Buenos Aires: Steaks, Alfajores and Daily Chicos

The food we ate in Buenos Aires was not that spectacular, unusual or exotic to us as what we've encountered in Peru and Bolivia, however it was clean, safe and above all, extremely delicious. To sum up, we had steaks and ice-cream every night, and random sweets and treats throughout the day. I am now seriously worried that this backpacking trip, which was supposed to starve me and bring back my maiden figure, will instead turn me into a big fat whale. Don't laugh my friend! I love food and love being skinny - now I have to find a way to make those two live happily together till death do them part.

 Buenos Aires is known for its grilled meat, so we decided to have as much Parilla (barbecue) as our stomachs and pockets could handle. Restaurants serving parilla are all over BA, and it's not hard to find a good one. The photo above is taken at Parilla Pena, a joint not far from our house. I read that the beef ribs are the best on the menu, so we ordered some ribs, salad and house wine.

 All of the parilla restaurants came with this sauce that you can put on the steak. It's a mix of herbs, salt, balsamic, tons of garlic and parsley. I guess you could call it tapenade, but it didn't have any olives in it. Let me tell you, this magic concoction was absolutely divine. I'd eat this on bread every day and be the happiest person alive.

 I took the photo above mostly because of the neat presentation of the produce. You can't tell, but it was really fresh and perky. They had all sorts of types of lettuce, watercress, radicchio and my favorite peppers in the whole world: the long green ones that can be roasted, made into a salad with garlic and vinegar and eaten cold from the fridge. (PS: Mom, oh how I miss your food!)

 Alfajores galore! Alfajor is a traditional sweet made of two soft cookies with dolce de leche in the middle and covered by white, dark, or milk chocolate. It comes in different varieties, depending on the type of chocolate it is dipped into. It can be found EVERYWHERE! It is insanely sweet. One small bite from an alfajor and you need to chug down a whole bottle of water. You can buy them at every corner store, but they are also found at Havanna, which is a coffee shop chain as ubiquitous in BA as Starbucks is in the US.

 You can't quite tell, but the winter scene in the photo above is made entirely out of candy, mostly licorice and Haribo, but also all kinds of jelly candy. We found it in one of the many local malls. They have quite a lot of malls in BA.

 Alright, now we get to the moment of truth. You may have wondered, dear reader, what a Daily Chico is. A daily chico is when Anne and Monica have made a pact to try out all the flavors at the ice cream shop located right next to our house. Daily comes from "we ate one flavor each every day" and chico comes from "the smallest size they had available on the menu." Despite the name (chico), the size was quite big and fulfilling. This was no ordinary ice cream. This was one of the best ice creams in the world, and the prices were no ordinary either. We paid its weight in gold for that ice cream, but it was totally worth it.

 Anne, licking her helado artizanale from Cadore. I think the flavor she got that night was dark chocolate.

 Cadore is the name of the game. If you go to Buenos Aires, you gotta try this. It's located on Avenida Corrientes and you just can't miss it.

 Chorizo grill stand at the San Telmo flea market. Really good sausages, made right on the street.

 This restaurant specializes in Asado de Cordero (roasted lamb) - we didn't eat there, because it was closed down for a private party, but this was what you could see from the window display.

The store whose window display we photographed in the image above specializes in various types of torrone (a traditional Spanish sweet made with sugar, egg whites and almonds), marzipans and halvas. Some of the marzipans contain candied cherries or other fruit. The prices listed are for 100 grams. Anne got 200 grams of halva and we devoured it.

On our first day in Buenos Aires, as soon as we landed, we walked around the hostel and got us some beef stew with potatoes. In Buenos Aires they like to do the fixed price menu (Menu del dia or Menu Executivo) which includes a main dish, a beverage, a desert and an expresso. You can find these fixed price menus all over the city.

First night in Buenos Aires we went to a Japanese restaurant that Daniel had heard of in his guide book and Anne and Daniel got these gyoza things that look a lot like tacos. I don't remember if they liked them or not.

Milanesa is breaded chicken breast and it comes with a lot of fries. By the time we left Argentina, we were sick of seeing and eating milanesa and fries...

Argentine steaks are made from very young beef. We call it veal in the US, but in Argentina it seems to be all veal. They just don't refer to it as veal.

Iguazu Falls

I've procrastinating writing this blog post for a while now... I guess I am not very excited about the subject matter. At first Anne and I were going to merge our photos into one joint post, but I didn't have my photos ready in time (that means selected and resized for upload), nor did I feel like taking the effort. So here I finally am ready to do it.

For those who don't know, Iguazu Falls is a big waterfall located at the border intersection of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Both Brazil and Argentina claim some part of the falls, but the more impressive part is on the Argentina side, thus the hoards of tourists coming here to see it. On the Argentina side there's a small town called Puerto Iguazu that exists (and probably was created) just for tourism. On the Brazil side (which is only 20 minutes away by bus), there lies a bigger town called Foz de Iguacu. This town is not very touristy, it's bigger and seemed more industrial to me (I think they had a water energy plant there.)


