In Bariloche the one recommended tour is the “Circuito Chico”. Most do it by mini van tour or personal car, but the more athletic option is to bike it. We headed out of town in the local bus to the bike rental closest to the circuit (could exaggerate the athleticism by renting a bike in town). Having rented two bikes we headed out toward the panoramic view point that the guide assured us should not be missed.

From here you can see the fancy hotel Llao Llao. Apparently everything around here revolves around the Llao Llao, one of the earliest tourist attractions. One of the leading hotels of the world. Saying the name gives the speaker away as Argentinian or South American thanks to the double Ls.

Although not on the main route we visited the Colonia Suiza for lunch. We expected to find wurst and other Swiss cuisine (Rosti or Rivella perhaps), but the choices were empanadas or alfajoles.

Back on the main path we rode the afternoon away and visited both a hidden lake and a replicate Roman bridge. By four we decided to treat ourselves at the Llao Llao for some tea and spectacular views. The tea not only came with cakes but also display by local birds of prey used to feeding on the leftovers.

The hotel, the fake Roman bridge (later discovered there were several others) and the nearby chapel were all built by Bustillo, a famous Argentinean architect. A nice hotel but nothing worth traveling there for unless of course you are an avid golf player as the course surrounding it did look quite tempting on this particular sunny day.

Having returned the bikes we got a voucher for some free beers down the road and took the express bus (we were the last ones to fit in, so he decided to not stop for any other bus stops). Bariloche is quite an enjoyable city if you happen to have good fortune with weather.

Sometimes St. Peter is just not fair. The two days we spent in El Calafate and at the Perito Moreno glacier were incredibly sunny and beautiful. Not a single cloud to be seen in the skies. Then our drive over to El Chalten on Tuesday was like a giant postcard viewing of Patagonia: deep blue skies, glistening sun and incredible views of Mount Fitz Roy and the Cerro Torre. The whole parque glaciar was completely free of clouds, which happens very rarely.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Taking advantage of the good weather, we drove to the Lago del Desierto in the afternoon which is at a dead-end road in a valley leading straight into Chile. (Up until a few decades ago Argentina and Chile still had skirmishes in this region about the exact location of the border. In 1965 a Chilean gendarme even died when an Argentinean patrol came across him and a few of his subordinates near El Chalten. Or as the Argentineans put it in the commemorative plaque: “…dejando de existir poco después…” meaning literally “…he stopped existing shortly after that…”.)

Nowadays though these border disputes seem to have been laid to rest as the tourists have taken full control of the area. El Chalten, which was only built in 1985 as a police outpost, has exploded in the past two decades and with every year it seems another hostel and another restaurant pops up. (We know this not only from the people in town but also thanks to our guide books which are both from 2004 and have only about a third of the places listed that exist nowadays. The prices are also not reliable anymore – everything has at least trippled in the last 6 years.) Luckily the beauty of the area hasn’t diminished:

After the Laguna del Desierto (seen above) we hiked up to the Huemul glacier, one of many in the surrounding mountains. The sun was almost blinding up there with the lake and ice on top:

We could even see the Cerro Torre and the Fitz Roy again from there, it truly was a picture-book day:

So really, we shouldn’t have been surprised that St. Peter had other plans for the next day. On Wednesday morning we woke up early to grey clouds and cold winds. But we tried to put a good spin on things: at least it wasn’t raining and the clouds were pretty high so we might still get a good view. We were hiking to the Laguna de Los Tres, a lake at the base of Fitz Roy and so named in honor of the three French men who climbed the mountain for the first time in the 1952.

It all started well enough and we even appreciated the clouds a little because it meant that the sun wasn’t beating down on us. But just as we had finished the first part of the hike (the easy part which goes through woods and along mostly level terrain) and came out into the river bed to start the much tougher climb on the other side, rain drops began splattering onto the rocks around us. From that point on until we reached our hostel again a few hours later, the rain never got worse than a strong drizzle but it didn’t let up once. Which means this is the view we got at the top of the Laguna de los Tres:

But sometimes you need a crappy day like that to make you appreciate the beautiful ones even more. It took us three hours to reach the Laguna de los Tres and only two to make it back to town, thanks to the brisk pace set by our iPods. Back in El Chalten we rewarded ourselves with a waffle topped with calafate jam at La Wafleria and mint hot chocolate. The best cure for rainy days and blistered feet.

