journey back in Buenos Aires, this fantastic city that is certainly never boring.
Last weekend we went to our favourite ethnic food restaurant, an Armenian place called Sarkis. Sarkis is well-known in the city as having excellent food, low prices, and a waiting list at the door. We’ve now been there three times, and every time it’s been fun, delicious and it’s fulfilled our craving for non-steak menu items. This time we took two American guys and a Norwegian girl. One is an officer on a cargo ship who just finished his four months of leave in BA, taking Spanish classes with Oli and taking tango lessons every afternoon. One is an M&A lawyer who’s taking time out to travel and reassess life. One works in a hotel in Oslo and she’s in BA for a few months to learn Spanish and to also take tango lessons. After a great dinner, we went to Acabar, the famous board game bar, where we played mega Jenga until 3am.
On Tuesday we went for lunch with some local tech entrepreneurs who have a successful start-up creating and selling videoconferencing software to South American businesses. With a downtown office and 15 employees, the four partners and their team are working hard to grow the company and meet new goals. These incredibly kind, down-to-earth folks took us to a great restaurant for a mixed parrilla and shared all kinds of stories about what it’s like to live and work in Argentina, about their business travels abroad, and about what it’s like to quit a corporate job to start their own business. Inspiring, indeed!
Tuesday night, we went for another big group dinner with friends from school, some of whom have just left to go back home and resume jobs and normal life. Bennett and Tatyana, you’ll be missed! The venue this time was Milion, a gorgeous old mansion turned restaurant, bar and lounge. The towering ceilings, inlaid hardwoods and massive mouldings made the ambience incredibly special. We ate excellent tapas plates shared around the table, and my main was sub-par fish. Argentina, even though it borders the ocean, doesn’t like fish and doesn’t seem to know how to prepare it very well. After dinner we went outside, down the sweeping stone staircase into the romantic courtyard filled with tables, mini lights and little gardens. Relaxed and feeling privileged to enjoy this gorgeous space, I was so happy to be there while we exchanged stories and made good memories with our new group of friends.
Wednesday night, we finally found decent Chinese food at a restaurant called Lai Lai. The Singapore style noodles were quite good, as were the soups. The duck was awfully salty, likely pleasant for the Argentinean taste buds but quasi inedible for us.
On Thursday we went for a nice walk around Palermo Soho, our thriving neighbourhood full of funky bars, modern restaurants, and all kinds of local designer boutiques. The shopping is wonderful (albeit untouchable for me) and I took a few snapshots of the areas. My favourite stationery store is a feast for the eyes—colourful papers, leather-bound notebooks and all kinds of creative materials are openly displayed–and all made in Argentina. Thursday night we were invited to a friend’s place for a rooftop parrilla, a real-deal barbeque grill over a small fire and lots of hot coals. We had some great food and also great conversation…all in Spanish! At the end I felt as if I’d just run a foreign language marathon, but the guests were extremely patient and helpful when it came to filling in missing words and encouraging us along every sentence.
Yesterday we took it easy at home—we read books, played around on our computers, and planned some future travel details. We went out for a long walk around the huge parks of Palermo, the neighbourhood where we live, and rented Motorcycle Diaries, a very good film about “Che” Guevara’s youth when he and a friend rode a motorcycle around South America in the early 1950s. Oli made some awesome spaghetti sauce and we went to bed around midnight, which is quite early from our usual routine.
Check out the pics attached!