After freezing our asses off in Patagonia (and feeling sorry for the locals in Punta Arena that call "warm weather" the 50 degrees they get in summertime), we jetsat (I just made up that word, I think) to Santiago de Chile, then Buenos Aires, then Iguazu - jumping over half of the South American Continent and over 30 degrees Fahrenheit. On January 3rd, we were comfortably chilling by the pool at our hostel in Iguazu and feeling that life was really good to us.

The next day we headed over to the national park Iguazu Falls, the reason why thousands of people come here every day. It was pure circus. I've never been to Disneyland, but Anne said it reminded her a lot of Disneyland. This waterfall might be Argentina's cash cow. The price of a ticket to enter the park is 100 pesos for non-Argentine residents (which is about 25 USD), the entire park has paved trails and it's full of people. If you know Yosemite at high peak tourist time, then triple that and you'll get Iguazu. Making the natural attractions of the park very accessible to anyone means that entire families with kids, babies in strollers, grandmas, etc. are all over the park. Hoards of people. You have to walk slowly everywhere; it's like a march of ants. Besides that, you have to wait in long lines for everything: to buy your ticket, to get the ticket stamped at entrance, to refill water, to get on a train inside the park, to get on a boat, etc. Lines, lines, lines... in 80 degree weather...

But somehow it's worth it. The views make up for it. This waterfall is extremely beautiful, surrounded by lush nature, real jungle and lots of wildlife roaming around. We saw tons of birds, butterflies, monkeys, lizards - despite all the hoards of humans nature still dominates. Here in the background you see a little island in the middle of the river at the base of the waterfall. A boat takes you there for free, and you can hike around the island or swim on that little beach. Unlike other waterfall experiences you may have had, the water here is really warm, because it comes from a river that flows calmly before it turns into a waterfall.

Vista point of one side of the Iguazu waterfall.

The boat you see there goes straight towards the waterfall until you get completely drenched and by the heavy downpours of water. We took that boat later when we got to the bottom and we really loved it. The water is so strong and so powerful when it falls on you, that after a few seconds it feels like you can't breathe anymore. But the boat stays there only for a few seconds anyway, after which it moves back, and then goes forward again.

Perfect curtain of water.

View of the waterfall from the little island where we took a dip in the water.

And now a Beached Whale and a Snow White. I am unhappy about the many pounds I've put on in the last couple of years, Anne is unhappy about her current lack of tan, but you know what, this is still the beginning of our trip and day 1 of beach time! We're each on a mission here.

Yet another adorable photo of Anne.

This is the "before" in "before and after." When we got on the boat, before we got completely drenched. (Not in the San Francisco Creatures of the Loin meaning of the word, mind you.)

On the boat, before going full-speed into the whiteness behind us.

The "After" photo. Completely wet, even the camera got a few splashes on it, despite the fact that we kept it in a waterproof bag the whole time.

At the top of the waterfall everything is calm, it looks flat and serene. I can't help but wonder if back in the old days people went in boats on the river, didn't see the waterfall and fell into it. From the river around the top of the falls you can barely tell what's about the happen. If feels as if one piece of earth fell down at a perfectly vertical angle. Or as if someone sliced the earth like a piece of cake.

And then this is how it looks like when all that river falls down. The name of this section of the waterfall in Spanish is Gargantua del Diablo. "The name Iguzu comes from the Guaraní word for "great water." The first Spanish explorer to see the falls was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541. Taller than Niagara Falls, twice as wide with 275 cascades spread in a horsehoe shape over nearly two miles of the Iguazu River, Iguazú Falls are the result of a volcanic eruption which left yet another large crack in the earth. During the rainy season of November - March, the rate of flow of water going over the falls may reach 450,000 cubic feet (12,750 cubic m) per second." - quote source

Anne at the top of Gargantua del Diablo.

Anne and Monica, January 4th 2012.

After we were done with the waterfall, we took a half hour chill cruise through the delta located above the waterfall, on an inflatable row boat. The boat went through narrow canals covered by the canopies of dense tropical forest.We saw monkeys jumping from one tree to another, from one side of the canal to the other. We rowed under a tree that had these tiny orange fruit (like miniature oranges) A baby monkey was hanging from her hind legs on the tree, while picking the fruit and eating it with the front legs. I picked one fruit too, peeled it and started eating it. It had 2 big seeds inside covered with a thin layer of white pulp. I asked the guide if it's ok to eat it and he reprimanded me for eating fruit from a national park, which apparently is not allowed. Oops...

Back at the hostel, we met a few nice and fun people, like these two Argentine boys, Marcos and Guille and hung out by the pool until late at night when the staff kicked us out. To all my girlfriends back home who were asking and wondering if we met any hot Argentine men... well, we did not meet any while we were in Buenos Aires, but luckily Iguazu saved its country's reputation.

Never Found Me Pot o' Gold...

