CarrieandJonathan

We have linked to a few web sites (below) in English which talk about the tango experience in Buenos Aires, but we've really only seen Tango in a few places. Cafe Tortoni (where they put on a show for tourists), the San Telmo market and street fair (where they dance in the square with the purpose of getting you to come and do tango with them at a club/ballroom), and Confiteria Ideal.

Our favorite place was, by far, Confiteria Ideal. People actually go there to learn, meet new partners, make new friends, and generally have a good time.

We're sure there are other places to tango dance in Buenos Aires. In fact, there are probably hundreds of other places to dance tango, and learn tango, in the city - we just didn't visit those places.

The fact that we didn't visit a bunch of places to dance tango, is kind of like our swing dance experience in the US. In Colorado, we know of a few places to go swing dancing, because we love to swing dance. We also know of a couple places to go salsa dancing, because Adam and Laura love salsa and invite us to go pretty frequently. We enjoy salsa too. If you're into swing, then you can find it everywhere. If you're into salsa, you can find it everywhere. You just go looking for it because you love it and love to do it. (Kevin Gianni actually made this realization for us while he was here, but I think it's very true.)

The same thing applies for tango. If you come here expecting to learn tango, just do a little looking, and you're bound to find it.

Despite taking a class before coming to Buenos Aires, we didn't dance tango ourselves while were here. (They did play some swing music at Confiteria Ideal, so we got up and danced to that a few times.) We may have been intimidated by the experience level of the people we saw dancing at Confiteria Ideal, (we are total newbies when it comes to tango), but mostly I think we just enjoyed watching other people dancing and listening to the live orchestras made up of violins, a bass, a piano, 2-5 bandoneons (like an accordion, but boxy - see the picture), and sometimes also a singer.

As I said, our favorite place to watch tango was Confiteria Ideal. I made some videos of the two "shows" we saw there.

If you decide to head to Confiteria Ideal, as of right now, lessons are Tuesday and Wednesday nights

To see one of these shows, you'll want to check their schedule on their web site (in espanol), but we went on Thursday nights both times we went. We think that these shows are most likely to happen on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, seeing as they don't start until very late.

How late?

Well, we arrived at 10:30 PM. There was music playing over the sound system, and people dancing, but the orchestra did not start until 1:15AM (ish), and the show didn't happen until 2:30 AM. So, on the day you plan to go, it might be wise to take a little siesta, and plan on staying until the wee hours of the morning.

As you'll see from the videos below, staying for the tango shows is completely worthwhile.

And, by no means should you consider our post to be an authority on the subject of Tango in Buenos Aires. I've also posted links below to a couple of Buenos Aires tango-related sites we've found useful below. They should help you when searching for places to Tango in Buenos Aires.

(Each of the 8 videos below is a different dance and different music... just so you know.)

A Little Different Style

Confiteria Ideal
TangoSpam Blog
SallyCat's Adventures
Tango Speak
TangoScopio (in Espanol)
TangoCherie
Cafe Tortoni

If you know of other great sites about tango in Buenos Aires, please feel free to post them in the comments below.

Also, if you loved the videos, or think they need improvement, or would like to see something else in them, I'd love to know. (It was a last-minute decision to record them with my little digital camera, and it did a good job with the low lighting in the place, but any comments on the videos are welcomed.)

Posted by Jonathan at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Meat Eaters' Paradise

Now I'm not 100% vegetarian. I still eat meat, just very occasionally. I do eat cheese and eggs on a regular basis though. Because I don't consider myself super strict when it comes to meat consumption, I can generally find a few vegetarian options (3 or more) on every menu, at least in the United States.

Here in Argentina, it's a different story. About 90% of the restaurants here do have an option for vegetarians. The challenge lies in that there is only ONE choice. (Even a majority of the salads here contain some form of meat.) So, if you're not feeling like spaghetti for the 3rd night in a row, then you're out of luck. For example, three of the last four restaurants we ate in offered only one vegetarian option. All of them were a variant of pasta. (Pumpkin ravioli is the most popular option.) I'm not a huge pasta eater. I like it occasionally, and usually for lunch. However, down here, I have eaten more pasta than probably anything else.

We have found four vegetarian restaurants here in Buenos Aires. However, we have only eaten at two of them. We will definitely try one more, but I don't really feel like it's fair for me to force my food preference onto others by taking them to a restaurant that serves no meat. This is part of the reason why it's frustrating me that there is only one option for me to choose at most restaurants in Buenos Aires.