Probably the trickiest part about maintaining a travel blog is that when you’re out having fun and doing things, your’e not at the computer blogging about those things. And later on when you’re back home because it’s late or the weather is bad, you’re usually too tired to write about all the fun things you did that day. Yes, I’m really moaning about having too much fun and too little time to tell you all about it. But tonight you’re in luck – it’s not too late yet and the weather is grim so we’re staying in to tell you all about our latest adventures.

On Monday we spent the day at the Perito Moreno glacier, one of many here in southern Patagonia but what’s special about the Perito Moreno is that it’s a stable glacier, meaning it’s not shrinking. It’s not growing either but it does do a memorable trick where every once in a while the tip of the glacier grows a few metres to meet the shore of the peninsula in front of it. This dams the lake on the other side and causes the water to rise, sometimes up to 24 metres. When the pressure on the dam becomes too big, the connection ruptures in a spectacular crash, levelling the water out again. There’s no schedule for this event, it can happen once a year or once a decade. The only thing they know is that when the water first starts to break through the connection (as water is want to do, it begins tunneling its way through the bottom of the ice) it takes about 24 hours for the rupture to happen. So if you’re ever visiting while the glacier has connected to the peninsula and you see a little cave forming at the bottom of the connection, do stay for another day for what will sure be a spectacular show.

We didn’t get so lucky since the glacier isn’t anywhere near connecting to the peninsula these days. But we did see some pretty big chunks fall off and even small, tennisball size ice clumps create a satisfying WOOMP when they hit the water. How can it be stable when it’s falling apart at the seams like that? Because the glacier moves forward up to 1.5 metres per day.

Click on this image as well as the header image at the top to see a large version of the picture.

Because we happend to be at the glacier on the birthday of the Lago Argentino (the lake into which the Perito Moreno feeds) our visit coincided with a visit from ‘La Cristina’, or as she’s known to anyone outside of the country, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, President of Argentina. She was here to baptize some new walkway that had been built around the shore of the peninsula and she brought a whole lot of union guys with loud drums and big banners. We’re obviously not very atune to the workings of Argentine politics since we had to ask one of the guys if they were for or against the government. (His answer: “With. There’s no other option.”) We could have scrambled for a spot in the crowd to hear her speak but politicians really are a dime a dozen compared to stable glaciers. Thankfully her short appearance at the visitor center/snack bar meant that we had some of the walkways all to ourselves for a short while and could eat our lunch watching the big hunk of ice without any other tourists getting into our view.

After lunch and extensive ice hunk watching, we proceeded to the other attraction of the day – walking on the glacier. Because I was afraid to freeze to death, we opted for the shorter version of the walk, about 1 1/2 hours long. There’s also a 5 hour one where you get better crampons and maybe even an ice axe. But I take full responsibility for getting us into the senior tour. It was quite pretty to see the glacier up close, especially to see all the different shades of blue and how they intensify in little cracks the deeper it gets.

But as pretty as the tour was, the highlight was probably at the end when we got some whisky served over – what else – glacier ice. Definitely did the trick to warm our feet and hearts.

(Travel spoils you that way – 2 years ago neither one of us would have touched the whisky and instead taken a glass of glacier water but since we drove through Scotland and sampled various whiskys directly at the source, we definitely appreciated The Famous Grouse we were served.)

The difference between Patagonia and Buenos Aires is almost too much. We’re less than 2000km from the capital but we might as well be on another continent. There are few paved roads, even fewer towns, the color scheme is brown/grey with lots of blue for the giant sky that opens up above and there are way more animals around than people.

Today we drove around Isla Valdes, a peninsula famous for its wildlife, off the coast of Puerto Madryn. Depending on the season you can see sealions, sea elephants, penguins and orcas. If you’re really lucky you can even see an orca eat a sea lion but that didn’t happen today unfortunately. (They only kill about 8% of the sea lion population a year, in the grand scheme of the ecosystem, that’s not very much.) But what is very impressive is that the orcas have come up with a special hunting technique here at Isla Valdes. They intentionally let themselves wash up on the beach, grab a sea lion pup and then wiggle their way back into the water with the waves. Basically, they beach themselves on purpose and then hope to make it back into the sea in time before their bodies give out under their own pressure. That’s a lot of dedication just for a meal!