We are now in Rio de Janeiro, after a hellish 24-hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazu. It was the most expensive bus we've taken so far, and unlike the other rides, they don't provide any food and they make a million stops along the way at different bus stations to drop off and pick up people. We had to switch buses in the middle of the night because it was raining and our bus was leaking water from the roof onto us. Also the A/C didn't work, so everyone on the bus was complaining and fanning themselves until the sun went down. All of this to say that we are incredibly excited to be off the bus and in bustling Rio.

Before this, we spent a couple days in Puerto Iguazu, the Argentinian city closest to Iguazu Falls. Foz do Iguacu is the Brazilian equivalent, a jumping-off point for visiting the amazing waterfalls. To get to Puerto Iguazu, we took a 17-hour bus from Buenos Aires. I suppose we could have booked a flight from BA to Rio, but we would have missed out on this extraordinary natural wonder.

Puerto Iguazu is a great place to see the Triple Frontier, the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, where the Iguazu and Parana rivers converge, so we walked there on our first day in town.

Tourist photo.

A tree at the border.

We are in Argentina, directly across the river and to the right is Brazil and to the left is Paraguay.

Walking around the downtown area, we stumbled upon some funny mannequins in a Lacoste shop.

Wow! Those dalmatians really look great in the summer 2012 mixed-knit striped line.

The next day we ventured off to the main attraction. Both Argentina and Brazil have parks with views of the falls, and most guidebooks tell you to visit both sides to get the full overview, but based on what other travelers told us, it seems the Argentinian side is best, so we decided to only go there.

Bridges and walkways lead you through the park, to many different waterfalls.

Our first view of the falls.

Boats take visitors around the park, and in the end we decided to "ball out" and take two of the main boat trips offered. The first takes you straight to the waterfalls, soaking you to the bone (which feels wonderful in the heat) and the other is lazy river style, rafting through the jungle.

The thrill-seeker's boat ride.

People in the top-right corner.

A sign for blind visitors. Too bad they can't actually see the waterfalls, but I guess the sound alone is worth a visit for them.

Some might say the main attraction is the U-shaped Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat), which you access through a series of long boardwalks.

On the way to Garganta del Diablo.

The earth sinks in on itself...

This is the chasm between Argentina and Brazil. Double rainbow!

The chill raft down the river back from Garganta del Diablo.

Monkeys in the trees.

Bad monkey. Monica picked some fruit that she saw the monkeys eating and was later reprimanded by our guide.

The park is very touristy and packed full of people. It reminded me a lot of a day at Six Flags or Disney World, just with fewer tramp stamps. At times it was difficult to deal with the crowds, especially in the heat. Everyone was trying to get the best photo and you basically had to elbow your way in to get a good look. That first day we did almost everything the park offered, except for one trail that takes you to a secret waterfall and the upper falls trail, that gives you a view of the waterfalls from above. I decided to go back the next day (half-price admission) while Monica stayed at our hostel, which had a pool, hammocks, and an outdoor kitchen and patio (can't blame her).

The Sendero Macuco trail to the secret waterfall is not paved like the other trails in the park, and it is also the longest trail (3 km each way), so most park visitors don't bother to go there, making it a nice respite in an otherwise overcrowded place.

Along the trail, I encountered wildlife, which really made me feel I was in the jungle.

Bad photo of a big iguana--the thing moved fast.

Very jungle-y.

Looking up...

Spiders everywhere.

Monkey? No. It's a coati, also known as the Brazilian aardvark.

These animals roam all around the park and are very common to see. They are part of the raccoon family and have a nose a bit like an anteater.

Baby coati.

The little one on the right is yawning.

Almost there...

The waterfall. Everyone wants a turn underneath.

Family photo opportunity. Everyone is trying to get the baby to look at the camera.

Most of the people on the trail appeared to be locals, which was cool. The waterfall itself wasn't that impressive, considering what you can see on the other side of the park, but the trail was beautiful and I think with any other surroundings this waterfall/swimming hole would be much more appreciated and frequented.

I then made my way to the upper falls trail for one last view. It's almost like I did a double-take, going back that second day, to make sure it was all real.

Little people down there.

If you can't stand rainbows, don't come to this park.

I never found me pot o gold...

Compared to Niagara Falls, Iguazu is four times as wide and also taller, but to me I thought it didn't look as tall as Niagara, probably because of how wide it is. Niagara's version of the thrilling boat ride mentioned above is called the "Maid of the Mist" and is pretty fun, but everyone wears ponchos because the water is too cold and you only get misted, not drenched. It's not a speed boat like the one in Iguazu, and it only goes up to the falls once, rather than three times (two different waterfalls). Niagara is still amazing in its own way. I actually started tearing up on the Maid of the Mist when the guide announced, "This. Is. Niagara. Falls."

But the main thing I loved about Iguazu is how green it is. It is the jungle and you feel it when you go there. It is quite theme park-y, but makes up for it with the Sendero Macuco trail and the magnitude of the landscape. If you get the chance, I say visit Iguazu Falls.

The bus ticket booth. Instead of going to Rio, we could have gone to Moron! Oh well, next time...