All I'm asking for here is a few more choices. I'm tired of pasta, and not having a choice of what to order. Even if I had two and I could choose from two options, I would be grateful.

May the Argentine beef gods forgive me.

(If you'd like, you can check out some of my Buenos Aires Restaurant Reviews)

Posted by Carrie at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Okay, so it's not quite as dramatic as the subject line would suggest. But it is VERY smoky in Buenos Aires today. Seems that hundreds of thousands of acres of land are being cleared to the West and North of here (primarily along Route 9 (the route we took to Cordoba) from what we can understand with our limited Spanish) to make room for grazing cattle.

The land that was once used for cattle to graze is apparently now being used for Soybean production, so they need to have more land available for use.

Not really sure how all that works, or who controls what happens in the provinces outside of Buenos Aires. There is a 400 year old history of the provinces not really getting along with the city/province of Buenos Aires, so the provinces may not care that much if their smoke is engulfing Buenos Aires. Difficult to say really.

One thing is for sure. Carrie and I don't smoke, but our apartment smells like someone smokes, and the visibility here is pretty poor at the moment. The smoke got REALLY thick last night, and has done some clearing today, and hopefully the fires will die down so that we can be without smoke once again.

(More interesting news is coming soon from the variety of things we've been doing over the past few days, but just thought we'd update you on the latest in Buenos Aires.)

Bloomberg has the only English-language article I've been able to find on the smoke in Buenos Aires at this point.

Bob Holmstrom was nice enough to send this to us as well - NASA's satellite picture of the fires and the cloud they're creating...

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Update April 18th
Adam sent us a link earlier today that CNN is now talking about the fires. Pretty crazy how thick the smoke is in the city, and isn't supposed to clear up for a few days.Here's the CNN article about the fires.

And one from China's Xinhua news agency
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Update April 19th
Just a few places you can get the same news linked below. Basically the fires and the smoke will be with us for at least three more days.

Oh goody.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/americas/features/article_1400702.php/Buenos_Aires_smoke_blows_death_and_political_winds
http://paddyinba.blogspot.com/2008/04/thick-smoke-blankets-buenos-aires.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7355723.stm
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-smoke18apr18,1,4114176.story
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/6395047.html
And, thanks to the BBC, you can see the smoke in pictures.

Here are a couple quick pictures we took from our apartment today. In the first one, the smoke looks darker, but it's actually just later in the day. You can judge the thickness of the smoke by the builidngs in the distance, which, by the way, are only about 10 blocks away. My plan is that once this smoke clears up in a few days, that I'll be able to add an additional picture (in the green space) with what the view normally looks like.

And I was going to post pictures of the sunset, because smoke from fires creates amazing sunsets, but the smoke is so think that we couldn't see the sun setting.

Paddy In BA posted this YouTube video, which does a good job showing how much smoke there really is here.

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Update April 20th
Today was actually mostly clear. I'm not sure if that's due to a change in the wind or because they were able to put out some of the fires. The smoke creeped back in to the city a bit this evening, but mostly all day we had clearer weather. Which is definitely a nice change from what it's been.

Just for comparison sake, here's the above picture with today's picture added (a day with nearly normal visibility for the city). I never thought I'd say that I'd be happy just to get back to a big polluted city, rather than a smoky one too, but today has been SO much better. (We can actually breathe now.)

Here's the picture comparison from our apartment. These are the original pictures. I've done nothing to change them other than resizing them:

As you can see, we've been living in a cloud for the past few days, but the smoke has lifted, drifted, or blown away for the day.

Hopefully it is gone for good.

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Posted by Jonathan at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The magnificence of nature is so easy to see when you look for it. However, at Iguazu Park and Iguazu Falls in Argentina, it's impossible to miss.

Puerto Iguazu, the town closest to the falls, is the kind of place Carrie and I could live for a while. While a bit touristy, kind of like Estes Park in Colorado, it has a small-town feel and a welcoming atmosphere.

One thing we were surprised about is that Puerto Iguazu doesn't seem to have much fresh produce, which we thought it would, since it's in the middle of the jungle where lots of natural produce should grow easily.

