Week 19 – Missions: Encarnacion & San Ignacio and Iguazu: Puerto Iguazu & Foz do Iguaçu

This week was about hoping through the borders. We found ourselves in the spot where Argentina and Paraguay meet Brazil on the banks of the mighty river Parana and we’ve been to all three countries in one week. First we made Encarnacion, Paraguay a hub to visit the Jesuit Missions of Trinidade then hopped in the ‘international’ city bus accros the brige to Posadas in Argentina for an onward travel to San Ignacio to see the missions in Argentina. Both ruins are listed by Unesco as the World Heritage Sites. Then we moved on to see the famous falls first from Argentinian side, where we stayed in Puerto Iguazu and then to Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil, again just by simply taking a city bus. If we were the locals we would not even have to leave the bus but as foreigners we had to go through the passport stamping procedure so we had to disembark and catch the next bus coming through.  

One peculiar thing about this corner of the world is that it is one a centre of Polish immigrations in South America. The first thing we saw in Encarnacion was ‘Dembicki’ taxi stand at the bus station, then in Argentina we took a bus from Posadas to San Ignacio with the regional bus company Horianski where one of the small shops was called La Polaca and Foz do Iguaçu had a few small business with the clearly Polish last names. But chasing the traces of polish immigration was not the reason why we came here so here are a few words about the sights  

The Missions

What remains now from the Jesuit Missions in south America are just the ruins, they look nothing like the white washed buildings in the movie ‘The Mission’. The ones in Paraguay in the small village of Trinidade seemed to be most preserved but the local authorities did not do much to provide any information about them. In Jesus, the smaller complex of Jesuit ruins just 10 km away from Trinidade, young students give a tour but only in Spanish. It was good enough for me but if you do not speak Spanish, all you get from visiting the ruins is just looking at the remains of the walls. In San Ignacio in Argentina, even though less remained from the original Jesuit constructions, they made more effort to inform visitors with a self-guided tour with audio available in 4 languages, incl. English. In the evening, they even make a light a music show but we were deprived of this experience because of heavy tropical rain. Yes, it rains a lot in the rainforest! There is one additional advantage of visiting the missions. You can take a look at the rural life away from the cities or tourist hubs (the ruins of the Jesuit Missions are apparently least visited UNESCO world heritage sites!). Most tourist visit the sites as day trippers from somewhere else, but we decided to stay in the village of San Ignacio and walk there in the evening after the handful day trippers have left. It is so quiet and deserted. We were the only people in the only open restaurant but to our surprise they served us a great pizza, possibly the best we had so far on this trip, maybe with the exception of one we had in the rather posh chain in Rosario.

The Falls

They are no doubts spectacular, both from Argentinian and Brazilian. Seeing the falls from both sides is a must. Brazil offers more panoramic perspective through a short walk on the bank of the rivers while in Argentina you get very close to the falling water and there are plenty of walkways not only to Garganta del Diablo (main part) but also to other sections, including a small island. In Argentina we spent one full day and came back the next day for more! The only imperfection of the falls is that they are in the tropical forest J and it was overcast most of the time and on our first day in the falls in rained all afternoon. It is better to have the spare day as to increase your chances for a sunny day and sunny day = rainbows = good photos. On both sides there is a boat service that takes people into the waterfalls. We did it from the Argentinian side because it was cheaper and it was worth every peso. Very thrilling and wet experience!

As much as the falls are spectacular, the towns that serve as a hub for visiting them are not. Puerto Iguazu in Argentina is a small touristy town with decent infrastructure and a central bus station, nothing special just all right. Foz do Iguaçu is a really ugly big town, with loads of not very good looking hotels and main street with the biggest concentration of pharmacies, I have ever seen and a few shabby eateries. Maybe Foz is not as bad as Agra surroundings of Taj Mahal but very close in terms of contrast to its major attraction.

The Birds

In the national park in Argentina we were lured by Lonely Plant description and made a 7km walk to a secluded small waterfall through the jungle in the hope of seeing some wildlife, really hoping for a tucan not so much for a jaguar. Yet almost until the end of the trek all we have seen where giant ants. Small redemption came 0.5km before the end when we had a quick sighting of monkeys. So when we arrived on the Brazilian side we had to go to the bird park where you could walk among the birds from the region under the protective nets. We had a ‘conversation’ with one of the parrots who preferred us talking in English to a Brazilian tourist trying to catch its attention in Portuguese and we had a few laughs, I mean we were laughing and the parrot either was laughing along (I hope) or just imitating our sound. The best where the tucans though. One of them really like the red lid on our water bottle and followed Gavin’s back pack, posing for photos along the way:-).