Apparently this happens on average once every three days during the season, which is on right now, but the orcas weren’t hungry today apparently so instead we got to see the sea lion pups happily frolicking in the waves. Notice the two big daddies, one on the very right of the frame and one in the middle of his harem. Those two seem to be rivals because they kept growling at each other and mock charging later on.

Let’s go in for a close-up here of the pups so you can really see them klutzing around in the waves:

(Sorry for the cloudy quality, it’s taken through binoculars.)

There were several different groups of sea lions on the beach, all separated by a bit of space and usually gathered around one or two huge males with big manes basking in the sun. Apart from the whole ‘orca might come for lunch and have your baby’ thing, this really seems quite a peaceful and pleasant life.

We also saw penguins and some very far away sea elephants (which might also have been sea lions or really just fat blobs on the sand, hard to tell from that distance…)

In between animals there was lots of nothing, followed by more nothing and long stretches of road. We covered almost 200km today, once around the peninsula, but we probably saw fewer than 20 cars. And most of those were the same people over and over again because obviously the tourists are all on the same route. At one particular long stretch of road we stopped for a while and took some silly pictures. Not a single car passed us the entire time we were there. Which is why we could do this without even having to check whether there was someone coming down the road:

Today we’re driving back down to Trelew to visit the paleontological museum and to have tea in Gaiman (remember the whole Welsh heritage thing we mentioned in the last post?). We’ll spend one night in Trelew and then fly down to El Calafate, to do some hiking and possibly some serious freezing. Will let you know how that goes.

Yes, you read that right, our time in Buenos Aires is up. But we just go here! We haven’t even gone to La Pharmacie yet to try their provoleta con verdura a la parilla and I want to go back to Morelia for another pizza fix (pizza from the grill, ultra thin and loaded with toppings). Let alone all the museums and shops and barrios that we haven’t visited yet. There’s no two ways about it – we just have to come back. Especially since most of last week we’ve had torrential rains and we couldn’t do much in the way of touristing. But when the rain let up for a day we did manage to go to Tigre, a small town about 30km north of Buenos Aires, built on the Paraná delta.
Because it sits smack in the middle of the delta, boat is the best form of transportation in the area. The popular thing to do is to buy a ticket for a boat ride from one of the restaurants which means the regular taxi boat will take you to the restaurant (for a hefty surcharge), drop you off for lunch and then pick you up again a couple of hours later. Since there really isn’t much else to do in Tigre, this is how most tourists spend their day in Tigre.

We chose the Gato Blanco restaurant because it was far down the river and we wanted to see as much as possible. Most houses along the way were just regular small holiday shacks but some people really let their creativity run wild, especially on their jetties. This one housed a very normal looking home in the back but it’s all about the first impression. Just look at that tower!

We also passed the local supermarket:

And finally made it to the Gato Blanco for lunch. Really a very pleasant spot and full of pensioners which is always a good sign in a restaurant. (This has been scientifically proven by us after many years of study – the number of customers over the age of 70 is directly proportional to the quality of the food.)

After we’d been dropped off again in Tigre town, we took a stroll along the river:

The monument to the heroic rowers with the Marina Regatta rowing club in the back. Can you tell rowing’s a big deal in this town?

And ended up at the (apparently) only other tourist attraction, the grandly titled Naval Museum of the Nation. There was a big jumble of exhibits in the museum ranging from maritime oil paintings to modern fighter planes and a baby whale preserved in a jar. Also, a giant tide computing machine:

But now our time is really up in Bs As and our trails are leading south. First stop: Isla Valdes, a little peninsula off the north-eastern coast of Patagonia about 1000km south of Buenos Aires. We’ll spend a couple of days there to see some wildlife and have some proper scones and tea. (The area was settled by the Welsh in the late 1800’s and nowadays there are still plenty of tea shops around, serving cucumber sandwiches, scones and Earl Grey tea.) After that we’re going even further south to El Calafate and surroundings so stay tuned for news from Patagonia!