When we got to our hotel, Hotel Esturion, we thought that it was going to be about $60/night cheaper than what they had listed online. We had thought, based on what we saw online, that we were going to have to spend $130/night. After requesting reservations online, we arrived at Hotel Esturion to discover that they did not have our reservation. But at check-in, they wrote down on a sticky that we would be paying $200 (pesos) per night. That equates to about $65/night for a room that sleeps three, and a pretty good breakfast (by Argentinian standards). Hotel Esturion is a nice place for sure.

We had a three person room, because we were traveling with Carrie's sister, Michelle, who came to Argentina for a week to stay with us and see what Argentina was like. We really enjoyed the time we got to spend with her!

As far as Hotel Esturion, We were very happy about spending less, and definitely enjoyed our stay at the hotel.

However, when we checked out of Hotel Esturion, they had written in a note on our agreement (a note that was written by someone after we signed it and left the checkout desk) that the room cost $280 pesos per night (about $90/night) for the three person room.

Still a good price when split 3 ways, but doesn't exactly leave you with the best feeling about a place when what they tell you at check-in is different than what you pay when you check out.

Our advice: Hotel Esturion is nice and is a good place to stay. Especially if you can stay there cheaply in the off-season. Definitely stay at the hotel, but make sure that the price/night they give you is written in at least two places on the agreement you sign, before you turn it back in to them. (Probably a good piece of advice for most hotel stays anyway.)

About 300 yards from our hotel was what's known as the three frontiers.

This is the place where three countries come together in the middle of South America. Seeing the connection of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, was fascinating. To know that it's a river which separates many countries from one another shows the power that nature really can have over the creations of humanity.

We had no idea we would be so close to this spot before we arrived, and it was a very pleasant surprise. There's a great spot where you can stand in Argentina and view the flags of both other countries painted on these large obelisk-like columns (one stands in each country).

We found it interesting that even though both countries are right there, and a boat ride to Paraguay only costs about $3 US, you can't go to either country without a visa. In the case of both Brazil and Paraguay, you have to get a visa in advance of having come to this part of the world if you want to see Brazil or Paraguay.

"As a general rule, Brazil requests visas based on the principle of reciprocity of treatment given to Brazilian citizens. You DO need a visa (either for tourism or business) BEFORE entering Brazil if you are a citizen of the United States. Citizens of some countries do not require a visa to visit Brazil for tourism purposes, for a stay of up to 90 days (if necessary an extension may be authorized by the Federal Police in Brazil). Visas will be issued on a "laissez-passer" to nationals of the following countries: Bhutan, Central African Republic, Comoros, Kampuchea, Taiwan."
Learn how to get a visa (if you're already in Buenos Aires)

"The Embassy of Paraguay announced that effective August 01, 2002 visas will be required for U.S. citizens traveling for business or tourist purposes. The visa must be obtained in advance." Learn more about a Paraguay Visa

Stinky stuff.

I understand the importance of border control, but it's also annoying when you just want to see a place to have experienced what it was like. But it's too hard for border officials to sort out whose intentions are good, and who is coming with intent to fraudulently gain from a country or a system, so everyone has to follow these rules.

Politics aside, Iguazu Falls is a place you simply must see in order to appreciate.

Animals in Parque Iguazu:
The fish have learned that in the small part of the river, where people are allowed to wade, that they can get fed. As a result, when you walk into the water (especially if you (accidentally) drop some bread crumbs), thousands of little tiny fish (and a few mildly larger ones, will swarm around your legs, and some even take little nibbles at your feet and toes. It's slightly tickly, and is fun, but gets annoying after a bit.

The Nasebaer, or Coatimundi, are like a cousin to the raccoon. They have adapted a nose that is longer than a raccoon or other similar creatures which helps them when hunting/foraging for food in the forest. (It also helps in their foraging for food from tourists, whom they've trained to give them food, just by looking cute and being fearless.)

There are a ton more animals in Iguazu Park and near the falls, including Iguanas, amazing butterflies, jays, crocodiles, vultures by the hundreds, and many more animals I'm sure we didn't see.

However, the biggest part is the falls. The awesome power and crushing force of the waterfalls can be underestimated by today's tourists who only have to brave a few elevated pathways and stone steps in order to reach them.

But make no mistake. We've not underestimated in any way at all.

Iguazu falls are one of the most amazing natural features we have ever seen, and we are likely to return to this park and Puerto Iguazu, at some point in the future.

(Here's the tourist video for the park)

Posted by Jonathan at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

We had a cockroach in our apartment. It was big. Not huge, but big.

I suppose this comes with living in a big city.

But it was actually rather comical. I was sitting at the table in the main room, and Carrie was in the bedroom with the twin beds.

Suddenly I hear this "Whoa! Whoa! Yuck!"

Followed by a couple of swats with what sounded like a flip flop.

Jonathan: "You okay?"

Carrie: "Yep. Cockroach."

Jonathan: "Yuck. Big one?"

Carrie: "Uh-huh."

So I get up and go into the room where there is a cockroach which has clearly been smacked because it's sort of oozing. (Sorry to be gross.)

Carrie: "I'm just surprised how fast it moved!"

Jonathan: "You're sure it's dead?"

Carrie: "Yep. I heard it pop."

Jonathan: "Want me to throw it away?"

Carrie: "Yes, please."

Jonathan: "Sure it's dead?"

Carrie: "Yep."

So I moved a suitcase to get closer to pick it up. Despite the oozing nature of it, the thing took off and freaked both of us out.

So I asked Carrie for a bigger shoe.

Carrie: "But I heard it pop."

Jonathan: "I know. I saw it oozing."

A few solid heel swats later with a dress shoe, and the cockroach was definitely dead.

Mostly, he just freaked us out with his erratic moving. We didn't know just how crazily or fast a big cockroach moved.

I wrote a poem/limerick (below) in response to this incident.

Kevin and Annmarie left on Monday, but over the weekend, we went to Cordoba. I made a video to showcase the highlights of the trip.

We actually stayed in Capilla del Monte, did hiking on the hill Cerro Uritorco, visited the artesan village at La Cumbre, and ate some of the best steak I've ever had in my life there at La Cumbre, Argentina.

The hills above Cordoba are a good 10 hours away from Buenos Aires, because a good portion of the road between here and there is a two-lane highway. (And don't let anyone tell you that it will take less time. It's just not true. Getting there took us 12+ hours.) So we spent a lot of time together in the car.

Here's the highlight video.

Prior to the trip to Cordoba, we spent some time doing things in the city, including going to Café Tortoni (big tourist destination, fun though), and the Evita Museum (only open since 2001).

I made a short video to highlight our evening at Café Tortoni.

Visiting Evita's Museum was absolutely fascinating! I was in Evita (the musical) in high school, and had really only heard one side of the story about her life (Andrew Lloyd Webber, while writing an amazing musical and making her famous in the eyes of people in America - not only Argentina and/or Europe, shows some bias that he didn't have a fully favorable opinion of Evita and her life choices... at least that's the way I remember it from doing the show in high school). The Museum costs 10 pesos (about $3), and wasn't feeling "worth" it until we were invited to take the English guided tour of the museum.

TOTALLY worth it. No additional cost, and was given by a great tour guide named Santiago who had an awesome approach to the whole tour. "Love her, hate her, it really doesn't make a difference to me, my job here is to tell you about her life, make it as interesting as it actually was, and let you make your own decision about whether she was Santa Evita (Saint Evita) or a devil."

What a fascinating life she lived, especially for someone who only lived to be 33, and was instrumental in making so many changes in the government in her lifetime.

Like us, Kevin and Annmarie like to cook, and Kevin made some awesome guacamole, so here's a pic of Kevin's guacamole...

And now, here's the limerick.

We were sad to see Kevin and Annmarie go, but we're enjoying our place here in Buenos Aires, and we are looking forward to having Carrie's older sister come and visit us starting tomorrow.

More to come soon!

Posted by Jonathan at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So now that we've had a little time to get adjusted into our home for the rest of the time we'll be in Argentina (although we're still getting acclimated to our new surroundings... just takes a while to settle in), we are getting out to do some of the toursity things. Kevin and Annmarie are down here, and like us, they like to walk.

It's really the best way to see things, and really experience the place where you're at.

(Not to mention the health benefits of walking.)

So, this post will catch you up on what we've been up to over the past few days.

But first, since most of the visitors to our site are American (and Americans are notoriously bad at geography) and because it might help someone wanting to visit Buenos Aires, we'd like to offer a little refresher about where in the world we are, and familiarize you with the neighborhood a little bit.

We are in South America

In Argentina

In Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is separated into a bunch of different neighborhoods, called Barrios. Our barrio is Palermo.