The Dam

Itaipu Dam, some 10km away from Foz do Iguaçu used to be the biggest hydroelectric plant in the world until Chinese have built a bigger one but it still holds the world record in annual hydroenergy output and continues to ‘outproduce’ the Chinese one. By visiting the plant on the rainy day we took a break from seeing the falls. It is an impressive engineering feat and we took a more engaged tour than just a panoramic view, where we were taken to the turbines and control room to fully appreciate its power but the closer we got to the core of the plant itself I understood less and less and less… We also got a propaganda movie about the dam that was entirely and solely focused on the pros and did not mention any of the negative sides of fooding a huge area for the reservoir.

So this week we had the first glimpse into huge Brazil. The nature was wonderful but the town of Foz do Iguaçu was very disappointing but we are going to discover more in the weeks to come so hopefully it will get better.

Week 18 – Beaches in Rocha and Piriapolis

This week was a bit of a diversion from our original trip plan but we could not have done otherwise after all Uruguayans we met convinced us that our visit to their country would not be complete if we skipped their wonderful beaches. Not much convincing was required as we were travelling a lot through big cities and a week on the beach would us a much need rest for our battered feet!  The Uruguayan Atlantic cost is short and is has a handful of small beach resorts in the Province of Rocha and some beaches between Punta del Este (the summer party capital of Uruguay) and Montevideo on the estuary of Rio de la Plata, that is so humongous that it anyway looks like the sea (I think I already said that before). Given we had only one week we had to pick where to go. We knew that we will skip Punta del Este, as it is full, expensive and laud in the high season. So we picked Punta del Diablo, furthest west, Cabo Polonio for its remoteness, both located in Rocha and Piriapolis just to check out river beaches. So here is my report from the Uruguayan beach experience:

Punta Del Diablo – where the streets have no names

We arrived in Punta del Diablo after a 4 hours bus ride from Montevideo and checked in to our hostel, where we turned out to be the only guest… and  not surprisingly so as the hostel was really shabby and was 1km away from the beach, but it was free. Strange to be so far out from the beach in the beach resort but as we later found out the old small fishing village of Punta del Diablo grew uncontrollably in the last years and stretched it self in all sort of directions. They did not even manage to give names to its streets, though streets is an overstatement; these were mostly sandy roads through the dunes forest leading in all sort of uncoordinated directions. All what remained from the old fishing village were two decaying fisherman’s houses. As the owner told us the pescadores (fisherman) are now all about pescadolares. Most of the village is full of hats and houses for rent of varying quality. It had a small town centre with a few not very inviting restaurants and of course trinket vendors The other sign of the ex-fisherman village were a few working boats on the Playa Pescardores. We stayed on this central beach that afternoon but I felt slightly disappointed. The beach itself was all right but was completely packed and the road alongside it was full of traffic. To get some shade from the scorching sun we sat under one of the boats but were annoyed by the sand flies that were attracted to the smells from the boat. So not great I thought, and could not understand what all Uruguayans were on about…?

Punta del Diablo was ‘saved’ however the next day when the owner of our hostel gave us a lift to the slightly more remote beach Playa Grande. We arrived there after some 15min walk through the dunes. It was great long stretch of sand along the bay surrounded by the dunes and it was almost empty, at least compared to Playa Pescadores. Now I knew what the Uruguayans were all about. It was wonderful!

Cabo Polonio – where there are no streets

This was supposed to be the highlight of our Uruguay beach crawling week and it totally lived up if not exceeded our expectations. Amazing place! There is no road access to the village and everybody has to either walk 7km from the main road or take a 4x4 vehicle through the dunes. The place does not have electricity and everything is powered of solar and wind energy. The village of Cabo Polonio is simply a bunch of small houses on the rocky cape scattered around in no particular pattern, certainly not alongside any streets. There some paths to move around but you can also wonder around as you please. The seemingly never ending beaches stretch to the south and north with dunes and forest behind them. Oh and it has a lovely lighthouse and a colony of the sea lions on the rocks just outside the lighthouse. We thought we would not get to see them because Lonely Planet said they hang around all year except for February… but sure enough they were right there. They are really fun to watch even though their fur colour blends their lazy bodies with the rocks. We got to see a fight of two males fighting for dominance.

As it turned out the accommodation we booked was in the village itself but about 1km away on the southern beach, and there was nothing around. I say accommodation because it is hard to describe. It was basically a family home with some additional rooms for rent build around it. Given its remoteness (there was nothing else around) they also served food for the guests from its own family kitchen and all what they cooked (if they did not run out of supplies) was really lovely, not sophisticated, just really good home cooking including a salad made from home grown veggies. So not really a hotel but a bit more than b&b. The place was so remote that we were often alone on the beach, some occasional people on the beach walk would pass by or the transport vehicle, bringing day-tripers in and out from Cabo Polonio.

Piriapolis – metropolis with numbered streets

When we arrived in Piriapolis we left the dunes and cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean and changed for the sandy banks of Rio Parana that does not look a river at all! Immediately when we arrived it was different. The cooling breeze from the ocean was missing and it was very hot and humid. Luckily our accommodation was this time set far away from the beach on one of the hills surrounding the town so it had some more air than the town and the cost itself (except for it cost us a dreadful walk uphill in the heat). On the first day we went for Playa Grande, some 3km away from the centre mostly because we did not have enough power to walk one more km to Playa Hermosa. The we set out for a longer walk to Playa Hermosa that unfortunately did not live up to its name, although it was less crowded  (at some point we were almost alone but that might be becauase of the weather, it was not too sunny) than the more central beaches but sure not worth extra walking in the heat. So conclusion for Uruguay is when in doubt always go for Playa Grande!

Piriapolis itself is rather dull big resort town. It long town that stretches along the river banks but is certainly not big enough to run out of the names for its street, yet like in big metropolis they numbered its streets except for some in the centre. You could feel that its hay days from 1930 were over and all the cool action now moved to Punta del Este. The holidayers here were mostly young families and elderly couples. However its landmark building Hotel Argentino still remains impressive and the pedestrian walk way along the river has some charm

I thought that these three were the end of our beach experience for this week but then on Sunday morning we arrived in Encarnacion in Paraguay on river La Plata, where in 2010 a part of the town was flooded because of the new dam and the town created a beach on the newly established river bank just this summer and our hotel turned to be just few meters away from another beach! This time tired after overnight journey, we decided to skip the beach experience and almost 40C heat and stayed in the fully air-conditioned room typing this blog. Anyway, the beach was so crowded that it did not need additional two people.

Week 17 – Colonia, Montevideo and its Carnival

This week was the originally unplanned part of our trip. After we decided to skip awfully expensive carnival in Brazil we were looking for alternative carnival experience in South America and that’s how we found out about the Montevideo carnival that is included in the UNESCO’s list of Intangible cultural heritage.

Montevideo Carnival
Montevideo carnival spreads throughout January and February but its biggest event is the Desfile de Llamadas (a carnival parade) that is held Thursday and Friday night at the beginning of February. This year it was 9 and 10 which suited well our travel schedule, though when we arrived a day before there were no more tickets available for the sits along the street General Flores where the parade takes place. We could just wonder the street but we paid 600 Uruguayan Pesos (=£20) to stay the night at the terrace in private house overlooking the parade. It was dear but as we found out the next day worth the price. The house was based right at the beginning of the street and the parade itself where the comparsas were at its best right before approaching the televised part of the parade. Comparsas, the groups of Negros (back people) and Lubolos (white people pretending to be black) perform at the carnival according to the specific traditional order.

First go banners and banderas at least four but typically more:

 Then the moon (or moons) and the stars (at least two) that symbolises the night but apparently has also to do with the Islamic influence brought by the African slaves:

Then the dancers at least 15 and here surprisingly unlike what I have seen from the brasilian carnival it is not all about being young and beautiful. Anybody young and older, slim and not so slim can dance, which I thought makes the event very inclusive. Still very similarly to the brasilian carnival there is a lot on display:

Then mama vieja(s) (old woman) and gramilliero(s) (old man, a village witch with the suitcases full of healing herbs):

And then the condombe drummers (at least 36) proceeded by the baton twirler and sometimes another dancing couple (this time always young and beautiful):

It was very entertaining at first but it became a bit repetitive after the tenth one as they really follow the same order. All that changes is the colours. But with the rented terrace we could see it from the top, sit down a bit and pop in to the street and shake the body to the beat of the drums with the excited locals and what is invaluable at the street event like this was the use the bathroom!  The next day, on Friday we went for the second round of carnival that was supposed to be better with more professional comparsas including the winner from last year carnival but it was not that much fun. We were standing on the a very crowded street closer to the end of the parade where the comparsas appeared to be slightly tired. Also we could not see much constantly interrupted by the vendors selling mostly the same stuff:  espuma (the foam), polystyrene snow and illuminating gadgets. So we gave up rather early and left behind very excited crows.

Murgas and Parodistas

The other important part of the carnival is the tablados i.e. the neighbourhood outdoor scenes where local satirist (parodistas) and singing and acting groups (murgas) are performing. They also have a big competition for the murgas in Teatro Verano but again we could not get tickets so we bought cheap entrance to the Tablado in the Carnival museum, which was really good enough for us. We saw one group of parodistas that we could not really fully appreciate (or enjoy) considering my limited and Gavin’s no Spanish and one female only murga with some feminist theme. Even though I could not fully understand the lyrics of their songs, I thought it was a good performance, nice costumes with big fake red hair, good beat and singing and the female part of the audience seemed to have really appreciated their jokes. 

All in all I enjoyed this carnival experience and even though I do not know how it really compares to  the experience we would have had in Brazil I think Montevideo Carnival is really good inclusive popular art expressing common people’s creativity.

Montevideo

Montevideo is an average South American city full of beautiful tranquil plazas shaded by the trees. As you walk the streets you can see its glorious past from the twenties and thirties that seemed to have gone into slight decay. Its main square, Plaza Independencia, houses once the tallest building in Americas and around the corner is beautiful Teatro Solis. However, what distinguishes Montevideo is the Ramblas, promenade along the river Parana (that is so big that it looks like a sea) circumventing the city’s with sandy beaches filling up on the weekend, like the one in what grew to be our favourite Montevideo neighbourhood Positos.

Montevideo is also home to the stadium of the first Football World Cup in 1930! It is really old, all concrete stadium that also houses an interesting museum, if you interested in football of course! It displays loads of football memorabilia from early twenties to the recent days including the infamous ball used in the famous 2010 World Cup match between Uruguay and Ghana, when Suarez defended the Ghana’s goal with the hand. I watched that game and needless to say cheered for Ghana!

Montevideo seems to have one other peculiarity. There is no recycling required from the people, all is just general trash but then on the streets you see people on horse carts stopping at every garbage disposal bin and plundering through it and leaving the city at the end with the cart loaded with the valuable part of general city garbage. Could it be the more efficient way of recycling that what we know in Western Europe?

Colonia

On the way from Buenos Aires to Montevideo we took a stop in Colonia. We took the ferry from BA across the river Parana that takes only 1 hour but if you think that this is only a river crossing it is rather a long time. Did I already mention that river Parana actually looks like a sea? We had enough time to spend 2 nights in Colonia to get on time to Montevideo for Desfile de Lllamadas, and contrary to the Lonely Planet recommendation to make Colonia a day trip from BA, this longer stay gives just about enough time to really enjoy this small town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Its old town is the only place in South America that mixes the Spanish and Portuguese influences: flat roof Spanish houses mingle with tile covered sloping roofs of Portuguese ones all wonderfully decorated with flowery bushes; Spanish street  with the sidewalks cross Portuguese ones that have no sideways and water drainage in the middle. It is just charming place and even though it is one of the major Uruguays tourist destination, not really overflown with tourists and typically accompanying it junk vendors. What makes the difference between a day trip and staying the night in Colonia is the wonderful sunset. As the sun sets down it exposes the high rise buildings of Buenos Aires on the horizon and it just simply beautiful. As you look at the photos, remember this is not the sunset of the sea, it is the river!  

Mate

Finally in Colonia I tried the mate. We have already seen it all over Argentina but Uruguayans seem to have taken this drink to the next level of addiction. Mate is a very bitter dink made of herbs (yerba de Paraguay) that fills up a cup made of wood, leather silver or dried small pumpkins, called mate.  Then you put a special metal straw into it and start pouring small amounts of water so that the top of the herbs on one side of the cup remains dry and then you start sipping it and then pour gain small amount of water and start sipping it, and again and again. Uruguayans seem to be doing it all day long and everywhere, in the parks, just sitting in front stairs of the house on the street. Once we saw a men coming back from bakery with a bag full of bread holding and drinking mate, so even mate drinking cannot be paused for a short walk to the bakery. Most of the spectators brought their mate to the carnival too! And it is not easy because you not only have to carry the cup and the herbs but also the thermos with the properly boiled water, actually not boiled as for mate water is only heated a bit less than boiling level. Even the electric kettles have a separate button for heating up water for mate! What I certainly remember from Uruguay other than the sights would be people holding mate cups and thermoses everywhere they go!

Next week we are going to make another diversion from our original trip plan and spend a week hopping through beaches of eastern Uruguay; one on the River Parana that anyway looks like a sea and two on the Atlantic Ocean. I shall report if the mate is also drunk on the beach.

Week 16 – Buenos Aires or New York

I do not even know where to begin…  Buenos Aires is great! It is a huge city but somehow really pleasant and very easy to navigate and easy to really feel like at home there. Or maybe I feel that way because instead of rushing through it in 2 days in the open top bus we rented an apartment in residential neighbourhood of Recoleta, moved around using subway, taxi or just leisurely walking through the shaded calles and avenidas. We took our time seeing the city too, only one neighbourhood a day or one museum. By the end of the week we saw all the major attractions and walked through all the central neighbourhoods but we also had enough time sleep in as we adjusted our bodies to the Argentinian life style that prohibits eating diner before 10pm! All week long I could not help but compare Buenos Aires to New York. So here is a couple of my thoughts about BA and its similarities with NYC.

Our neighbourhood, Recoleta, was so much like Upper West Side even though it did not have any brownstones. Its mostly residential buildings with doormen, of course, are so much like the one I used to live in NYC. You could look from the balcony and can see what neighbours on the other side of the street are watching on the telly; there were constant parades of dog walkers, though the Argentine ones seemed to be able to handle more dogs at a time but do not pick up the shxt. And there was Palermo, sort of like a cross between Soho and Williamsburg full of nice and posh but also funky restaurants and bars and really cool shops.

Central BA is much like Manhattan with the streets and avenues organised more or less in a grid. Even though BA does not use numbers and streets have proper names somehow it still easy to navigate once you remember the main avenues and cross streets. And if you get lost you can hail black and yellow cab everywhere or just look at them filling up the avenues. Subway though seems to be the most efficient way (and cheapest) to get through town. The network is much smaller than NYC but the platforms are the same hot in the summer. And the summer is same as NYC, hot and humid!

BA also has some wonderful shopping; I’d dare to say better than NYC! Unlike in NYC where each shopping area is full of chain stores and the small unique shops are well hidden, BA is full of independent boutiques, quality varies of course but that’s all the fun looking for the treasure. Even if you do not need to buy anything or do not like shopping, or read your books on kindle or iPad, there are two places that are a must in BA. One is the bookshop on Santa Fe converted from a theatre. It is extraordinarily beautiful and number 2 on the list of the best bookshops published by The Guaradian, after one in Maastricht and ahead of one in Porto that I saw last year and thought that bookshops cannot get anybetter. The other one is a shopping mall Galerias Pacifico in an historic building with a painted ceilings.

BA like NYC is full of culture, home of Teatro Colon that as we are told can easily rival Metropolitan Opera (it was closed for summer so we could not see anything) but also home to independent cultural centres, like the one we went to see drums performance Bomba Del Tiempo (very entertaining), where tourist easily mingle with the local ‘cool’ crowd. On one of our walks we passed by an independent cinema that seemed to have no Hollywood movies just best of the best of cine latino. It looked so much like Angelika or Sunshine in NYC. Shame, my Spanish is not good enough to see a movie without English subtitles. We had to pick an English speaking movie in a multiplex, yet we could not even see one cause all good new releases: Iron Lady, The Ides of March and J Edgar were all sold out on the Sunday afternoon. It would have been such a good way to hide in the air-conditioned cinema from the heat and see Iron Lady in Argentina, especially now that Argentines do not seem to particular fancy Brits because of the Malvinas.