Our time in Buenos Aires is almost coming to an end and we’re starting to enter panic mode: there’s so much we haven’t seen yet! We try to squeeze as much as possible into our remaining days but there is simply too much to do. Apparently once you enter panic mode like that, your judgement gets somewhat impaired as well. That’s the only way I can explain how we ended up at ‘Caminito’, a little road that passes throug the La Boca quarter and which is well worth a miss if you ever come to Buenos Aires. To give you an idea: imagine, if you will, the lower part of the Ramblas in Barcelona. Already full of tourist touts and restaurant owners who try to lure you to one of their overpriced tables. Now multiply their persistance by 10, divide the area in half, add garish colors, suffocating heat and you have an idea of what the Caminito is like on a good day. (On a bad day one of the pickpockets makes off with your wallet.)

The La Boca area is one of the poorer neighbourhoods of the city and usually not a very touristy quarter but the residents of the Caminito started painting their houses back in the 1950’s to spruce things up and now they host mainly tourist restaurants, tango shows and mediocre street painters. We sped through the area trying to rid ourselves of tango posers, waiters and painters and when we came out on the other side we immediately started looking for a taxi. There was really nothing fun about the place, it just seemed like one giant tourist trap, painted in primary colors to hide the dirt.

Also, creepy note on the photos – there’s a papier-maché doll looking from a window or balcony in all the pictures below. What’s up with that?!

Caminito was definitely a bust but to balance it out we had a very pleasant experience in a place that we expected to be much worse: a tango show.

There are so many different tango tours advertised for tourists that you just have to assume it’s going to be sleazy and disappointing. But our visit wouldn’t have been complete without it, would it? So Conor did some research on the different shows and finally settled on the Piazzolla Theater. We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the show but their website has a good selection so you can get an idea of what it’s like. The theater isn’t very big so when the music starts to play it really takes over the whole place and pulls you into the show. I had expected a guy with an accordion and some shady dancing but what we got looked more like a full blown off-broadway production with an 8-piece band, 6 dancers and 2 singers. There was dancing (du’h), singing, music and mixes of all of the above. Even though everything was extremely stylized we still enjoyed it very much and walked home humming Carlos Gardel tunes.

Another ‘very Bs As’ experience – and a good one – was our visit to a puerta cerrada restaurant, literally a closed-door restaurant. Although restaurant is a bit of a misnomer because you’re actually going to someone’s house. We found a couple of listings for different puerta cerrada restaurants in the local Time Out guide so we picked one with an Asian flavour, Cocina Sunae, and made a reservation. Once your reservation is approved – since it’s someone’s house there are usually only a few spots available – you’re provided with the address and directions on how to get there. We felt very hush-hush and exclusive but in the end it’s really just a restaurant. A small and secluded one but nevertheless a restaurant. Sure, there was a TV in the corner and some toys stuffed behind a curtain but there were also 5 tables (2 for larger parties, 1 for four and 2 for two), a wine list (scribbled on a napkin) and two waitresses. But the food was very good and its Asian twist provided a welcome relief – spices, mint, lemongrass! – from the usual meat and potato options on offer.

Yesterday we visited three museums in a row, just because we can. (And because the cleaning lady came and we didn’t want to bother her in the apartment while she was doing her thing.) We started at MALBA, the Museum of Latin American Art, where we saw an extensive Warhol exhibition. That was probably worth the price of admission alone but the rest of the museum was very interesting as well. My favourite was by a local artist, Pablo Reinoso, called Enredamaderas. A wooden bench that takes on a life of its own and winds its way through the different floors of the museum, bursting out of walls and snaking around columns.

Following the MALBA it was time for lunch so we headed to the National Museum of Decorative Arts, MNAD. We had heard about their good restaurant and we weren’t disappointed: even though we sat right by the Avenida Libertador, one of the biggest and busiest avenues in the city, it was a relaxing and peaceful lunch. And very tasty as well.

The MNAD is housed in a former private residence although palace is probably a more apt word. The house is enormous especially since it was built for a family of four. But it lends itself very well to being a museum. The decorative arts didn’t really captivate us all that much but in the basement they had an exhibition about the posters of Pierre Mendell which was wonderful. Beautiful, simple designs often with a cheeky undertone.

Postcards of some of the posters. The first one is for a German sailing event, the second for Swiss book design and the last two are for the Bavarian opera house's productions of L'Orfeo and Don Giovanni.