If you have been following the blog, you know that we have been in four different apartments up to this point.

The next picture gives you your bearings as far as everything we're about to talk with you about. Everything contained in this post (and everything we have done so far in Buenos Aires) has taken place inside of this area on the map.

Buenos Aires also has the oldest and largest subway system in South America.

So we wanted to go down to the main part of the city, and Annmarie needed a computer cable for her laptop. We had read online, through the awesome power of Google, that Galleria Jardin might be a good place to go to get a computer cable. So we took the red line (Line B) subway (Subte) from the Malabia stop to the Florida stop. For anyone who might get to Buenos Aires without the right computer parts, Galleria Jardin, or Galeria Jardin, is on Florida Avenue between Correnties and Cordoba and is definitely the place to go. Galeria Jardin a 3-story computer store/mall made up of about 50+ computer stores that appears to have everything computer-related that one could need.

I got the correct cord for my computer so that I don't have to use an adaptor plug. My cord was only about $3. Carrie's cord though, has a different plug, and hers was going to be $17, so we decided to just use the adaptor plug for the time we are going to be here.

While the variety of stores at Galleria Jardin does seem to have everything computer-related that one could need, not all the stores are open on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you are going to Galeria Jardin, definitely go after 10:00 AM (because not much opens before 10:00 AM), and go on a weekday.

From Galleria Jardin, we wanted to walk down to see the water.

So we started walking, and ended up thinking that there was not really a good way to get to the water from where we were. Turns out (after looking at Google Maps) that had we walked about 10 blocks north, we would have been able to see the water pretty easily.

But ah well. We'll head back there sometime during our time here... perhaps to take the ferry to Montevideo.

But, we did walk across a really neat suspension bridge, and got to see the ministry of defense, as well as the Casa Rosada. Most people who have seen the musical Evita know this as the place where Eva Peron spoke to a waiting crowd of Descamisados (the "shirtless ones" - the working middle class who helped put and keep Juan Peron in power), and is the same balcony where Madonna stood when she played Eva Peron in the movie version (which came out in 1998).

From there, we walked some more, and took the dark blue line subway back to the red line subway, and came back to our place.

We went out and had Parilla food, which is like the Argentinian equivalent of grilled food... It's supposed to be some of the best meat and vegetables in the world, but there is a strike going on here right now, so there has been a huge interruption in the availability of a lot of fresh food, and so I think the steak I had was previously frozen, and wasn't the best I'd had.

Check out this store shelf which would normally be stocked with chicken and beef

(Read more about the strike here)

We will definitely try some parilla though again while we're here, and today there are talks of the strike ending soon, so that should help with that.

Every Sunday, there is a market at a square in a neighborhood called San Telmo. We found that the market was more like a flea market, or a swap meet, with lots of antiques and people selling things like glasses and silverware. So that wasn't super-exciting for us, but there were street performers there and that made the market a fun experience for sure.

Here's a video I put together with highlights from the market at San Telmo.

(By the way, if you're coming to visit here, the market is only open on Sundays, is absolutely HUGE, and is a great place to visit at least once, but more often if you like to hunt through antiques and knick-knacks.)

From there, we came back and had Yerba Mate (pronounced Yer-buh Mah-tay), which you can see more about in the video below that Kevin put together.

Monday, we walked to the botanical gardens and visited the cemetery in Recoleta (another of the Barrios), and then walked back to our place. (About 9 miles round trip)

We walked from our place now to the botanical garden (which is close to where our first apartment was), and then walked from there to the cemetery in Recoleta

The Botanical Garden in Palermo is definitely worth a visit, is very nice and is well-cared for.

However, though we found that the garden wasn't as quiet as being in the center of Central Park in New York City or Hyde Park in London.

The thing that people know most about the botanical gardens in Palermo is that the park is filled with cats.

We saw some...

And some more

And some more

And some more

And...

Yes. LOTS of cats.

From there, we walked to the cemetery in Recoleta.

I'll talk more about the Recoleta cemetery more in a separate post, since this one is getting long, and since we'll probably go back there when Carrie's sister comes to visit later on.

So, I'm going to close this out with a couple of Kevin's videos.

Kevin does a daily video on healthy living at Renegade Health, and we have been in a couple of his videos while Kevin and Annmarie are down here. So I've posted those below!

Posted by Jonathan at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)