Oh, and the museums! Sure Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) is not MoMA but yet we saw a really good exhibition of the works from XX century. For a moment I thought that the it was not fair to name the exhibition ‘Arte Latinoamericano’ where most of items on display were from Argentina itself but then we found some good stuff from Brasil too (I really liked Emiliano di Cavalcanti) and one painting of Ferdnado Botero and Frida Kalho too. It also housed a special exhibition of works of colour of Carlos Cruz-Diez. One of rainy afternoons we spent in Museo de Bellas Artes, again maybe it is not Googenheim or Metropolitan but still the collection was quite impressive and we got to see one of Rodin’s Kisses.

Like NYC, BA is also a heaven for foodies! It has it all, all sorts of cousins, mom and pop restaurants and high end posh places or ‘secret restaurants’ where you have to make a reservation and ring a bell to get in to the house/restaurant. We went to one, Casa de Coupage run by a sommelier who will pair up wine with your meal and offer the best bottles for tasting. By the way this is a much better way to taste Argentinian Wines than a trip to the wineries in Mendoza and it costs about the same! We tried an unknown grape, Bonarda and I was given a rare late harvest white wine with a slightly salty taste from the bodega Alfredo Roca. It was slightly pricey experience but really worth it. I cannot even imagine how much more it would have cost in NYC!  Both NYC and BA are full of pizza and pasta eateries but I will also dare to say that it is easier in BA to get good pizza and pasta in the randomly selected place than in NYC. In NYC you need to know where to go to avoid disappointment and in BA we were not disappointed once! By the way, food in Argentina is so much more than a steak, they really seem to eat lots of Italian style dishes. Here is the place to mention that we even found a Polish bar in San Telmo, called Krakow and I had a brief chat with the second generations immigrants from Poland.

There was one part of BA that is hard to compare to NYC, La Boca. Close to the port, in the past mostly inhabited by the European immigrants it is and used to be a working class neighbourhood and meatpacking district. In the last decade the NYC meatpacking district was turned around to become a fancy, cool and posh neighbourhood. La Boca, turned itself to become one of the major tourist attractions in BA, some (Gavin) would say a little bit tacky… The colourful houses are a real charm and so what that the tango dancers are posing for photos for money and that every restaurant has hosts trying to drag you in, so what that the sounds of all the life performances mingle and you cannot really hear any of them properly. I thought it was still good fun and really unique and the photos are lovely too! We avoided being dragged into any of the loud restaurants and picked quieter one with just one man with guitar signing tangos and other genres of Argentine music. He was really good, apparently he is coming this summer to sing in Europe (including Krakow) and he knew the prose of Witold Gombrowicz. That’s uncommon!

There two icons of BA that NYC does not have. One is of couse tango. I am sure you can find a place for milongas in NYC but it must be different than BA. Although I must say that it seemed a bit like the tango vibe is maintained like folklore for really passionate locals and tourists. Yet it was still fun to go for a quick 1 hour class and learn the basic step. It is difficult enough… and we got tired after about 2 hours practice! We probably broke all the rules on the dance floor so we just settled in for watching those who can tango.

Another icon is Evita. As Argentine say, you cannot be indifferent to Evita, you either love or hate her and certainly you would be interested! And so was I (Gavin less so) but I managed to get a lots of Evita in BA. We went to see a small intimate tango show in the basement based on her life story, Evita Vive (slightly overpriced but not bad). We visited museum entirely dedicated to Evita that displayed some of her famous clothing and her graveyard in Recoleta cemetery with a very interesting story of disappearance of her body. I played ‘Don’t Cry for me Argentina’ at the Casa Rosada, presidential house from where she and Peron made their famous speeches. Her huge portrait is overlooking the major avenue in BA, 9 de Julio, that is apparently the widest street in the world with 8 car lanes one way and a green space in the middle.

So this is my summery of a week in BA. I could keep going but the blog is getting a bit long and all I really wanted to say is that I really loved BA. It is a wonderful city! If you plan to visit, do not trust Lonely Planet that says you can do BA in 2 days or worse if you stay for 4 days to make a day trip to Colonia in Uruguay (as much as Colonia might be a lovely place too).  

Week 15 – Mendoza, Cordoba and Rosario

This week was really very uneventful and maybe sort of disappointing but mostly because I did have really high expectations from both Mendoza’s wine and Cordoba, Argentina’s second biggest city and its educational and cultural centre.

Disappointment 1: Mendoza

I was very excited about tasting all these wines in Mendoza, the heart of Argentine wine industry. We had 3 options: one to take one of many regular tours through wineries for some $40-50, a posh one that would require splashing out upwards from $160 or just go to one subregion Maipu, rent a bicycle and pop in to random wineries that accept the visits. Considering lack of regular pay checks we went for a regular tour just to see how it goes and decide on the other options later. The tour started wrong from the beginning … we spent 1 hour in the tour bus collecting people from various hotels and hostels around Mendoza. Then it got worse; we went to Navarro Corres, a winery owned by Diagio (one of the biggest if not the biggest alcohol company in the word) who after absolutely boring tour of the production process served us with their probably worst and cheapest wines. Things got slightly better with a medium-size boutique winery Vistandes, that only produces for export and own consumption at the bodega. The tour was more interesting and passionate. We got to taste their Torrontes, Argentine white grape. It was not bad really but sort of strange selection of 2008 for tasting after explaining to us that the young wine that did not age in the oak barrels is best within 2-3 years… The last winery we visited was a small winery Don Arturo where the tour was fun, tasting was ‘richer’ though the wine themselves were rather non-descript; the flagship wine of this winery were 2003 vintages that the owner aged for his daughter’s wedding in 2007, those of course we did not taste! All the wine tastings we did was before lunch; somehow it did not settle with me to drink wine that early after the meagre breakfast! The best thing of the wine tour was the lunch with a humongous picada (selection of cold cuts, cheeses, salads, fresh, grilled, marinated vegetables) that was served with the non-branded house Syrah, that turned out to be the best wine we had that day; or maybe drinking wine at not before lunch is just better altogetherJ

So my take on wine tasting in Mendoza is best to skip it. Just buy yourselves a good bottle in the shop. Most of the stores sell half bottles. It would make much better wine tasting. Mendoza itself is good to visit if you would like to do nothing but wonder the streets and hide from streets on the plazas or in the park; or alternatively if you a football fun in Argentina during the summer. Argentine league does not play so the teams play friendly summery tournaments like Copa de Mendoza. We got to see San Martin beat San Lorenzo 3:2. Sure it was not a big game like Boca v Riverplate who played there after we left (disappointing too) but it was good fun. So football not wine turned out to be the highlight of our day in Mendoza!

Disappointment 2: Cordoba

Cordoba was very hot, very very hot and there was nowhere to hide from the afternoon heat because its supposedly interesting, artsy museums did not open until 5pm or one even after 8pm! So we just wondered the streets full of cheap shops, not even a decent park or a square with benches under the trees! My highlight of Cordoba was a conversation with the owner of the small grocery shop where we were buying our nibbles for the bus to Rosario. He knew Wajda, Polanski, Kieslowski movies and what was even more surprising Zbigniew Cybulski, our polish equivalent of James Dean. It does not happen very often that the shopkeeper on the other side of the world knows so much about small polish contribution to the world’s cinema! Oh, I also liked a very cheerful hippy band that played on the streets: Manana me chanto.

Slight redemption: Rosario

I did not expect much of Rosario. I actually did not even want to go there. It was just convenient place to break the journey from Cordoba to Buenos Aires and it is at the end the birth place of Argentine flag, Che Guevara and of course Lionel Messi (for readers oblivious to football he is the best player these days!). Yet we had really good time there. It was still very hot, if not hotter than Cordoba but somehow seemed more pleasant and not as busy. Even the shops were nicer! Sitting in the café on the river Parana made a really good pass time. We did not get tickets to go on the boat to the river islands because the day boats were full but even walk through the park on the river was very pleasant! So do not get out of your way to get to Rosario but if you do enjoy it but if you want to sleep at night avoid hostel La Mansion de Nomada, decent place in good location but a hard-core party place with the barbeque on the rooftop starting at about midnight.

Next week we are going to spend in Buenos Aires. I am going to have absolutely no expectations to avoid any disappointments.