Since the MNAD is just down the street from the Museum of Architecture, MARQ, we headed there next. (Gotta love all those acronyms…)
Because we didn’t have any change for the entrance fee, the receptionist waved us through. Argentineans really are very nice people and not just because they let us into their museums for free. Everyone we’ve met so far in Buenos Aires has been helpful, friendly and usually very happy even though there is a constant lament about ‘la Cristina’, i.e. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the president. But when they hear we’ve just come from Venezuela they start laughing because they know that while things are bad here, they are not THAT bad. They usually go on saying that Venezuelans and Argentineans are brothers in arms and have to bear the same cross but I think deep down they’re patting themselves on the back for their good fortune.

After dealing with some work unpleasantness, we’ve finally gotten into tourist mode and started seeing the city beyond our little area of San Telmo. Yesterday we took a tour on the Buenos Aires Bus which in the end turned out to show us much of what we’d already seen by ourselves in previous days but it was still fun to see things from a bit higher up and hear a little history on the side.

Two red heads on a bus. Yes, we forgot our hats...

We also went to the Japanese garden where we heard a lecture on Bonsai trees. At first we treated the whole thing as more of a joke but once the representative of the Buenos Aires Bonsai club (I kid you not!) started talking and showed us how to re-pot a bonsai, in this case a small ficus, it actually got very interesting and we learned quite a bit about plants in general and very small trees in particular.

A few days ago we also went to pay hommage to the most famous grave in the city, that of Eva Duarte de Perón aka Evita. Her remains are buried at the Recoleta cemetery, one of the oldest and most exclusive cemeteries in the city. They weren’t always there, in fact they only arrived back in Buenos Aires, after an extended stay in Italy and Spain, in the 70’s. If you want to read all the sordid details about that story, go ahead.

Our research into Argentinean beef has also continued with a visit to Cabaña Las Lilas, a steak restaurant owned by a ranch. (So convenient!) The meat was as good as we had hoped if not better. A little morbid perhaps – the steaks come out with a little plastic cow stuck in them that tell you how it’s cooked, i.e. “I’m medium!” Looks cute but just a tad disturbing…

Don’t worry, we haven’t been sucked into a giant black hole on our trip down south. We’ve just been trying to get our bearings in this new city as well as getting some much-needed work done. But we’ve vowed to become better tourists in the next 3 weeks.

The area we’re staying in is called San Telmo, also known as the antique quarter because there are so many antique shops lining its old-fashioned cobbled streets. But there are also a lot of bars, galleries and restaurants so some call it the Greenwich Village of Buenos Aires. Whatever name you want to call it, it’s a great place to stay.
Our apartment is very modern with lots of concrete, glass and steel. Not quite our style but it’s sunny and has a wonderful rooftop terrace with a barbecue. Our neighbour has a little kiddie pool on his terrace. At first we snickered at that but with the temperatures steadily rising these days, we’re plotting ways of jumping the fence and taking a quick dip.

Yesterday we wandered down a few blocks towards calle Defensa where the weekly street fair was in full swing. This turns almost the entire street into an artisan/flea market with vendors offering everything from knitted Barbie dresses (with human size versions to match) to the obligatory mate containers in all shapes, sizes and materials. One guy was selling flowers from the back of his bike. Or maybe he was just taking his plants for a ride.

At the plaza Dorrego, the epicenter of the San Telmo street fair, we had the equivalent of an Argentinean ploughman’s lunch.

Speaking of food, I’m sure you’re all dying to hear whether the meat is really as succulent as everyone says it is. So far our verdict is, yes and no. We’ve been to a restaurant recommended by a friend as well as a guidebook and the meat was fine but nothing to write home about. Then we had some Venezuelan friends over for a barbecue on our terrace and that meat was excellent. (Hmm, that makes it sound like we ate our friends. It was beef on the barbecue, I promise!) Which explains our ‘yes and no’ verdict: Restaurant 0 – Carrefour 1. We shall continue our research on this topic though and will report back with further findings.

We’ve also wandered around Puerto Madero a bit, the youngest quarter of Buenos Aires. It’s the old port of the city that has been reformed in the past 20 years with spacious lofts and trendy restaurants. Calatrava built one of the bridges connecting the mainland with the port side, which looks especially nice at night: